Outdoor footwear supplier Fulgent Sun Group (鈺齊國際) yesterday gave an optimistic outlook for the rest of this year — despite a 14.8 percent annual decline in sales last month — as the company is to ship new products in the fourth quarter.
“We have spontaneous shipment plans based on customers’ needs and most of the company’s orders [for the second half] are scheduled to ship in the fourth quarter,” a Fulgent official said by telephone.
The firm’s revenue plunged to NT$711 million (US$22.44 million) last month, with accumulated sales in the first eight months falling 3.08 percent year-on-year to NT$6.28 million, company data showed.
Fulgent attributed the sales decline to the late delivery of goods to global customers.
The official, who declined to be named, said that the company has already begun mass production of its new functional footwear for global brands, including Under Armour, Keen and Toms.
Fulgent is adopting a multi-brand strategy in a bid to diversify its operation risks. The company’s manufacturing process starts only after an order is received, making its production lines more flexible than local peers.
“We have more than 40 customers worldwide this year,” the official said, adding that most of them are in Europe.
Fulgent said that the rising demand for its shoes featuring special fabric such as Gore-Tex is the key reason the company acquired new orders from global brands.
In the first half of this year, revenue from Gore-Tex footwear accounted for 43 percent of the company’s total sales, compared with last year’s 36.6 percent, Fulgent said.
Despite the fluctuations in monthly sales, Fulgent said that it expects the multi-brand strategy to stimulate its sales in the long term.
The company said it is planning to increase capacity at plants in Vietnam and Cambodia this year.
Fulgent shares dropped 9.95 percent to NT$57 yesterday, while the benchmark TAIEX fell 0.43 percent, Taiwan Stock Exchange data showed.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
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
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
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],”