Yesterday was an afternoon full of green tea drinking with 2 friends: one new and one old. We were at the new friend’s house-Baron, who is a green tea connoisseur as many Taiwanese businessmen are. We were chatting about various life issues, family, philosophy, tea, etc. before the discussion came around to marketing. Specifically a product that Baron discovered on a a China business trip.

The product was a Soy Bean Milk machine. Soy Bean milk is a staple in Asia usually enjoyed as a breakfast drink. It can be served hot, warm or cold in sweetened, unsweetened and savory forms. Byron was all bubbly over his little contraption that made great bean milk. After having consumed a fish pond worth of tea each we checked out hi machine. Baron added cold water and a variety of beans in equal proportion, pressed “click” and away we went. The machine began to whir and bubble and hum and steam and churn and voila, ten minutes later we had some fresh bean milk which in fairness I’d say was really more like fine bean soup since the bean milks I’ve had are all much finer (with no pulp included) than the mix Baron’s machine provided. I’d say it was  great little gadget.

The real fun part,  for me at least, was when the subject turned to marketing this device. Baron said he checked into agency rights for this product in Taiwan but that had already been taken  by another company. Then the discussion turned to marketing this device in America. That’s when the bigger wheels in my head began to turn. I began to point out to baron some of the key differences in Americans and Chinese and for that matter Asian diets. One key point I made is that Asians thrive on hot and warm drinks and foods. Americans eat and drink hot things as well but nearly in the quantity or frequency of Asians. We bantered back and forth on a few other points until we came up to the big one:Americans are too lazy(definition:hooked on convenience). This was stated by me an American.

I went on to point out how Americans are fascinated by gadgets and excitedly buy: waffle makers, blenders, microwaves, popcorn poppers, dishwashers, yogurt makers, ice cream machines, bread bakers, etc. Oops, almost forgot salad shooters. Other than dish washers and washing machines which are far easier to operate than manually performing the actual task of washing and drying dishes or clothes, most of those gadgets get used a few times or sporadically at best and are usually  stuck in a closet or stuck on a table at the next yard sale.

A few more sips of green tea and banter inspired me to comment that I really do like the machine. The major market I could see would be making fresh baby food. However, the major obstacle to that is the convenience of all the little jars with a cute baby on them and fluorescently colored mashed substances inside of them.

We concluded with several more cups of delicious green tea, this one from Ali Shan, and concurred that if we only could get this to the TV Sales people we might have something. Sunday afternoon’s of tea drinking and conversation with friends are one of life’s pleasures in Asia. You should try it sometime.

..what did they say? Well here in Taiwan with four seats up for grabs in the National Assembly the DPP got 3 while the ruling KMT only got 1. The DPP are claiming this as a mandate”

Su Chia-chuan, said the results were a demonstration of voters’ trust in the opposition party.

Well maybe or at least partly. I feel more strongly it is a trend which is due probably more to the immediacy of mass communications via the Internet than political strategy superiority of a given party or candidate. We live in the era of what I like to call “mayfly politics.” Where you win your election and need to hit the ground with your feet running as fast as a broadband connection. The stop watch starts ticking the moment you win and the people don’t have patience for anything anymore. So if you can’t maintain whatever spin, or momentum, or charm that got you elected you will be replaced by the other guys just like with the Democrats losing a seat that was fixed in granite it was so secure: Ted Kennedy’s to Scott Brown.

Who knows maybe what the people of  Taiwan will get is something better than what they were offered. Sadly, I feel what the Internet makes ever clearer everyone is playing the same old game and money is hard to beat anywhere.

Waking up like a previously sleeping Tiger. Each year I get to go through two sets of separate but un-equal year end holidays: one for the west and one for here in Greater China. To say this is distracting would be an understatement. It can be fun although having 9 out of 11 days of cold rain and grayness is not entirely my idea of fun. The Blockbuster man was the winner this holiday with 15 rentals from us.

I’m exhilarated I have work to do in these challenging economic times  and am about to go visit with one of my factory partners on a new order. I hope everyone has a great Year of the Tiger as we all try to make a little more sense of our new age and present reality.

I hope Taiwan and China’s relations continue to improve as well as China with the rest of the world. Hopefully there will be a little more Peace and Understanding happening although that will surely be spun and manipulated for someone’s political agenda.

