Wise Center Profits from Building Branded Garden Tools

Quality and competitive prices have helped to enter Swiss and French markets

Realizing that long-term success rests with exceeding built-to-order manufacturing, Wise Center Industrial Group Inc., seasoned maker of garden tools, has been working earnestly on competiveness optimization to build a global-caliber brand for more sustainable development.

Since its inception in 1991 in Taichung, central Taiwan, Wise Center has specialized in production of garden tools and accessories on an OEM (original equipment manufacturing) basis, with two plants in Taiwan and one packaging plant in China to turn out three major product lines, namely garden shears, hand tools sets and ladders.

The company mainly offers pruners, handle tools, peripheral gardening equipment and parts, shovels, flower scissors, water pipe shears, step stools, ladders, and long reach shears, as well as aluminum zinc castings, lighting fixture parts, household hardware, plastic products, building materials, molds, forged and die castings. The maker also fills ODM (original design manufacturing) orders and sells items under its own brand.

Emphasizing upgrading production and capacity, Wise Center employs only advanced production equipment as automatic press machine, heat treatment machine, powder painting and non-stick coating machine, CNC (computer numerically controlled) processing machine and grinding machines, which are periodically recalibrated to uphold precision.

Wise Center's insistence on the best product quality helps to build solid reputation among international brands of garden tools. To ensure totally reliable quality, the company, regardless of procurement costs, adopts sophisticated, precision inspection facilities as hardness testers and the newest tensile strength tester.

With focus on IQC (input quality control), IPQC (in process quality control) and QA (quality assurance), Wise Center is ISO 9001: 2000 approved, with products certified by German's GS (GeprUfte Sicherheit) standards. Unsurprisingly, the company claims output defect rate lower than 1ppm.

Optimizing Competitiveness
In the face of increasingly challenging global market, chairman Thomas Lin has led a program to optimize competitiveness by different means, which has proven effective as the maker has weathered global economic fluctuations to steadily grow over the past years.

Part of Lin's optimization plan is to build standards for production and other operations in compliance with TS16949. “Implementing production and quality management to meet TS16949 is a lifetime job,” said Lin. “This will take considerable effort but is worthwhile to enhance added-value for customers, because today a maker must prove to customers its capabilities besides offering good products.”

To achieve this goal, the company resorts to industry-academia-research cooperation, to optimize, standardize production and operations with help of professors and industry experts to improve yield rates and operating efficiency. The company is scheduled to obtain a certification in October, a rarity in this industry but will help every employee to cultivate the concept of standardization to produce better quality products and more efficiently, said Lin.

Also to differ from Taiwanese counterparts, most of whom being family-run, Lin said that his company will try to recruit specialized managers. Having been specially-trained, experienced managers will help Wise Center become more rational and systematic, instead of another nepotistic enterprise relying on questionably-qualified personnel, with decision-making carried out by impartial, dedicated specialists who are truly mature, knowledgeable rather than fortuitous executives whose priorities are based on sound business backgrounds that tend toward minimized risks.

The company has also been building a worker-friendly environment to boost image among foreign buyers, said Lin, who furthered, “Foreign customers tend to evaluate a supplier not only by product quality, but also management systems, work environments and human rights.” Certification of BSCI (Business Social Compliance Initiative) established in Europe, for instance, is one of the objectives to achieve.

Market-driven R&D
Meanwhile, Wise Center has also been developing more garden tools to expand product mix to enhance branded sales. Lin said that his company plans to build 10 different product families in the short term for cutting and trimming bushes, trees, fences and lawns and other special purposes, having so far developed three new lines: telescopic shears with one-touch buttons; effortless pruning shears; and lopping shears featuring easier operation.

The biggest difference between the company's new and old design concepts is that new products are specifically developed to meet market demands, instead of being built for order as before, said Lin, who is inspired by HTC, a Taiwanese smartphone brand that has paid attention to product exclusivity to meet consumer preference, and launching fine-tuned smartphone models in different markets to achieve bigger sales. He feels this promotional strategy will also work in garden tools, considering that consumers tend to buy dedicated garden tools.

Hopefully this product R&D project along with competitiveness optimization plan will start to drive Wise Center's business growth three years later, said Lin, who has also smoothly increased footholds across China with sub-brands.

Deployments in China
A step ahead than others, Wise Center entered the Chinese market a few years ago to bear fruit already.

“Professional-caliber garden tools featuring higher efficiency to cut labor input are increasingly needed in China, partly because young people there typically disdain physical labor, and partly because fast-growing development of urban and suburban regions spur more demand for higher-end garden tools,” said Lin.

Demand in a certain region is high due to climate and crop cultivation. “As most cash crops and fruits in China are grown in cold weather, farmers need professional tools, and therefore we promote higher-end garden tools in the north and northeast under the own brand Chienchia, and DIY tools under the other brand in the central and south,” said Lin. So his company decided to penetrate the market with top-end garden tools for professionals at the very beginning to build gradually solid ground, said Lin.

Looking optimistically towards the vast, lucrative market, Lin said that his company will set up a new production line in China by the end of this year, to produce garden tools to be sold under its sub-brands.

Branding for All-round Benefit
To fend off fierce underselling globally, Wise Center concentrates on development of high-end, professional gardening cutters, hoping to create mutual benefit for his company and partners with branded products.

Although offering higher margins than subcontract manufacturing, branding is often easier said than done for most Taiwanese enterprises, as successful branding is very resource extensive, calling for ample time, money, earnest effort and plentiful market savvy. Regardless, Wise Center has ventured into the global market for high-end, branded garden tools and developed its own brand Win-Win.

Backed by cutting-edge R&D and production capability, Wise Center has seen its branded garden tools well received in Asia, including India and, especially China, where the company has built sound cooperation with local distributors. And good news have come out of Switzerland and France recently, the markets the company's own-branded tools with proven quality and competitive unit prices have penetrated.

“Wise Center aims to build everlasting, mutually beneficial partnerships with clients via branding,” Lin said.