--- title: Taiwanese Brand SMILE Korean-Style Photo Booths | Taiwan’s Korean-Style Photo Booth Industry Research Series url: https://joelin.cc/en/p/3787 source: https://joelin.cc/en/p/3787 lang: en pubDate: '2026-10-12' date_modified: '2026-10-12' description: A profile of Taiwan’s SMILE photo booth brand, covering its history, five locations, a 2023 Chifeng store visit, brand collaborations, rental prices, and franchise offering. author: joe ai_role: ai_only translation_of: /p/3787 mentions: - name: Disney+ sameAs: - https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q54958752 - name: Swatch sameAs: - https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q573422 --- # Taiwanese Brand SMILE Korean-Style Photo Booths | Taiwan’s Korean-Style Photo Booth Industry Research Series ## Summary SMILE is a Taiwanese Korean-style photo booth brand. Its corporate entity, 微微笑有限公司, was established in April 2023. Its representative, 巫允心, also heads two sole proprietorships with the same name that operate the Taipei Zhongshan and Tainan Hai’an stores, and personally holds three registered SMILE word-and-design trademarks. As of August 2026, the brand had five locations: Taipei Zhongshan, Taipei Chifeng, Taichung Yizhong, Tainan Hai’an, and Tainan Shin Kong Cinemas. Chifeng and Hai’an carry SNAPPP × SMILE joint branding; the Chifeng store opened on June 24, 2023. Pricing rose from NT$100 per session in 2023 to NT$200 for two prints around October 2024. Beyond store revenue, the brand has three other revenue streams: machine rentals, store venue rentals, and paid listings for fan-support photo frames. Its published rates include NT$16,000 for a four-hour wooden photo booth rental and NT$1,000 for a one-week fan-support frame listing. It also publicly recruits franchisees, claiming that a business can be started from NT$350,000. Collaborations acknowledged by the brand include Disney+’s Light Shop, Swatch, RHINOSHIELD × Abei, Sorry Youth, New Balance, Eason Chan’s Taipei concerts, and the Taipei Film Festival. The Taiwanese trademark owner of ALWAYS JOHN is an unrelated individual, and the registrations do not cover photo booth services. SMILE is not the license holder for that IP. ## Key facts - The corporate entity is 微微笑有限公司, business registration number 93380167, established in April 2023 with registered capital of NT$500,000. - As of August 2026, there were five locations; the Tainan Shin Kong Cinemas location was added in June 2026. - The Chifeng store opened on June 24, 2023, as a SNAPPP × SMILE jointly branded store. - Pricing changed from NT$100 per session in 2023 to NT$200 for two prints by October 2024. - Published rates: wooden photo booth rental at NT$16,000 for four hours, fan-support frame listings at NT$1,000 per week, and franchise startup costs from NT$350,000. - Collaborations acknowledged by the brand include Disney+’s Light Shop, Swatch, RHINOSHIELD × Abei, and New Balance. ![SMILE Korean-style photo booth brand identity](https://image.joelin.cc/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/0xu8EsaSar9n3zUKY5d7xw/joelin/2026-09/brand-logo-smile/w=180,h=72,fit=scale-down) ## What distinguishes this brand? When I first researched the brand in May 2023, I wrote that it “feels like a team with an understanding of, or background in, IP development.” That was just an impression at the time, without evidence. After visiting the Chifeng Street store in September 2023 and reviewing public information again in August 2026, I can replace that sentence with a more precise account: SMILE does participate in IP collaborations, but it does not own the IP and is not the party negotiating its licensing. What it does is package its stores and machines into an offering that customers can order, allowing other people’s IP to use them. Five marks appear together on the Chifeng store’s sign, lightbox, and display stand: SMILE, SNAPPP, ALWAYS JOHN, Culture Supply, and FILTER017. The project is called Film Date, written in Japanese as フィルムデート, with the subtitle “デートの銀塩” (“A Date in Silver Halide”). The project credit printed on the lightbox reads, verbatim, “PROJECT BY FILTER017 Culture Supply.” In other words, FILTER017 produced and released this collaboration project, not SMILE. ALWAYS JOHN is an original character by Japanese illustrator SHIBACHAN (オフィスシバチャン): a white dog who lives in New York, loves the Yankees, and skateboards. The brand consistently uses blue, white, and black for its visual identity. The character’s licensing extends to France, the United Kingdom, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Thailand, and a themed café opened in Taiwan in January 2022. The copyright credit in the corner of the display stand reads OFFICE SHIBACHAN / TOKYO. One additional fact uncovered in August 2026 changes how this should be read: ALWAYS JOHN has three registered trademarks in Taiwan, covering paper goods and printed matter, clothing, and games and toys, respectively. Their registrations were published in January 2024, and the owner is a Taiwanese individual—not