Adult reality is so complicated and can cause headaches. I want to go back to a more innocent time. Like when the characters in the picture would have amused me, but alas…

This is classic. Hey George did you see that big elephant in the room? What elephant? Hey Hank did you see that big elephant? Ok The R.O.C. Navy claims to the press here that they didn’t see a Chinese submarine off souther Taiwan. Why would a Chinese submarine be there? What could it possibly hope to find?

The R.O.C Navy denied yesterday a media report that the nation’s naval battleships detected a suspected Chinese submarine off southwestern Taiwan during a military exercise on Jan. 27.

Quoting unnamed sources, the United Evening News reported that the submarine belonging to China was spotted at an area 24 nautical miles or 45 kilometers off the Zuoying naval base in Kaohsiung City, last Wednesday morning.

According to the report, the submarine was first discovered by one of the navy’s anti-sub S-70C helicopters, but the submarine was allowed to leave later on.

On this topic I’ll have to defer to my Chinese friends common sense approach to discussing the obvious,”If you already know why do you need to ask?” Indeed…

I read this article and it produced a mixed reaction. On the surface you’d think,”oh well, I guess that’s it for Taiwanese electronic firms, put a fork in it.”

The report showed that monthly salaries offered by some Chinese enterprises to high-ranking employees are already 20 percent to 30 percent higher than those granted by leading Taiwanese enterprises to their employees.

Liu Teh-chuan, manager of China operations division of the 1111 Job Bank, said that major enterprises in Zhejiang, Shanghai and Beijing want to raid high-end talents in the optoelectronics field from Taiwan, they can offer annual pay of NT$3 million to NT$5 million, at least 25 percent to 30 percent higher than offered by their Taiwanese counterparts. Some can even offer stock warrants to attract field talents from Taiwan.

Liu noted that high-tech firms in both sides of the Taiwan Straits are expected to engage in a war for high-caliber talents in the first and second quarters of the year.

When in fact it really means that Taiwanese companies are going to be paying these people much more to keep them here. If salary conditions are equal very few Taiwanese are going to leave the comforts of home to go work in the mainland. Sure the mainland will help recruit away some people but should mostly benefit the Taiwanese with higher salaries to keep in Taiwan. Let’s check back in about 18 to 24 months and see-mark your calendars.

I was on another segment of American Public Media’s Marketplace with Scott Tong. Here is the link for this episode and to listen go here. Here is link from last one from back in Dec to listen go here.

Picking up where I left off from the last post below this one-here is a new article talking in more detail about Solar, LED and Electric Car markets and planned support for those industries.

I’m kind of excited about this. One of the reason the Taiwanese are so innovative is because they have been left to sink or swim on their own. The government here traditionally has offered little support other than the occasional tax incentive and in fact tends to follow the small and medium businesses lead when making policy. So a bit of the tail wagging the dog. While the role of small and medium businesses gets more and more challenging with conglomerates crowding the space, I know that they’ll always have a role because of their innovation and agility and ability to make decisions quickly. The conglomerates are very slow moving and take a long time trying to get things done by consensus, often missing the very markets they sought to enter and dominate.

I am very happy solar is one of the new technologies being promoted here since it’s potential for sustainable energy production. My hope is that they’ll come up with more environmentally friendly ways of producing the components for solar power. It’s a little disappointing and self-defeating when some environmentally friendly  product is produced when it does not utilize an environmentally friendly process itself.

LED’s are an exciting field. Here in Taiwan all of the traffic lights have been converted to LED using ones. China has similar plans:

The greatest growth drivers are government policies and legislation that favor energy saving. A few countries have already outlawed incandescent light bulbs, which lose some 70 percent of their energy to heat, and others plan to phase them out over the coming years. China, for instance, has instituted the “Ten Cities, Ten Thousand Lights” plan, a program to revamp six million traditional streetlights with LED lights by 2011.

Electric Vehicles are obviously another great concept that is becoming a reality with major players like Warren Buffet getting involved via his investment in BYD. The Taiwanese are already making soem maor strides in that direction as well:

E-One Moli Energy, which belongs to the Taiwan Cement group, supplies the lithium-ion battery for the Mini E electric vehicle by German carmaker BMW. Taichung-based Fukuta Electronics & Machinery Company produces the motor for the high-performance electric sports car, Tesla Roadster, made by industry newcomer, Tesla Motors. And even the company that helped the Californian electric vehicle maker design the system for the US$125,000 Roadster — AC Propulsion — is 80-percent funded by Taiwanese investors.

