Office Furniture Makers in Taiwan Brainstorm to Maintain Global Strength

Over the last two decades and as manufacturing costs escalated in Taiwan, many local furniture makers, especially those who saw the cheaper, land and labor overseas as decisive advantages, have moved offshore, hence hollowing out the core strength of the sector on the island, especially mass produced low-end items. Increasingly challenging rivalry from emerging nations has forced Taiwan-based makers to gradually transform into original design manufacturers (ODMs), instead of exclusively subcontractors or OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), as well as tap the lucrative potential of branding.

With ample supplies in Taiwan of quality glass and metals, local furniture makers have inevitably made glass-and-metal office furniture their bread and butter. These suppliers adopt a mixture of stainless steel, aluminum alloy, titanium alloy, and ferrous metals matched with various kinds of glass to create a wide range of high-end, value-added pieces. The savvy makers, to target global niches, of office furniture in Taiwan have been brainstorming to roll out design-oriented, innovative products.

Human System Furniture

Human System Furniture Co., Ltd. was established in 1991 by Steven Lin and Elen Huang, the like-minded couple who have built a career in design-oriented furniture.

Lin and Huang are living-proof that a couple who can live together can also work as team. The two have weathered all the ups and downs of the industry to lay a solid foundation for the company, which offers a line of office and home furniture systems under its own "Human" brand.

R&D Dedicated

Usually investing some 70% of revenues in R&D, Human System shows its dedication to building top-quality, innovative products. The firm offers trendy, cutting-edge furniture made of a mix of metals, glass, wood, and plastics. "We decided to develop design-oriented, innovative pieces right at the beginning," Huang says. "Developing creative products is intellectually draining, not to mention the repeated debugging involved."

"We are committed to building aesthetic, multi-functional, and health-enhancing products that fully meet user demands," Huang emphasizes. "We don't compromise on perfection, always ditching imperfect molds as necessary."

Virtually fearing attrition, "You have to outperform rivals or be quickly rendered obsolete," Huang adds.

Human System is also consistently on its toes in terms of innovation: For instance, as early as in 1998 the company introduced the idea "mobility" into its furniture, which was groundbreaking in industry.

The company's wide-ranging office furniture line includes intelligent height-adjustable PC desks, ergonomic office chairs, bookshelves, file racks and cabinets, office desks, reception counter, executive desks, conference tables, movable office cabinets, staffer chairs, modular office partitions, portable utility tables, etc.

"All our products are concept-oriented and user-friendly," Lin points out. "As the company's main designer, I am obliged to be the well of new ideas and materialize them. The pieces I create are not mere furniture but help to enhance convenience, comfort in offices."

Packaged Solutions

Thinking "packaged solutions" is the norm at Human System: "When designing an office table, I also think about the chair to go with it and related accessories, such as cabinets, file trays, and even penholders," Lin explains. "Designing a combination enhances the flexibility of a workstation that is expandable according to space limitations."

"Sometimes I am inspired with new structural concepts. For example, I created honeycomb-like partitions," Lin continues, "Such beehive-like structure departs from the traditional 90-degree structural angle to impart a sense of nature in an artificial setting." Dubbed "New Base," this new partition can be of plain fabric, clear and opaque glass, frosted glass, or even translucent flax, with each able to color various offices with different moods.

Intelligent PC Desk

One of the latest launches by Human System is the "pcfree," a totally smart, movable PC desk that is ergonomically designed, featuring hydraulically-controlled infinitely-height-adjustable desktop that tilts at 25 degrees, as well as being 360-degree rotatable. Having such incredible adjustability truly allows users to personalize the desk for height, angle and orientation while using a PC almost anywhere, including office, home and even outdoors.

"pcfree is deceptively simple on the outside, yet it consists of some 80 parts, each of which has to be made with a precision mold that sometimes involves more than NT$1 million (US$31,250 at US$1 = NT$32) in tooling investment," Lin confirms.

