In this week’s episode of Looking South, Eric Gau chats with Sunmade Vice General Manager Ardex Huang about his company’s expansion efforts into the Southeast Asian market.
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Transcript below:
Eric Gau: Good morning, and welcome to another episode of Looking South. I’m Eric Gau, and today we are continuing our exploration of how small and medium-sized enterprises are taking advantage of the government’s New Southbound Policy. To tell us about how his company is doing that, we are joined this morning by Ardex Huang, the vice general manager of Sunmade. Mr. Huang, welcome to the show.
Ardex Huang: Hello everyone, good morning. This is Ardex from Sunmade company.
Eric: To start us off, Mr. Huang, why don’t you introduce your company to our listeners. What is it that Sunmade does?
Ardex: We are Sunmade. We have been dedicating to traffic safety, road construction, concrete and public work project for 40 years. With the core values of safe, economic, practical and durable, we developed Automated Flagger, durable anti-glare post, and also Solar LED signs, which haven’t been used in highways for so many years.
In order to reduce casualties caused by sun glare, SUNMADE invented Anti-Sun Glare Signs, which we call ASGS, in 2014. ASGSs are regular traffic signs equipped with the innovative optical lens, that we call SUNMADE DOTs, that refract sunlight to shine, which is the exclusive solution for sun glare problem in traffic. With the light refracting function, ASGS can turn unreadable signs under sun glare condition into readable traffic signs from 200 meters away. The advantage of ASGS is no wires, no electricity, and no maintenance, which means it is a pretty green product. Besides traffic, SUNMADE DOTs could be applied to commercial signs, installation art and commercial advertisement. It’s a technology with lots of applications.
Eric: What made Sunmade want to expand into the Southeast Asian market? What countries have you been targeting, and why did you choose those?
Ardex: SUNMADE has lots of experience and technology in traffic safety in Taiwan. So, expanding business overseas is always our goal. Besides Europe, the U.S.A, Japan and the Middle East, we think that Southeast Asian has great potential and our government has the New Southbound Policy. With the support of Taiwan government, we think that we could definitely benefit from it and expand the business abroad. We have developed our business in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia in the past few months. We are working on introducing ASGS to Thailand, Philippine, and Vietnam.
Eric: Were there any government incentives that led you to pick those particular countries?
Ardex: We have got lot of supports from Bureau of Foreign Trade, the Ministry of Economic Affairs, and ITRI, Industrial Technology Research Institute. They helped us on marketing, information collecting, analyzing exhibition, and data collecting, which gave us lots of great opportunities to meet customers and we got some trial orders from customers. We really appreciate the support from government. For SUNMADE, I would say it’s a great opportunity to develop overseas in depth. The resource and support from our government is very helpful for small and medium enterprises like us.
Eric: Mr. Huang, in your experience, how is doing business in the Southeast Asia market different from your operations here in Taiwan?
Ardex: Besides culture and language, the most important is the suitability of product in different markets. Such as size, design, function, color, tax, safety regulation and etc. All of these needs to fit market requirements. The market analysis, product survey, and business model of local market is extremely important before actually investing in a new market.
Eric: Since SUNMADE has expanded into the Southeast Asian market, how has your business benefited or expanded? What have you learned from this experience?
Ardex: We get some feedback from the overseas market. We have already cooperated with local partners in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Especially Malaysia, we have met the minister of Public Works and requested road trial which is already in progress.
Eric: What are you plans for the future in these countries?
Ardex: We plan to visit the traffic department in those countries and request pilot projects. We are confident that the real effect of Anti-Sun Glare Signs and the result of enhancing traffic safety would interest the local government and lead to more traffic projects.
Eric: Finally, before we wrap up, what is something that you and SUNMADE wished you knew before expanding into these countries, and, based on that, what advice do you have for other companies that are following in our footsteps?
A: We mainly focus on traffic market and government is our targeting customer. They normally have new project for some big events. For example, soccer world cup 2022 in Qatar, Tokyo Olympic, and other public events. These events usually comes with huge business demand. If we knew some exhibition that target these event, we will expand our business more efficiently. Of course, we suggest other companies to follow The New Southbound Policy from our government. There will be a lot of supportive information and resources. Especially the cost of exhibition host by our government is cheaper than commercial exhibition and they help us to invite some potential customers.
Eric: We’ve been chatting with Ardex Huang, the vice general manager of SUNMADE Incorporated. Mr. Huang, thank you for joining me on the air today.
Ardex: Thank you for your calling. Thank you.
Eric: That’s it for this week’s installment of Looking South on ICRT. I’m Eric Gau, thank you all for tuning in.