SMILE, FILTER017, or SNAPPP. None of these three trademarks covers Class 41, which includes entertainment, recreation, and cultural activities; in other words, they do not cover photo booth services themselves. It is therefore not valid to write that “SMILE obtained an ALWAYS JOHN license.” The accurate description is that SMILE supplies the machines and photo booth services within this collaboration project. ![Exterior of the SNAPPP × SMILE Chifeng store, with alternating SMILE and SNAPPP marks on a blue awning, a smooth cement façade, rounded window openings, and three low stools](https://image.joelin.cc/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/0xu8EsaSar9n3zUKY5d7xw/joelin/2023-09/smile-chifeng-storefront/hero) ## Where did the brand originate? Where was its first store? Zhongshan, Taipei. Registration records push the timeline back a little further: 微笑商行, the registered business behind the Zhongshan store, was approved for establishment on September 2, 2022. Its tax registration lists its industry as “retail sales through vending machines”—the industry code that most closely fits unattended photo booths. A registration date is not an opening date; it can only serve as a boundary when tracing the opening back in time. Still, this is the earliest point in the brand’s history that can currently be established from public records. ## What physical stores does it have? How many locations and machines? The original May 2023 version of this section listed “Zhongshan and Ximen.” Much has changed over three years, so recording the locations at specific points in time is less misleading: * May 2023: Two stores, Zhongshan and Ximen, plus a single-machine location in the East Metro Mall around Zhongxiao Fuxing. See [What Photo Booths Are Available Around Zhongxiao Fuxing?](/p/3565). * June 24, 2023: The Chifeng store opened at No. 3-1, Lane 12, Chifeng Street, Datong District, Taipei. The date appears in the introduction on the store’s official Facebook page, which states, verbatim, “We began serving everyone on Chifeng Street on June 24, 2023.” Its cover photo was also updated that day. * Before February 2024: The Taichung Yizhong store was already operating. * April 2025: The registered business behind the Tainan Hai’an store was established. The store occupies a three-story old house, with self-service photo booths on the first and second floors and film processing on the third. * June 2026: The Tainan Shin Kong Cinemas location began appearing on the official account. * August 2026: The five locations still being promoted officially were Zhongshan, Chifeng, Taichung Yizhong, Tainan Hai’an, and Tainan Shin Kong Cinemas. Ximen and the East Metro Mall were no longer on the official list. Two of these five locations carry SNAPPP × SMILE joint branding: Taipei Chifeng and Tainan Hai’an. This indicates that the collaboration is a store format that has been replicated, rather than a one-off pop-up. Machine counts can be inferred from official announcements. A cross-store event announcement in July 2026 listed machine identifiers as “Zhongshan store (machine 1-3),” “Chifeng store (machine 2-1),” and “Yizhong store (machine 3-4).” The numbering combines a store number with a machine number: Zhongshan is 1, Chifeng is 2, and Yizhong is 3. Under this system, Yizhong has at least four machines and Zhongshan at least three. Interestingly, the fault-reporting notice I saw on-site in 2023 used colors rather than numbers: the identifier to report then was “Chifeng—dark blue.” The naming system changed at some point during those three years. For addresses, maps, and a city-by-city list of the five locations, I have put together a page on my photo booth information site: [SMILE Korean-Style Photo Booths: All Taiwan Locations](https://photobooth.joelin.cc/brand/smile/). ## On-site observations at the Chifeng store in September 2023 I visited on the afternoon of September 26, 2023, about three months after the Chifeng store opened. The following are things I photographed that day that could not be found in online information. ### It is a mixed-format store, rather than simply a photo booth shop The store runs three businesses at once: photo booths, film and camera retail, and a curated selection of Japanese-style goods. Its most prominent feature is a wall of film recessed into the interior wall, densely packed with hundreds of rolls of 135 film, including Kodak, Fujifilm, and CineStill. Nearby shelves sell disposable cameras, instant cameras, hair accessories, and photo props. The wall also displays a collection of vintage Japanese enamel signs from the Shōwa era, including signs for a Chuo Bus ticket sales office, Kodak color processing, Fuji Film, and Sakura Film, accompanied by a green FUJICOLOR bench. From a business perspective, photo booths bring in foot traffic, while film and related merchandise increase the average transaction value. Most other Korean-style photo booth brands at the time sold only the photo-taking experience. This mixed-format approach was uncommon in Taiwan’s market then. When