Taiwanese companies might be wasting their time planning strategies to become internationally recognized brands in the post-manufacturing economy as it often happens by accident, a senior official at the world's No. 1 bicycle brand said yesterday.
"My advice to OEM companies when trying to build their own brand is that it often happens by accident," Bonnie Tu (杜秀珍), executive vice president of Giant Inc (巨大集團), told the Taipei Times yesterday.
"When the chance comes, grab it," she said.
The vast majority of the nation's industrial production is carried out under an original equipment manufacturing (OEM) basis, which means companies here manufacture products to the specifications of overseas brands.
The Giant bicycle brand, the world's largest with an estimated 5 million bikes to be shipped this year, was created in 1981. In 1985, the company's European importer decided to start selling the brand there. After establishing a foothold in Europe, the owner of the import company emigrated, leaving Giant the chance to buy up the company, Tu said yesterday.
Soon after the European acquisition, Giant's largest OEM customer in the US decided to work with a Chinese rival instead, prompting Giant to start selling its own brand there, Tu added.
This year Giant expects to sell NT$18 billion worth of bicycles in 50 countries globally, an increase 7 percent on last year's NT$16.7 billion figure. We are in consumer goods and a brand is very important," Tu said. "It means we can sell at a premium price."
The news may grate on the country's other brands. Acer Inc spent billions of dollars and years in building a brand to little success, Acer Inc president Wang Chen-tang (王振堂) told reporters on Monday.
"Acer's past experience scared everyone off. In the past 10 to 15 years Acer kept losing money, and lost huge amounts in its battle with US brands," Wang said, adding that the company finally turned profitable in May last year.
And Acer spin-off BenQ Corp (明基電通) has plans to be the nation's's answer to Japan's Sony and South Korea's Samsung in the technology market within five years, BenQ president Sheaffer Lee (李錫華) said on Wednesday.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained