About 10 years ago, Stan Shih (施振榮) came across a massage chair made by Osim International Ltd, thinking that it was a high-class product from a Japanese manufacturer.
But the founder of Acer Group was surprised when he found out that Osim was actually a Singaporean brand, during a business trip to the city-state.
Shih, who has an Osim chair at home, has always wondered how the massage chairs from the small city-state were able to beat the Japanese big brands in markets around the globe.
Osim was originally a trading company established in 1980 selling general household items. The company expanded into its first overseas market, Hong Kong, in 1986, a year after its home market in Singapore was hit by a devastating recession.
"The recession taught me two things. One was that the Singaporean market was too small, and we had to expand our external economies," said Ron Sim (沈財福), founder and chief executive of Osim, at a forum in Taipei on Thursday where international and local companies spoke about their brands.
The second lesson Sim learned was that to survive the company had to find a niche -- a key element it lacked being a trading company.
This finally gave birth to the Osim brand in 1993 as the company switched its focus to home healthcare products.
Today, the Singaporean healthcare equipment maker offers more than 100 innovative products in the areas of health, hygiene, nutrition and fitness. Its product portfolios go from massage chairs and air purifiers to health supplements and treadmills.
Osim now operates a wide point-of-sales network with more than 1,100 outlets in more than 28 countries in Asia, Australia, Africa, the Middle East, the UK and North America.
The company has targeted having 3,000 stores around the globe by 2013.
"Brand is a personality. It must be able to speak with substance over time," Sim explained, a lesson Taiwanese tech companies are struggling to learn in order to bring their name to the world's consumers.
He said that the products and shopping experience must be "relevant" to consumers, and Osim launches at least four big new items each year to lure buyers into loosening their purse strings.
One of its products, the iSymphonic -- the industry's first massage chair that synchronizes massage and music -- was voted "Invention of the Year" by Time magazine.
Sim said he had a high respect for Taiwanese entrepreneurship.
"Taiwan is strong in original design manufacturing [ODM] and technologies," but these high-tech firms should always embrace change to hone their competitiveness, he said.
And radical changes are expected to take place at Asustek Computer Inc (
The world's largest motherboard maker is set to spin off its ODM operations from its brand business by the end of the year, moving its original deadline earlier by a year.
"It is inevitable that you see conflicts when a company's own brand gets stronger," Asustek chairman Jonney Shih (
His remarks echo the current predicament for many local tech firms, which will have to find a way to keep their ODM clients happy should they to realize the "brand" dream.
Asustek's portable computers are currently the world's No. 9 brand, which raised some clients' eyebrows. Apple Inc decided to withdraw MacBook orders from Asustek in April.
"It is the right time for the spin off ? Building a brand is no longer a volume or pricing game, it is a mindset involving brand value and product distinctiveness," Shih said.
Despite Asustek's struggle, the government and private sector still hope to nurture more companies and help them become Taiwan's new Asustek or Acer Inc. The "Branding Taiwan Venture Capital" project was launched to help the process last November.
The venture capital fund, which has NT$2 billion, recently shortlisted two companies to be the first recipients of the venture capital.
According to Taiwan External Trade Development Council (
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