I checked the registration records three years later, this “two businesses” structure also matched the paperwork. In the Tainan Hai’an building, the first floor is registered to the business on SMILE’s side, under entertainment and recreation services. The third floor is registered to an entirely different business, under photo processing, with a different representative. The same applies on Chifeng Street: the jointly branded store and another store operated by SNAPPP itself belong to different entities at different street addresses. In other words, this collaboration model involves two businesses that register separately, issue their own invoices, and divide the work under one roof. It is neither a joint venture nor a case of one belonging to the other. ![The film wall inside the Chifeng store, with hundreds of rolls of 135 film packed into recessed niches and a blue SNAPPP acrylic sign above](https://image.joelin.cc/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/0xu8EsaSar9n3zUKY5d7xw/joelin/2023-09/smile-chifeng-filmwall/hero) ### The price was NT$100 per session The instructions posted on the wall were clear: choose a photo layout, insert one NT$100 note, select a filter, take the photos, choose a frame, select the number of additional prints and insert more cash, then scan a QR code to collect the digital files. The listed price was NT$100 for a set of two eight-panel prints, or NT$100 for one four-panel or six-panel print. Digital files were treated as a complimentary extra, and the store would not provide additional help locating them. This figure is worth retaining as a reference point. The price doubled earlier than I had originally thought: an October 23, 2024 post on the official TikTok account announcing a trial run of a new Zhongshan store setting already stated, verbatim, “NT$200 / 2 prints.” In other words, the doubling observed over three years happened in the second half of 2024, not in 2026. I have not been able to establish an intermediate price point for 2025. ![Photo booth instructions on the Chifeng store wall, listing seven steps: choose a layout, insert NT$100, select a filter, take photos, choose a frame, insert cash for extra prints, and scan a code for digital files; pricing shows NT$100 for two eight-panel prints or one four-panel or six-panel print](https://image.joelin.cc/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/0xu8EsaSar9n3zUKY5d7xw/joelin/2023-09/smile-chifeng-pricing/hero) ### Operations are partly unattended The instructions explicitly stated, “This is an unattended store; please do not wait for staff.” Faults had to be reported through LINE, with the specific machine clearly identified. In practice, however, there was someone at the counter, because the film and camera side is a retail business that needs staff to handle payments and explain products. The photo booth side is unattended; the retail side is staffed. Two different staffing models coexist in the same store. The Tainan Hai’an store makes this arrangement even clearer: its official description says the third floor opens every Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, while the self-service first and second floors operate daily. The staffed part opens four days a week; the unattended part opens every day. ### The store lies within an urban redevelopment site The store occupies the renovated ground floor of an old townhouse. A developer’s sign seeking participants for an urban redevelopment project hangs on the second-floor exterior wall. Locations like this typically involve short-term leases before redevelopment, introducing uncertainty about how long a store can remain open. Looking back, though, this store was still operating in August 2026 and had lasted three years. ![Lightbox at the Chifeng store entrance, showing the Film Date project’s Snappp and John characters and opening hours of 11:00–23:00, with Culture Supply, SNAPPP, and ALWAYS JOHN marks along the bottom](https://image.joelin.cc/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/0xu8EsaSar9n3zUKY5d7xw/joelin/2023-09/smile-chifeng-lightbox/hero) ## What collaborations and partnerships has it undertaken? This was entirely absent from the 2023 version, yet it is arguably the most interesting part of the brand. SMILE lists a section called “Classic Collaboration Cases” on its official link page. Combined with the clients named on its rental offering pages, these can be organized as follows: | Period | Partner | Format | | --- | --- | --- | | March–May 2023 | 來吧！