Clearco Products

Arista dual wiper system

Clearco Products, a company with definite goals and driven to innovate, has evolved into the world's largest supplier of performance wiper blades. Its globally-famous in-house Arista-branded series of products, long taken for granted as effective profit-makers, are trusted name-brand items at big international automotive accessory importers and retail chains.

The company is also the only wiper blade maker on the island still producing "fully made-in-Taiwan" wiper products rather than moving production to low-cost nations.

With state-of-the-art designs, superior performance, and a trend-setting style that leads the market and meets global consumers' needs, sales of Arista performance dual-wiper systems have been steadily growing without being impacted by newcomers or lower-priced rivals in major markets worldwide.

Cedric Charng, director "Innovation is the core value at Clearco products," proudly claims, "because only through such practice can our company stay ahead in the targeted niche market and achieve targeted profit margins to sustain our continual R&D and future growth."

Charng, the spirit behind the company, is pushing Clearco to be a world-class player in the performance wiper market. A veteran in the traditional wiper business with over 20 years of experiences and know-how, Charng is now a guru in the performance wiper sector by innovating every aspect of his firm's operation and management.

"Innovation does not necessarily mean invention, but you upgrade, refine, improve the existing to create new values and functions, like the many conveniences that we enjoy today, which are derived from ideas long ago and such products bear new meanings for people," Charng said.

The same concept applies to Clearco's Arista Dual Wiper System, the idea of which was invented over 20 years ago by a German. The original item was introduced with poor performance and appearance, but has been upgraded by Clearco. Today Arista wipers are truly functional products that have redefined high-end wipers, giving users added-value and superior windshield clearing capacity during rain, as well as eye-catching styling that not only improves wiper systems' aerodynamics but also greatly enhance a car's overall aesthetics.

There's an old saying in the aviation industry "something that looks good must flies well," Charng says, while the Arista Dual Wiper System is a good example of a different product proving the same principle.

A testament to its innovation lies in Arista Dual Wiper System having won in 1999 the prestigious "It's Very Well Made in Taiwan" award from the Taiwan government that cites locally-made items for optimally embodying the spirit of "Innovalue"--innovation combined with added-value.

"The award-winning Arista Dual Wiper System is a reflection of Clearco's commitment to innovation as well as corporate confidence and taste in product design," Charng claims. "We know everything about wiper blades--from design, manufacturing to product performance and functions, and we set a clear goal for innovation--to make ours totally different from all available counterparts in the market."

Design is a key part of innovation, an aching process (especially without computer aiding tools) of which took over one year at Clearco, which tried to develop a really unique dual-wiper system, compared with only about three months at companies developing similar products

No more aching process

Money can buy very expensive product developing computer aiding tolls like UniGraphics/NX instead of drawing board. Also buy high computing power CPUs' to calculate and combine your beautiful engineering lines, complex surfaces into logical solid/body and command in-house 3D printer (Fused Deposition Modeling) instead of subcontracting 3 different service providers and talking to dozen professional engineers /craftsmen to get our mockup done in a short limited time frame that you'd never imagine. All these monies pay off but why only few percentages of companies deployed these implements: synergy knowledge of driving these tools and IT infrastructure.

"With the whole set of advanced and high-performance R&D tools," Charng claims smugly, "our R&D has become easier, faster, and rate of defects in minute parts of a prototype has been effectively decreased. More importantly, such implements help us achieve really precise prototyping work--with everything made being identical to what we logically saw in the computer, while the advanced instruments also set up a platform to integrate our R&D team's long accumulated experience, know-how, and innovative ideas in the most efficient way."

"If you contract a design company to take over the whole project, it will surely fail," Charng states. "A design project can only be refined and improved gradually according to our degree of pickiness, in that we reject and change the original design sketches to suit our concepts and market sensitivity, which enable us to jointly achieve optimal results with the design company."

The results speak for themselves. The Arista Dual Wiper System has been winning the hottest consumer responses at major automotive aftermarket retail and service chains, such as PepBoys and AutoZone in the United States, the big retail chain WalMart, and many other major auto-parts boutique chains in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

For almost all traditional wiper manufacturers, the replacement parts aftermarket is the only target due to enormous demand for hundreds of millions pieces per year, and market security as most consumers only ask for mid- to low-price levels with unexpected product quality.

Not so for Clearco, because it targets only the high-end automotive accessory sector, in which buyers are extremely picky and are sensitive about quality and design, though the margins here are relatively higher.

Unlike virtually all counterparts in Taiwan, Clearco, since its establishment in 1993, has adhered to its innovative niche-market strategy to only focus on the high-end performance wiper market, and has since aimed to be the world's leading player, an objective it has achieved not long after registering landslide sales in major markets.

"We fully recognized that Clearco is not an international tier-one wiper maker geared to lead the market," Charng recalls, "but we had full confidence that our Arista Dual Wiper System could revolutionize the market with unmatched performance, function, and style. So from the very start we aimed to sell the innovative product in tuning or boutique accessory markets rather than as replacement parts. And we succeeded fairly quickly, though after years of preparation, to rapidly become the world's largest performance wiper brand with an annual sales volume of about one million blades, defeating all similar, now minor, counterparts."

