The humble wooden match has ignited a battle between one of Europe's leading match manu-facturers and competitors in Asia.
Officials with Czech-based Solo Sikarna company, which boasts an annual production of "20 billion flames," claim competing match makers in China and Pakistan are stoking the fire by selling knock-off matchboxes to its customers in countries around the world.
Solo sales director Veroslav Puchinger says the "counterfeiters" are selling poor quality matches in boxes stamped with imitations of the company's century-old brand names and logos.
The competitors, which Solo declined to identify, are threatening a 165-year-old business started by a Czech carpenter and his investor friend from Vienna.
According to the Solo company's history, carpenter Vojtech Scheinost was making matches by hand in a Czech village 16 years before Sweden's Johan Lundstrom obtained the first patent for matchsticks in 1855. His friend Bernard Furth provided funds to build a factory.
Solo officials recently called a news conference to publicize the company's plight, hoping Czech media would generate sympathy in their homeland. Solo is a major employer in the small town of Susice, near the Czech-Austrian border.
Puchinger said Chinese and Pakistani companies are competing unfairly and have already hurt sales in Turkey, Ethiopia and Israel.
They succeed by undercutting Solo's prices with lookalike matchboxes.
"A definite share of our Israeli market has been affected, for example," he said.
Solo is in trouble because, unlike multinational corporations that face similar challenges from knock-offs, the small company cannot afford to defend itself in various national courts.
Solo's brands are protected by registered trademarks, but the company says defending those trademarks against unfair trade is too costly and time-consuming.
Match-making simply cannot generate the cash needed to support a team of international lawyers.
Solo sells about 400 million matchboxes a year, exporting more than 70 percent of its products worldwide and controlling 80 percent of the Czech market.
Nevertheless, last year's sales totalled just 180 million koruna (US$6.6 million) hardly enough to win overseas trademark battles.
Following an old tradition, Solo sells aspen-wood safety matches with 19th century matchbox designs under names such as "The Key," "The Two Eggs" and "The Posthorn."
In recent years, Solo has diversified its product line to include plastic cigarette lighters. But wooden sticks and boxes are still at the heart of the business that Puchinger said is now fighting for survival.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last