營業中 2 星之沙龍 (the television show’s second season, “Star Salon”) | Store venue rental | | September 2023 | SNAPPP AND JOHN (ALWAYS JOHN × SNAPPP × FILTER017) | Jointly branded store format and limited-edition frames | | October 2023 | RHINOSHIELD × Abei | Mini pop-up at the Zhongshan store | | July 2024 | Sorry Youth (拍謝少年) | Seven exclusive collaboration frame sets at the Chifeng store | | December 2024 | Disney+’s Light Shop | Full-store pop-up at Zhongshan | | May 2025 | Swatch SCUBAQUA collection | Four themed machines at the Zhongshan store | | Dates not disclosed | New Balance, Eason Chan’s Taipei concerts, Taipei Film Festival, Lang LIVE (浪 LIVE) | Machine rentals | What matters in this table is the scale of the clients, rather than the activity alone. A brand with only five locations and combined registered capital of less than NT$1 million has secured an experiential space for a flagship Disney+ series, a Swatch watch launch, a RHINOSHIELD collaboration pop-up, a New Balance brand event, and Eason Chan’s Taipei concerts. The largest was in December 2024: the entire Zhongshan store became “Disney+ Light Shop,” recreating the drama’s light bulb shop and bus shelter settings for nearly three weeks. ![Display stand outside the Chifeng store’s photo booth, carrying five marks—Film Date, Snappp and John, ALWAYS JOHN, Culture Supply, and SNAPPP—with an OFFICE SHIBACHAN TOKYO copyright credit in the corner](https://image.joelin.cc/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/0xu8EsaSar9n3zUKY5d7xw/joelin/2023-09/smile-chifeng-filmdate/hero) ## Which social media post is a notable example? Like counts are hidden. The brand worked with the television show 來吧！營業中 2 星之沙龍 as a filming location. The nature of this arrangement became clear in August 2026: SMILE lists it as a case study under its own “store venue rental” offering. The show rented the space for filming; this was neither product placement nor sponsorship. The show premiered on March 4, 2023, so the collaboration took place between March and May 2023. ![Screenshot taken on May 7, 2023, at 10:24:23 p.m.](https://image.joelin.cc/cdn-cgi/imagedelivery/0xu8EsaSar9n3zUKY5d7xw/migrations/wp/2023/05/%E6%88%AA%E5%9C%96-2023-05-07-%E4%B8%8B%E5%8D%8810.24.23/hero) ## What revenue streams does it have beyond its stores? This section was added in August 2026. SMILE has no official website. All its offerings sit on a single link aggregation page that ordinary searches do not turn up—but it contains a complete set of published rates. Here is the breakdown: | Revenue stream | Offering | Published rate or terms | | --- | --- | --- | | Machine rental | Wooden photo booth | NT$16,000 for four hours of unlimited photo sessions; limited to Taichung and areas farther north | | Machine rental | Standard photo booth | Minimum billing period of one day | | Machine rental | Wedding photo booth | Must be booked eight weeks before the event; limited to Taipei, New Taipei, Keelung, Taoyuan, Hsinchu, and Miaoli | | Venue rental | Entire store | Limited to the Zhongshan, Chifeng, and Yizhong stores | | Fan-support and celebration frames | Listing a customer-designed eight-panel frame | NT$1,000 per week; up to four weeks for NT$1,600 | | Franchising | Business startup offering | Official wording: “Start a business from NT$350,000” | Customization add-ons also have published prices: NT$3,000 to add curtains to a machine, NT$25,000 to create a separate room, NT$6,000 per photo frame design, NT$15,000 per screen interface design, NT$15,000 per machine wrap design, and NT$20,000 per store window graphic design. Read this table alongside the client list in the preceding section, and the business model becomes clear: what the brand really sells is a physical space that can be taken over by another party’s IP at any time. Machines can be wrapped, screens changed, photo frames customized, and whole stores transformed—each item has a listed price. Brands want a contact who can provide a quote, sign a contract, and commit to a delivery schedule. SMILE has standardized this with a few online forms and an official account. That explains how a five-store brand can secure Disney+: its cost of taking an order is far lower than the value of landing a collaboration. ### Fan-support frames are a separate product line The “celebration package” deserves its own discussion. It is sold to individuals and fans: customers supply an eight-panel frame design, and SMILE uploads it to machines at the designated store. The basic package costs NT$1,000 for one week, with listings always going live on Mondays. Two weeks cost NT$1,200, three weeks NT$1,400, and four weeks top out at NT$1,600. Customers who cannot lay out the design can add a design service for NT$500. Occasions can include a friend’s or partner’s birthday, one’s own birthday, a relationship anniversary, or a wedding anniversary. In practice, idol birthday fan-support events are the most active use case. In July 2026, the official account announced a fan-support frame for Jungsu of the Korean band Xdinary Heroes, available from the announcement date through July 27 at Zhongshan, Chifeng, and Yizhong simultaneously. “Idol fan-support project” is also a formal option in the event-type menu for store venue rentals, alongside brand events and collaboration events. Cafés have long been the main venues for idol birthday fan-support events in Taiwan. This is the first photo booth brand I have seen turn the practice into a standardized product with published prices and a self-service online application. ## What is the corporate background? In 