Unique Furniture Composite Board

Specializing in office-automation (OA) furniture, Taiwan's Ofisworld Co., Ltd. Recently introduced a proprietary type of composite board now being used in its products. The board has casing of ABS-plastic and a super-strong internal structure of paper honeycomb—ideal, says the firm, for making environment-friendly furniture pieces.

"A standard 150cm x 100cm x 100cm desk weighs only 13 kilograms with our board," reports George Huang, Ofisworld's president. The firm is now applying the board in almost every one of its OA furniture models, including its movable file drawers. "In spite of its light weight, each item can withstand at least 80 kilograms of weight pressing down on it," Huang adds, saying the honeycomb structure serves as a super-strong reinforcement mechanism for the plastic casing, and that ABS is an especially strong and durable plastic.

The board has been quality-approved by SGS Taiwan Ltd., a respected testing organization, which evaluated the firm's AP-01 and RP-01 movable office cabinets for stability, pliability, drawer-extension durability, out-stop, and lock and latch performance, coming through the tests with flying colors.



Huang's company spent two years and around US$1 million in developing the board, its primary motivation to find a replacement material for metals, for which prices have been going up sharply. The board has won patents in the United States and mainland China. "We were very cognizant of the global environment-protection trend right from the beginning of development," he recalls, "and so chose only recyclable materials for experimentation and use."

Friendliness to Mother Nature is seen not only in the board's materials but also in the color. Huang says the paints used are mixed with the ABS plastic before the case is formed, eliminating the need for electroplating or protective coating. "The wood grains on some of the boards are glued," he adds.

According to Huang, an influential American furniture designer has approached his company over the idea of working together on models featuring the board. The United States, he says, is the market with the greatest potential for items incorporating the board, because U.S. consumers place equal emphasis on budget and styling considerations. "Compared with metals," reports Huang, "the board is much less expensive and thus allows us to market at lower prices as well."

Huang accumulated over 20 years of experience in the OA-furniture industry, including two years spent with steelmaker Yieh Loong Co., Ltd.'s furniture unit, before opening his own business in 1997. "Over the past few years," he says, "sharp hikes in metal prices have considerably hurt our competitiveness, so we have begun using composite materials. Today we use very little metal in our models."

To ensure business growth, Ofisworld has been working hard on enhancing the styling of its models. According to Huang, the firm has spent around US$500,000 in each of the past few years, rolling out 10 to 20 new products each year. "This is the key reason why we have been able to maintain annual revenue growth of 20%-30% over the past few years," he says.

Among the firm's many models of unique design is a movable cabinet with a patented hidden anti-tilt fifth wheel and latticework-structure interior board. The cabinet has an arched frontal structure, giving it a sleek modernistic appearance that has made it especially popular in style-conscious Europe. The board has also been used on the company's office chairs. "We ship more arched-front movable cabinets than any other Taiwan firm," Huang claims.

Europe accounts for 80% of Ofisworld's business, according to Huang. His company is now putting more effort into developing the U.S. and Australian markets as part of its long-term market-diversification plans. Huang states that as a general rule European consumers consider quality and design more than budget, the opposite of the reality in North America.

When asked about Ofisworld's advantages over its domestic rivals, Huang points out his company has completely focused on the production of OA furniture and contracted many respected overseas designers to design models for his company. In addition, the company has invested in production facilities in mainland China, where production costs are comparatively low but worker skills high. He says his company has an output capacity of 1,000 desks and 4,000 chairs a day, produced on both original-equipment manufacturing (OEM) and original-design manufacturing (ODM) bases.