This post is in response to a news article reported here on 6 new industries that are expected to generate upwards of 400,00 jobs in Taiwan.

Officials of the Council of Economic Planning and Development (CEPD) said the six emerging industrial sectors, which include the green energy, tourism, biotechnology and electric vehicle sectors have been listed for priority development for 2010, as part of efforts to rev up employment.

I think it is a great idea although I’m not sure of how many jobs it will really produce. The key of course is how serious the government is for it’s actual success. I think it’s very plausible with the high tech and light industrial background that Taiwan has. My only hope is that this isn’t some trail balloon the government is putting up to try to gauge the private sectors interest thereby determining what if any resources will be channeled into this scheme to make it work.

The tourism part is a no brainer here. One of Taiwan’s greatest assets is it’s unique geographic profile. It sits in the northern sub-tropical zone and it’s high Central Mountain range along the narrow island make it possible to go from alpine mountain environments to the coast in under 90 miles. There are all kinds of trails excellent for hiking and cycling where people can really experience what the Portuguese called Ihla Formosa-the Beautiful Island.

The others-Green Tech, Bio Tech and Electric vehicles all require much heavier capital intensive investments. These are where the government can really assist in making this dream come true by providing incentives for the private sector and educational system to re-toll or build factors and add related educational programs accordingly. Time will tell.

If I had a nickel for every time I had to explain, “which China?”, “which one is Taiwan and which one is Thailand?” and “ohh Taiwan, love that hot food and those beaches…” I remember when I first started studying Chiense history at University that these multiple names/identities only became clear through deeper study and discussion. Let’s run through a few: Taiwan-R.O.C.(Republic of China[on Taiwan]), Free China, Formosa, et al.

China-P.R.C. (People’s Republic of China), mainland China, Communist China, Red China, Cathay, etc.

So if a student like myself had to really concentrate to work through this alphabet soup of acronyms, pseudonyms, abbreviations,etc. how can Joe Blow (or Joe the plumber for that matter) on the street even stand a fighting chance?

Oh yeah, Thailand home of the hot food and the nice beaches was Siam as in the King and I but you knew that right?

For those of you still following it’s been quite some time since I’ve posted anything here. Not that I haven’t had anything to say, just that I’ve been saying it in real time face to face or on Twitter or at my main site Color*Sound*Word or even Big in Asia:Monochrome. So how have you all been doing?

One recent connection I had that’s worth sharing about was the WorldWide Photo Walk that took place last month in several hundred locations around the world. I had the privilege of leading the local Taichung, Taiwan portion. What was great for me was meeting many new people on that day that all shared a common interest-in this case:photography. Several new faces were Taiwanese and came via my friends BBS through his camera shop. It was great meeting them and finding out what is interesting to them in photography, life, etc. I also had the fun of meeting some people I only new online and seeing some friendly faces that I hadn’t seen in quite a while.

What was great to see is how each person dealt with their interest and passion for some via camera(s) and what they shot, where they shot it,etc. Some of the Taiwanese photogs felt that I had an advantage here in getting portrait (people) shots. Their point was that since I’m a foreigner I can get away with pretty much walking up to most people and going “snap” without getting scolded or a dirty look. Maybe, but I still think a lot of it is a personal thing.  I’ve thought about this and mentally wrestled myself on this point several times. Essentially it’s always a judgement call thing. Who I shoot or don’t shoot. There are times when I simply don’t feel right about taking a shot and I don’t. Obviously that is the minority of the time. Whenever I do take a shot my goal is to present something for every one to see with them in their best light or most beautiful. maybe that is the way I justify it, but I hope that is the case and feel it probably is.

That being said I guess  all people contain some exhibitionist and voyeur within them. Some more, some less and all manifested differently through their individual personality filter. Some of the Taiwanese  photo walkers that came that day expressed their curiosity on how foreign photogs selected their shots and on their points of view. I think that was an honest curiosity and would agree culture will influence that but still feel the main factor is the individual’s personality, aesthetics, and even sense of humor. Anyway, we concluded by talking about future meetups and even semi-formal group. We shall see…