SerendiPIC Korean-Style Photo Booths: One Sign, Four Registered Entities, and an Unverified Fifth Location | Taiwan Photo Booth Industry Investigation Series

Summary

This article investigates the operating structure of SerendiPIC, a Korean-style photo booth brand in Taiwan. Its five locations—in Taipei’s Zhongshan, Ximen, and Shilin areas, Taoyuan, and Yulon City in Xindian, New Taipei—have approximately 1,571 Google business reviews combined, while its official Instagram account has approximately 8,482 followers. The investigation produced four findings. First, the five locations are associated with four independently registered entities: two limited companies and two sole proprietorships. The earliest company was established in December 2022, and the latest sole proprietorship in December 2024. Second, the brand previously used the name THE FILM Seoul. Its official Facebook page still carries that name, although a post on the same page dated May 25, 2024, already calls it SerendiPIC. Third, no self-service photo booth brand with the same name was found in South Korea. The Korean spelling of SerendiPIC is a transliteration of its English name, and no public evidence of licensing or franchising ties with the Korean business sharing its former name was found. Fourth, a search of Taiwan’s trademark records found neither registrations nor pending applications for the brand name. The article also explains the investigation method: industry code 760112, Photo Developing, in the Ministry of Finance’s nationwide business tax registration dataset can help identify photo booth locations. The dataset contains 304 records nationwide with this code, and establishment dates peak in ROC year 112 (2023), with 24 records.

Key facts

• SerendiPIC’s five locations are associated with four independently registered entities: two limited companies and two sole proprietorships.
• The brand previously used THE FILM Seoul. Its official Facebook page still carries the old name, although a post on the same page dated May 25, 2024, already calls it SerendiPIC.
• No self-service photo booth brand with the same name was found in South Korea; the Korean spelling is a transliteration of the English brand name.
• A search of Taiwan’s trademark records found neither registrations nor pending applications for the brand name.
• The five locations have approximately 1,571 Google business reviews combined, and the official Instagram account has approximately 8,482 followers.
• The Ministry of Finance’s nationwide business tax registration dataset contains 304 records with industry code 760112, Photo Developing; establishment dates peak in ROC year 112 (2023), with 24 records.

The original Chinese article was published on August 21, 2026, and last updated on October 2, 2026. The findings and figures below reflect that original snapshot.

Zhongshan, Ximen, and Shilin in Taipei, one location in Taoyuan, and another at Yulon City in Xindian, New Taipei—five places carry the SerendiPIC sign, with approximately 1,571 Google business reviews between them. But matching those five addresses against publicly available government business registration records reveals four independently registered entities. At the fifth location, the registration records do not identify this brand at all.

This article is an investigation of the business structure. I also explain how to do the research, so you can look into any photo booth shop you encounter.

First, the question people ask most: Is it a Korean brand?

No—or at least, no supporting evidence can be found in public records.

The brand spells its name in Korean as “세렌디픽,” which makes it look as though it comes from Korea. Yet a search of self-service photo booth brands in South Korea turns up no such brand. Its own official explanation makes the origin clear: on Linktree, the brand explains that SerendiPic combines the English words Serendipity and Picture. In other words, the Korean spelling is a transliteration of a coined English name, rather than a Korean brand adapted for a Chinese-speaking market.

This is the reverse of what happened with Kr4Cut. That Taiwanese operator first put up a sign for the Korean brand Life4Cut, then replaced it with its own name fifteen days later. It moved away from a Korean name; SerendiPIC gave a name created in Taiwan a Korean flavor. The directions are opposite.

But it did use a name that sounded very Korean

The brand’s official Facebook page is still named “The Film Seoul 韓式拍貼機” (“The Film Seoul Korean-Style Photo Booths”), and its bio says “韓國正統拍貼館” (“Authentic Korean Photo Booth Studio”). Yet a post on that same page dated May 25, 2024, is already titled “SerendiPIC Branch Introduction.” The three addresses listed in the post are those of the current Zhongshan, Shilin, and Ximen shops, and the contact email also uses the current brand.

The name change itself is therefore firmly established: it happened before May 25, 2024, while the Facebook page name has remained unchanged for more than two years.

There is indeed a Korean business called “더필름 THE FILM.” It describes itself as Korea’s first provider of transparent film photo developing, and transparent photo paper happens to be SerendiPIC’s signature selling point. It is easy to jump from this to “they obtained a Korean license, then changed their name”—but the Korean business’s entire official website contains no mention of a Taiwanese partner, and no public evidence of licensing, franchising, or investment ties between the two could be found.

Sharing a name does not establish a licensing relationship. This is one of the most common traps when investigating photo booth brands. When a brand calls itself “authentically Korean” on social media, that is its marketing language. The only verifiable facts here are that its entities are registered in Taiwan and that its name was created in Taiwan.

One sign, four registered entities

I matched each of the five location addresses against the Ministry of Finance’s publicly available nationwide business tax registration dataset. Here are the results.

The current addresses and maps for all five locations are collected on the Photo Booth Information Site’s SerendiPIC brand page.

There are three things to take away from this table.

• This is not one chain company opening five branches. Four separately registered entities, with no subordinate relationship to one another, share a single sign.
• The establishment dates trace a clear expansion path: first a company was established; six months later, Ximen opened; another four months later, Shilin and Zhongshan opened at the same time, with registration dates just one day apart; only more than a year later did the brand expand to Taoyuan.
• The registered person in charge of both the Shilin and Taoyuan sole proprietorships is the same person. That indicates connections between shops, but not through a single headquarters legal entity.

