I made my first business trip to Taiwan over 30 years ago, one of the friendliest countries in Asia. I’d learned enough about importing and marketing to know that to be successful in import business I had to find products for which I could obtain exclusive rights contracts for North America. It was a pipe dream, since this implies a big domestic market where the manufacturer is seeking foreign markets to expand market share, and they will somehow give you exclusive rights to sell their products in the United States. Yes, there are a few products manufactured for the Taiwanese market, but the chances are you wouldn’t want to import these into the United States unless your market is the ethnic Chinese shopping in Chinatown. If you want to be successful in marketing the key is to have your own ideas or designs manufactured for you where labor and instrumentation costs are not prohibitive as in North America. The first name that comes to mind is Taiwan.
Taiwan, like China, is predominantly a contractor economy with numerous plants some of which are owned or managed by Americans and Europeans to manufacture proprietary products for export. Unless you are one of these companies that made substantial investment in staff and facilities, it can be a jungle for importers to find reliable suppliers. This goes especially for products involving different materials, and which have to be coordinated and assembled by people working for you..
The word “manufacturer” has a totally different meaning in Taiwan and other Asian countries than what we understand in North America. The government trade office had already given me a list of dozens of “manufacturers” which did not own factories or any production facility. My cab driver from the airport to the hotel also claimed to be a manufacturer. Soon the word spread in Taipei that a buyer had arrived looking for products. My time was spent meeting dozens of uninvited “manufacturers” who claimed that they could deliver practically anything I wanted. The first question the visitors asked was “what do you want from Taiwan?”. I was also taken to several “factories” to learn later that the people purportedly associated with the factory had nothing to do with the factories shown to me. Some people only wanted to make a commission for referral, but had nothing to do with the plants I was taken to. To make things complicated, it was not possible to talk to the people running the plants since they did not speak any English, and I did not speak Chinese. Friends who went to Taiwan or China on business had similar experiences. Most of them returned empty-handed and confused about how to do business with Taiwan, or for that matter China.
Soon I learned that the most important task is having someone, a reliable someone or people, who speak Chinese and fluent English look after your business in Taiwan, and the same goes for China and other contractor economies. After years of seeking the right local people, we now know that we can have our people manufacture anything within Taiwan’s capability reliably to quality standards expected in North America. We stand behind what we ship. I don’t think there are many suppliers on the other side of the Pacific who can say this. These are the reasons we have repeat customers that have been dealing with us for 20 or 30 years.
China is a new comer into the contract manufacturing business, about 20 years versus Taiwan’s 70 years of experience. In fact, Taiwan is a gateway to China with over 50,000 Taiwanese working at Chinese plants or shipping from China, including some of our people. If low price is the priority over quality, we can ship goods from China as well. However, Taiwan is our preference due to higher quality. There is now the matter of tariffs slapped on China by U.S. Government, which offsets China’s price advantage and makes Taiwan the preferable option.
Thank you for using our service.
Steve Ileman,
President, Taiwan Manufacturing Service