2023, I wrote “not found.” After matching addresses against the Ministry of Economic Affairs’ business registration records and the Ministry of Finance’s public business tax registration records in August 2026, I can now fill in this section: | Item | Details | | --- | --- | | Company | 微微笑有限公司 | | Business registration number | 93380167 | | Representative | 巫允心 (Wu Yun-hsin) | | Registered capital | NT$500,000 | | Establishment date | April 26, 2023 | | Registered address | Linkou District, New Taipei City | | Branch | 微微笑有限公司赤峰店 (Chifeng branch of 微微笑有限公司; established June 17, 2023) | In addition to this company, the same representative has two sole proprietorships, both named 微笑商行 but with different business registration numbers. One corresponds to the Taipei Zhongshan store, established in September 2022, and the other to the Tainan Hai’an store, established in April 2025. Setting up a separate business under the same name when expanding into another city or county is common and does not indicate a change of operator. I could not find independent tax registrations for the Taichung Yizhong store or the Tainan Shin Kong Cinemas location. The former is presumed to operate under the registration of the main business in Taichung; the latter uses the centralized invoicing arrangement commonly found at department store counters. Trademark records are also available. The registrations of three “SMILE and design” trademarks were published on July 16, 2024, with exclusive rights running through July 15, 2034. They cover Class 35—advertising, business management, and wholesale and retail services—and Class 41—education and training, entertainment and recreation, sports, and cultural activities. Interestingly, the registrant is Wu Yun-hsin personally, rather than 微微笑有限公司 Before this, two applications using a different design were submitted in 2022, and neither succeeded. Putting the timeline in order reveals something: the Class 41 trademark was secured in July 2024, followed by the Disney+ full-store pop-up in December 2024 and Swatch in May 2025. Class 41 is precisely the category needed for “renting out a store as a cultural event venue.” Securing the rights first and then selling event slots is the right sequence. Thus, these four registered entities have combined capital of NT$900,000 on paper, with no second individual or legal entity appearing in the shareholder and contribution fields. This is one individual’s brand, rather than a company of substantial scale. ## Does it have a franchise program? In 2023, I wrote “not found.” That needs correcting as of August 2026: franchise recruitment is public. The official link page includes a franchise application form titled “Business Startup and Franchise Offering.” Its selling points read, verbatim, “Fully automated store opening and closing, with low staffing costs,” “Low time commitment; can be operated part-time,” and “Start a business from NT$350,000.” The process is to read the franchise presentation, complete the form, have the details confirmed by the official account through LINE, and receive the documents. The form divides prospective investment into five brackets: up to NT$500,000, NT$500,000–1 million, NT$1–2 million, NT$2–3 million, and more than NT$3 million. One qualification is needed, however: all five current locations can be traced to the same representative, or to the separate entities on the collaboration partner’s side. Public registration records reveal no SMILE store operated by a third party. The accurate description is therefore “franchise recruitment is open, but no completed franchise store has yet been identified,” rather than “a franchise network already exists.” ## Where do the photo booth machines come from? Parallel imports from China. This was recorded during the May 2023 research. I did not photograph a machine nameplate during the September 2023 visit, and another review in August 2026 found no public information that could support or refute it. This point remains unverified by a repeat check. The only new clue is that the machines come in two types: the official rental offerings distinguish between “wooden photo booths” and “standard photo booths.” The wooden model has its own pricing and a separate list of brand-event examples, suggesting that it is the model used to make an impression. ## Official brand information * Instagram: * TikTok: Article keywords: SMILE Korean-style photo booths, 微微笑有限公司, SNAPPP, Chifeng Street photo booths, ALWAYS JOHN, Korean-style photo booth franchises, photo booth rentals ### Other profiles of operators from the same wave SMILE was among Taiwan’s first wave of Korean-style photo booth operators in 2022–2023. I have also researched its contemporaries individually, including [Taiwanese Brand Error8 鼬鼠](/p/9640), [Taiwanese Brand Joy&Ray](/p/9642), and [SerendiPIC: Five Locations Across Four Registered Entities](/p/9645). The industry’s overall chronology is covered in [A Historical Report on the Development of Taiwan’s Photo Booth and Korean-Style Photo Booth Industry](/p/5848).