As Chinese Father’s Day—Aug. 8—approached, Taiwan’s print media were filled with advertisements for electronic massage recliners or chairs as gifts for fathers. The advertisements claimed that the products were continuously enhanced in terms of function to provide a feeling of massage as comfortable as massage by human hands. Some advanced models were represented as having a warming function that...

Not only have manufacturers of all kinds in China had to cope with rising manufacturing cost due to rising global prices of raw materials as coal, oil, metal, plastics, wood, rattan etc., which is worsened by soaring wages without sparing furniture makers in China of such misfortune, with the odds stacked even higher against those who rely on the United States as major export outlet, who are now...

A truism in business remains that social trends, regardless of short- or long-term miseries created, will always be cradles of opportunities. Graying societies in Japan, Taiwan, China and elsewhere due to decreasing birth rates may alarm policymakers and life insurers, but are actually creating potentially lucrative opportunities for makers of children furniture. One reason is simply doting child...

Functional breakthrough presents new opportunities Once the domain of mostly high-end furniture, ergonomic design is becoming deeply embedded in the thinking of most office furniture makers in Taiwan today. Many of these manufacturers have been in business for a decade, two decades or longer, giving them a vast pool of knowledge and expertise in making furniture that meets people's needs and p...

Manufacturers go for the natural and human touch With "low-carbon" furniture having become a catchword in their industry, some Chinese makers of living-room furniture have started to roll out environmentally -friendly furniture products through the careful selection of raw materials, improved processing technology, and enhanced manufacturing management. With a history of more than 20 y...

The Shen Pao Wooden Co., Ltd. has experienced decades of ups and downs since its founding in 1920, but has managed to remain viable and competitive by nimbly diversifying its product lines. M.C. Huang, Shen Pao's founder and chairman, set up the company and built his first factory in Longjing Village, in central Taiwan, to turn out audio speaker boxes, video tape boxes, and other boxes on an O...

The 18th Taiwan Excellence Award, diverting from earlier ITC-oriented submissions, showed wider variety in entries. For the first time, makers of automobiles and motor scooters took top honors, demonstrating that Taiwan's designers are also capable of working out innovations in products besides ITC, a field for which Taiwan is generally well known globally. Luxgen Motor Co., Ltd., a subsid...

One maker attributes steady profit margin to dedication to R&D After enjoying very rapid growths in the first half of 2010, Taiwan’s furniture hardware makers were alarmed by an abrupt slowdown starting in the second half, when the developed economies, especially the U.S. and peripheral European countries excluding Germany and France, widely posted sluggish growths, which, coupled with steadi...

But some manufacturers stay home to focus on high-end innovative products Taiwan’s furniture industry, once one of the world’s top suppliers in the line, has been in a steady decline since the late 1980s due to the rising cost of land and labor. Around 70% to 80% of the furniture makers on the island have moved their production lines overseas during the past two decades, mo...

Researcher at Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, Council of Agriculture Bamboo belongs to the Poaceae (or Gramineae) family under the monocotyledons group of which most members have one cotyledon, or embryonic leaf, in their seeds. Grown bamboo has culms hardened as xylem which can be processed for economic use. Culms, referring to the hollow stems with nodes, are composed of vascular bundle ...