Kuo Tien-hsiang set up Samson Global Co. back in 1964 as a maker of billiard cues, but quickly expanded into furniture. The company endured many vicissitudes and challenges in its earlier years, but has developed into a leading global supplier of both categories of products.

In his younger days, Kuo labored as a carpenter in Pingtung, near the southern tip of Taiwan. But being ambitious and unwilling to spend his life in such an obscure job and isolated place, he moved northward to Taipei. He learned from a newspaper that a Japanese buyer was looking for billiard cues in Taiwan to sell in the United States, and this encouraged him to go into the business of making them himself.

The company grew, and in 1982 Kuo was joined in its operation by his son Samuel, who had just completed his military service. Working together, the father-and-son team built Samson Global into Taiwan's largest furniture exporter (in terms of volume) in the 1980s.

Like many other Taiwanese manufacturers in traditional industries, however, Samson ran into difficulties in the latter part of that decade as the island's manufacturing environment deteriorated due to the ballooning cost of labor and industrial land. The younger Kuo thought about finding a production base offshore, and traveled to Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and mainland China to asses the environments there. He finally settled on Dongguan, in China's Guangdong Province, as the best place to set up Samson's operation.

In 1992 Samuel persuaded several other Taiwanese manufacturers involved in the lacquering, carton-packaging, and furniture-parts industries to move to Dongguan together. At that time the city was underdeveloped and without a good infrastructure. In those days, Samuel recalls, the only road to his Dongguan plant was unpaved and became a track of mud whenever it rained. He persevered, however, and he and his counterparts achieved wide recognition as pioneer Taiwanese investors in that now-booming area.

Kuo's mainland Chinese business was set up under the name Lacquer Craft Mfg. Co., the second Taiwanese-invested furniture maker there. His goal was for Taiwanese investors to form a cluster that would help Dongguan develop its furniture industry.



World's Leading Furniture Production Base



Today there are more than 300 Taiwanese manufacturers in Dongguan, which has developed into a bustling modern city. It has also become the world's leading production base for furniture products.

Samson alone has nine plants with more than 6,000 workers there. Its furniture shipments exceed 1,000 standard 40-foot containers a month, making the company No. 1 in Asia in its field. In 2000 its annual revenues topped NT$10 billion (US$320 million at NT$31.22:US$1) for the first time, reaching NT$13 billion (US$416 million).

Samson has also expanded outside Asia by purchasing Universal, the 15th largest furniture maker in the United States, which had annual sales of US$350 million but had been losing money for years. The first month after its acquisition, according to Kuo, the American company returned to profit. The Taiwan company has used Universal's original marketing channels in the U.S. to sell its own products there; as a result, Universal has become the fifth-largest furniture retailer in the U.S and Samson the world's No. 2 furniture maker.

Today, besides turning out furniture on an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) basis for customers in the U.S. and Europe, Samson also develops furniture for sale under its own "Legacy" brand.

Samuel Kuo, who now manages all of the Samson Group's operations, built an automated warehousing center in Shanghai in 2002 to extend the company's mainland Chinese presence to the central coastal area.

The group is continuing to develop its operations there, particularly in the Yangtze River delta. As part of this effort, Kuo plans to spend US$300 million to establish a furniture plant in a Taiwanese-invested industrial zone in Jiashan, Zhejiang Province.

Kuo reports that he has already poured US$105 million into the first-stage construction of the plant, which is believed to be the largest of its kind in the world. The building has an aluminum-alloy structure and will have a huge arched glass-panel roof that lets in light and saves energy. When it is finished, the new plant will offer jobs for some 10,000 local residents.