Thanks to the Internet, 35-year-old housewife Lu Su-feng (盧淑芬), who called herself a "computer idiot," not only launched the nation's first online milk-fish restaurant, but also realized her dream as a woman entrepreneur.
"At the start-up, my initial motive was to share the fondness for my home-town product -- milk fish from Tainan -- with others including my [three] children who love fast food more than anything else," Lu told a seminar yesterday held by the Chinese-language Business Next (數位時代) magazine to encourage female entrepreneurship in Taiwan.
After seven months of effort and with a total working capital of some NT$300,000, Lu succeeded in inventing nearly 20 modern milk-fish snacks ranging from milk-fish hot dogs and milk-fish hamburgers to milk-fish-flavored popsicle, achieving a monthly revenues of NT$100,000 through the cost-free online network.
The key to her business success is respect for professionals, Lu said, adding that she aggressively sought strategic partnership with a variety of professionals including computer wizards, chefs and salespeople to assist with her one-woman band company.
Lu is not alone, 32-year-old Mao Li-chien (毛儷蒨) is another successful woman entrepreneur, whose management expertise combined with her father's chemical knowledge to launch the nation's first environment-friendly nail polish.
"My ambition is to promote this nail polish with a business ethic of being not only good for the consumer but also good for the environment," Mao told the same seminar yesterday afternoon.
Set up in 2002 with an initial working capital of NT$6 million, Mao's e-nail business paid off with annual revenues quickly rising from NT$10 million in 2002 to NT$25 million last year, with a goal of NT$50 million this year.
Social acceptance, women's growing business ambition and government policies all help contribute to the growth of female entrepreneurship in Taiwan, said Annie Lee (李安妮), a member from the Cabinet's Women's Rights Promotion Commission (婦女權益促進委員會).
"If women are ignored, business opportunities are ignored," she added.
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