The success of the Arista brand is not a coincidence, but the result of sophisticated strategy innovation by the company, which even took time to design the attractive wiper packaging that makes the "accessory" appealing, complete with that high- tech, upmarket look.

Now worldwide, vehicles equipped with the Arista Dual Wiper System is almost a status symbol showing individual taste, which does not detract at all from the built-in advanced functionality that more effectively squeegees rain from windshields than typical counterparts.

Smart Way to Increase Stores' Revenue/Space Ratio

We've done many things successfully to attract consumers but what about the stores buyer? A "wiper blade logical sizes" was invented to increase store revenue without extra cost and unfortunately only United States in the globe will patent this kind of business method.

As we know, most stores frequently check the revenue generated by each unit of the store space and, more importantly, count how much profits are generated. "The key is not product prices but sales performance or sales volume according to a store owner's policy, i.e. to attract more customers to the store, generating more profits, etc."

"Wiper Blade Logical Size" business method is simple but innovative, Charng says. Clearco puts an extra label "Also Fits xx-inch Size" on the package of wiper product, such as on a 16-inch physical size wiper with an "Also Fits 17-inch" logical size label that tells any customer that requires either 16" or 17" can purchase this one. For retail stores, he adds, these "Logical-Sizes" deployment theoretically can double the revenue generated by the same store space.

No matter how stylish and attractive, quality of wiper blades is the decisive factor of a good product. And Clearco is serious about quality control—it is today still the world's only wiper manufacturer to stamp each wiper produced with its own lot number to effectively track quality and inventory.

Each package of Arista Dual Wiper System has a serial number indicating the date and time of manufacturing, with the number also identifying in code for the material batch and even the assembler team and shift.

"It is a total quality-control innovation in the wiper manufacturing industry developed in-house by Clearco," Charng claims. "With the serial number, we can easily trace or recall at the store and/or from their warehouse the whole batch to find the source of problems along the manufacturing process. Such system allows us to easily recall only the problematic batch, which has not occurred so far, in the shortest time, rather than removing all the items on store racks, which would take longer. Without such serial-number control system, a maker still cannot get to the source of the problem effectively even with a total recall."

Clearco's lot-number quality-control system for every Arista Wiper produced is an industry-first, though such management method is already required in the foods industry, which shows the firm's commitment to quality and superior management efficiency.

In addition and also innovative, workers at Clearco production lines use a bar code system as part of each assembly/job, so that work performance, efficiency, time, rejects, procedures, etc. are totally recorded and analyzed by the management on a daily basis. "Any employee problem, no matter related to the mind or body, can be easily found, for which resolutions may be devised," Charng says. "However, we utilize such management system in a positive way, to care for every worker to achieve better quality, not only for productivity."

Another innovation is Clearco's adoption of the first automatic wiper-blade packing system in Asia to replace the traditional manual system in use many years ago. "At that time, even gigantic tier-one wiper-blade makers in Japan with enormous production value did not have such advanced packaging system," Charng claims proudly. "But we adopted it because we are committed to achieve the best."

Backed by the spirit of innovation, best quality, and right market positioning, Arista Dual Wiper System for many years has been one of the best-selling lines at many leading importers and retail-chain purchasers, ranking high as profit-makers and fast movers.

Products with good design and high quality can lead the market for a long time, Charng says, such as Arista wipers, which are virtually flawless and unrivaled by counterparts.

Though Clearco's operations have been quite smooth and grown steadily, the farsighted and bold-minded Charng reveals that a big market change is ahead that is expected to shake up the traditional replacement wiper blade market.

The pre-curvature wiper blade (none-articulated or frameless) is specifically developed by automakers for many new car models to conform the windshield curvature, according to Charng; but you going to have big problem if installed a pre-curvature wiper on a vehicle with a none-compatible windshield curvature. Pre-curvature wiper is dedicated to certain car models with specific windshield curvature.

Charng explains that consumer picks one adaptor from adaptors included in the traditional articulated wiper to fit the wiper arm and articulated structure takes care the different windshield curvatures, this we called it "universal wiper". With 8 to 14 sizes to complete a "universal wiper program" results 85 to 95% vehicles coverage which is so economic and efficient for the autopart store since they're easy to run and taken very small store space. Unlike articulated wiper, to devise a pre-curvature universal wiper program is a different ball game: different adaptors included for each size still needed and group the models with same size wiper but with different compatible curvature……. For the stores, they'll have to run at least 80 to 140 SKUs' on pre-curvature instead of 8 to 14 SKUs' on articulated wiper to result the same vehicle coverage (revenue).

"As each inch of the store space is carefully calculated by the owner to maximize operation profits," Charng says, "pre-curved wiper blades can hardly survive in the traditional retail autopart stores due to the much-higher operational cost than traditional articulated counterparts, I meant the pre-curvature wiper will eventually been thrown out of the door of the store." If this comes true, new car buyer has to go back to their car dealer and spend 5 to 8 times of money for such D.I.Y. item compares to purchase an articulated wiper in the autopart store.

It's an old news that automakers continue to try (as is now) to exploit (control) the replacement parts market including wiper blade and their efforts seem to be working on this none-articulated wiper. We'll and must devise a new and innovative strategy soon as now still have 95% of the cars running with articulated wiper. We'll have to shut down our business like every other aftermarket wiper makers if we do not come out with a good one when the time comes.