World Co.'s petit main expands to four Taiwan stores in 18 months

World Co.'s children's-wear label petit main is opening three more stores in Taiwan this autumn, expanding from a single Taipei flagship to four stores in about 18 months, according to the retail group's own announcement.

The first of the three, at the Far Eastern Garden City mall near the Taipei Dome in Taipei's Xinyi district, held a soft opening on August 22 ahead of a formal opening September 16, on the mall's fifth floor at roughly 19 tsubo (about 63 square metres). A second store, about 22 tsubo, opens September 11 on the fifth floor of the Far Eastern SOGO department store in Hsinchu, and a third, about 27 tsubo, follows September 18 on the third floor of Global Mall in New Taipei's Zhonghe district. All three join petit main's existing store at Mitsui Shopping Park LaLaport Nangang in Taipei, which opened in March 2025 and has "continued to perform well" while "gaining new fans" among Taiwanese shoppers, World Co. said, without disclosing sales figures.

The Taiwan push runs through World Co.'s international business division and a Taiwan-based partner named in the release as 台湾和亜留土股份有限公司, which the company said supplies petit main with brand, store-development, marketing and local-network resources — the standard package a Japanese group leans on to move a domestic label overseas without building a market presence from scratch. petit main runs 148 stores in Japan, priced and styled for the 0-to-9 age range, a segment where scale at home gives a group like World Co. more room to subsidise a slower overseas build than a standalone kids'-wear label would have.

Four stores in 18 months, off the strength of one debut, is still an early bet rather than a proven Taiwan strategy — the real test is whether petit main holds its new Taiwanese shoppers once the novelty of a Japanese import wears off. But going from one store to four this fast, on a parent group's local partner and property network, is a faster start abroad than most mid-market Japanese brands manage alone.