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Innovations Open New Frontier for Taiwan Stationery Makers
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Taiwan's stationery industry has been steadily developed in recent years. Despite fierce competition from China and Southeast Asia countries, Taiwanese makers have still maintained fair performances through aggressively improving quality, fortifying design capabilities, and building brands. In speaking of the future, Donald Mai, Executive Secretary of Taiwan Association of Stationery Industries (TASI), the co-organizer of Giftionery Taipei 2009, strongly believes that, though Taiwan is being buffeted by global economic turmoil that “Crisis presents opportunity and that it may be the ideal time for companies to re-think their business models and progress with the latest innovative products.”
The average annual export value of Taiwan's stationery products for the past 12 years is NTD 16.7 billion. Given the fact that the export and import ratio is around 5:5, the total production value of Taiwan's stationery industry is about NTD 33.4 billion. According to Mai, stationery as a mature industry faces various challenges like writing stationery being replaced by computers, the emergence of China as an economic power, and acute competition across the global market. Fortunately, in the face of all this long-established and large scale companies like Lion Pencil and Liberty Stationery have quickly adjusted their global deployment and flexibly adapted to such conditions. This has allowed Taiwan stationery makers to match the output China in many countries, including Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines. |
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TASI constantly strives to promote Taiwan's stationery industry on the global market. Donald Mai, Executive Secretary of TASI, has full confidence in Taiwan's stationery industry. |
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Innovative Thinking Speeds Up Transformation
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Although China has emerged as a strong competitor for Taiwan, is also has greatly suffered from the global financial crisis and industrial environment changes. Mai believes that many orders will return to Taiwan under such circumstances. “It's the best time for Taiwan's stationery makers. Companies must leverage their advantages of quality, affordable prices, and design capabilities to grab this opportunity,” stresses Mai.
In fact, Taiwan makers are also aware of this situation. In order to find new growing momentum, they should aggressively develop products of higher value. One opportunity is opening as Taiwan moves toward expanding its cultural and creative industry since there is a crucial need to design and style all kinds of products and that same approach can be used to adapt new ways of thinking into the traditional stationery industry. The Butter Lion created by Lion Pencil, the Pencil School operated by Rabbit Industrial Corporation, and the Crayon Tourism Factory run by Lucky Art Industrial are all good examples to show that show what such efforts can achieve.
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Centralizing Resources to Expand Scales
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Mai has dedicated many years of his life to the stationery industry. He points out that TASI member companies can best achieve new orders by actively participating in various exhibitions. And to better meet the needs of such a diversified membership,
TASI is using every means to provide show information and to form groups to participate in related trade shows, such as books, office stationery, hardware, and leisure events.
Mai also stated his approval to combine the spring and autumn shows of Giftionery Taipei to make for a more comprehensive event this April 2009. The path to success for this industry is clear, states Mai, they must continue to demonstrate their strengths in creative, delicate, and high value products to differentiate themselves from other regional producers. He also suggests that Giftionery Taipei should consider covering more diverse areas such as lifestyles in a bid to expand its scale to meet the buyers' one-stop-shopping requirements.
“If buyers are touched when visiting the show and realize that so many originally creative products can be found here, then we’re on the right track,” reflected Mai. And the best track forward is Giftionery Taipei 2009 since it can best stage the innovation, value, and quality coming from Taiwan.
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