One further point: none of these four entities’ registered business names contains a single character related to the brand on the sign. This is precisely why so many people cannot find out who owns a photo booth shop—matching the storefront name against the registered-name field returns zero records.

The operating clusters revealed by two mobile numbers

On Google’s business listings, the Zhongshan main shop and Ximending shop share one mobile number, while the Taoyuan shop lists another. Shilin does not list a phone number, but it has its own Instagram account, its own opening hours, and even sells its own customized phone cases.

Combining the phone numbers with the registration records suggests two or three operating clusters within the brand. It is neither five franchise shops operating entirely on their own nor a directly operated chain controlled end to end by one headquarters. This kind of “partial chain” is common among small and medium-sized chains in Taiwan. Its advantages are fast expansion and room for each shop to experiment with products; the trade-off is that brand consistency depends on mutual understanding rather than formal systems.

Why the fifth location needs a question mark

The seventh-floor location at Yulon City in Xindian is listed in the official Instagram bio. But its Google business listing has no reviews, photos, or opening hours, and has not yet been claimed by the owner. Meanwhile, the business registration for the seventh floor at that address belongs to another company in entertainment and recreation, with an industry classification entirely different from Photo Developing.

A reasonable interpretation is that this is a booth installed inside someone else’s venue, rather than a shop operated by the brand itself. The brand’s official links have long included an inquiry button for “franchising / booth rental,” so this arrangement would not be surprising. Until stronger evidence is available, however, this location must remain unconfirmed and cannot be counted as a fifth shop.

Trademarks: Not a single one

I searched the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office’s trademark search system using the brand name in a text similarity search, then examined the similar results in the education and entertainment classes and the audiovisual and optical classes one by one. None had this brand name in the text of the mark. Searching trademark owners by the names of the registered entities identified earlier also returned zero results across the board.

This means the brand name has no trademark protection in Taiwan and no pending applications.

The comparison with other operators is clear: Freeze Film has a registered trademark with protection running to 2034; SMILE has one too; Error8 has none. SerendiPIC has expanded to five locations and accumulated more than 1,500 reviews, yet its brand name remains unprotected. More interestingly, it has already changed its name once—and still did not register the new name afterward.

How to investigate it yourself: Three public data sources

There is a substantial information gap around photo booth shops. Official social accounts usually discuss products, not companies. But the following three sources are free and public.

1. The Ministry of Finance’s nationwide business (tax) registration dataset is available for download in full. Match the shop’s address against the address field, rather than matching the storefront name against the name field.
2. The business registration lookup lets you check the approved establishment date, registered capital, and registered person in charge once you have the Unified Business Number.
3. The Intellectual Property Office’s trademark search system lets you search by the brand’s wording or by the trademark owner’s name.

The first source has a crucial key: industry code 760112, “Photo Developing.” Almost all Korean-style photo booth shops in Taiwan are registered under this code, sometimes with 760199, “Other Photography,” added as well. Recognizing the code is far more reliable than recognizing the name.

One technical detail can also save a lot of wasted effort: the tax dataset’s address field uses full-width digits, and the address suffix “之一” is sometimes written with a dash and sometimes with “之.” Matching an address containing ordinary half-width digits directly against the dataset will produce no matches. The records are there; the strings simply do not match.

An industry figure picked up along the way

Since the industry code provides a search key, I also counted the records. The nationwide tax registration dataset contains 304 business records with 760112, Photo Developing, as either a primary or secondary industry classification. By city, the counts are Taipei 51, New Taipei 43, Taichung 32, Kaohsiung 32, Tainan 26, and Taoyuan 22. By approved establishment year, ROC year 112 (2023) has the highest single-year count at 24, followed by 13 in ROC year 113 (2024) and 10 in ROC year 114 (2025). Going back one year, ROC year 111 (2022) has 9.

The 2023 peak coincides with the explosion of Korean-style photo booths in Taiwan, and aligns with the search-volume curve in Joe’s history of the industry. But this figure cannot be treated directly as “the number of photo booth shops in Taiwan”—760112 also covers traditional photography studios and photo developing shops. It is useful here only as a signal of the trend. Another layer of filtering would be needed to turn it into a usable statistic.

Article keywords: SerendiPIC, Korean-style photo booths, photo booth franchising, business tax registration, business registration lookup, trademark search, Taiwan’s photo booth industry

Frequently asked questions

Is SerendiPIC a Korean brand that opened in Taiwan?

No evidence supporting that was found. There is no self-service photo booth brand with the same name in South Korea, and its Korean spelling is a transliteration of the English name. The brand’s operating entities in Taiwan are locally registered companies and sole proprietorships.

Then what is THE FILM Seoul?

It is the name the brand used before its rebranding. Its official Facebook page still carries the old name, but post titles on the same page were already using SerendiPIC in May 2024. A Korean business with the same name does exist, but no public evidence of licensing or cooperation between the two was found. Sharing a name does not make them the same business.

How can I identify the operating entity behind a photo booth shop myself?

Match the shop’s address against the Ministry of Finance’s publicly available nationwide business tax registration dataset, and check whether a business at that address is registered under industry code 760112, Photo Developing. Do not match the storefront name against the registered-name field: the storefront name and registered business name are usually entirely different strings.

Why would one brand have several registered entities?

This is a common structure among small and medium-sized chains in Taiwan. Each shop sets up its own company or business registration. The headquarters does not have to be a single legal entity, and the entities do not have to publicly disclose their relationships. From the outside, they look like one brand; in the registration records, they are several independent entities.