Planning to bypass trading firms to distribute products directly in Taiwan and abroad, the company is looking for agents, which certainly looks to be a window of opportunity to be opened by any ambitious entrepreneur.

President Office Furniture

Founded in 1974, President Office Furniture Co., Ltd. is a Taiwanese furniture maker with operations in Taiwan and Thailand. Headquartered in southern Bangkok, with a factory of 30,000 square meters on a 50,000 square-meter site, the company turns out mainly knockdown (KD) stainless steel office furniture and fire-resistant high-end safes; while its Taiwan operations focus on marketing development and fabricating high-end items in small volumes.

"One of my partners, a Taiwanese expat living in Thailand, suggested that I set up operations in Thailand for its far more affordable manufacturing cost, which is why I have the bulk of my business there," says H.K. Chen, founder and general manager of the company.

Timely Entry

In the 1970s KD office furniture manufacturing had few suppliers. Seeing the advantage of modest competition, President jumped in the line, invested heavily in R&D and manufacturing facilities, which realized considerable profits at the time, with such sizable returns fading as rivalry rose starting in the 1980s.

To cope with the threatening competition, the company has kept upgrading facilities to make better products. Its current R&D team of six in Thailand and about 200 workers turn out on average NT$20 million (US$625,000) of office furniture per month; while the Taiwan plant generates revenues of around NT$40 million (US$1.25 million) a year.

Benefiting from technological transfer offered by the Metal Industrial Research & Development Center (MIRDC), a government-supported organization in Taiwan that helps to upgrade the local metal furniture sector, President has been introducing advanced metallurgical know-how via a student with formal background in the field.

Such technological cooperation with the MIRDC has helped President to improve manufacturing technologies for high-end items.

"Metallic quality and manufacturing technologies are pivotal to making top-end office furniture, as important as skilled workers. So, we insist on being very careful in choosing metals and good workers," Chen notes.

President distributes 30%-40% of its output in Taiwan and exports the remaining 60%-70% to some 40 countries, with the Middle East taking over half of such global shipment.

Chyi Cheng Co., Ltd.

Chyi Cheng Co., Ltd. was founded in 1990 and produces mainly metal PC desks and other metal furniture as TV stands, chairs, and clothes hangers. "PC desks are our bread-and-butter, accounting for 40% of our total output volume and 60% of production value," discloses Kathleen Chen, assistant sales manager.

Chyi Cheng runs two small plants in Taiwan with around 30 workers overall. "We do not need many workers since 95% of our manufacturing is subcontracted," Chen explains. "We work with more than 50 carefully selected satellite plants in Taiwan, whose performances are evaluated once a year to make sure their quality meets our needs."

The company has diversified the functions of its two plants, with one focusing on R&D and the other on production of metal tubes. "Having paid more attention to product design in recent years, one-sixth of our personnel are R&D professionals engaged in design and mold development," Chen adds.

R&D is the Soul

"Our R&D team is the soul of the company for they are seasoned specialists who can create incredible pieces. Plus they can develop 'common' molds that turn out parts usable on various furniture, hence saving manufacturing cost," Chen points out proudly.

"Besides holding patents for all our products in Europe, the United States, Japan, and Taiwan, we also guarantee to deliver high quality goods, prompt delivery, and reasonable prices," Chen emphasizes.

Chyi Cheng mainly fills OEM and ODM orders from Europe, the United States and Japan, where the distributors have been generous with praise, including the American Wal-Mart, British B&Q, and Japanese NTR, Keyio and Sigma; while other European retailers as Leroy Merlin and ASDA, Gusdorf brand, and Hagebalt have also recommended Chyi Cheng's products to their customers.

Currently the company ships about 60 containers of furniture per month, and posted a 10% growth in 2008 despite the global financial fallout in the second half. To maintain global exposure, Chyi Cheng actively attends international furniture shows and plans to tap the Central and South American markets in the near future.