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ajor retail chain Kawan Lama Retail plans to venture into Sorong, Papua, and Pontianak, West Kalimantan, next year by opening ACE Hardware and Informa stores as part of its business expansion.

The company saw its business grow this year despite a weak macroeconomic environment.

'€œWe will open stores in Pontianak in 2016. As for Sorong, we are still discussing the plan intensively,'€ Kawan Lama Retail public relations and customer activations manager Nila Adisepoetro said on Wednesday.

Nila expressed confidence about the retail business amid growing demand at ACE Hardware and Informa stores across the country and said the company would continue to expand.

ACE Hardware offers products ranging from kitchen utensils to automotive accessories, while Informa provides consumers with an array of home furnishings.

She added that the company had exceeded its target of opening 10 ACE and Informa stores in 2015. As of October, it has opened 11 stores: seven ACE stores and four Informa stores.

This was due to very strong demand and the purchasing patterns of Indonesians on hardware, home improvement and furniture products, especially in eastern Indonesia, Nila said.

'€œWe had an exceptional response to the opening of ACE stores in Manado [North Sulawesi], Kupang [East Nusa Tenggara] and in Lombok [West Nusa Tenggara]. In Manado, I recall that we had to expand our store to accommodate demand. Many people in eastern Indonesia have high purchasing power, but there are not many places that sell the kind of products we do,'€ she told The Jakarta Post.

She added that demand was not uniformly high across all ACE or Informa stores, admitting that there were stores in some areas that occasionally showed just moderate sales.

Even so, Nila said there had been no case yet of an ACE or Informa store closing down due to weak sales.

In July, an ACE Hardware store located in South Jakarta'€™s Green Tebet mall was forced to close due to the shopping center itself being closed by the Jakarta administration for lacking a building worthiness certificate (SLF).

'€œOne of the reasons for the growth of our market is the rising number of customers who own apartments or more than one residence. The strong apartment market is helping us as well,'€ Nila said.

Despite notable demand, the company'€™s expansion was still considered slow, said Nila, because the decision to open a new outlet would be preceded by intensive market research regarding lifestyles and income brackets [in the prospective location].

ACE Hardware currently has 116 stores across 34 cities nationwide. It began Indonesian operations in 1995. Informa has 60 stores nationwide.

ACE Hardware, which is listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX), recorded income of Rp 393 billion in the first nine months of 2015, up from Rp 375 billion earned in the same period of 2014.