Taiwan Factory Visits & the Ride On OEM Camp

Taiwan Factory Visits – pt 2 & the Ride On OEM Camp

Taiwan Factory Visits

Taiwan Factory Visits – part 1

I’m out In TW again, thought I’d show you a little of the behind the scenes stuff I did for the company blog.

BackfromTaiwan

‘twas a long – short trip… long in the sense it felt like a long time, short as in the sense that I was gone and back in just a week…

Lots done. Lot’s more to do.

Great to be home… hermit bags packed away for the fortnight before the next long-haul trip to the US….

Back Home

‘twas a long – short trip… long in the sense it felt like a long time, short as in the sense that I was gone and back in just a week…

Lots done. Lot’s more to do.

Great to be home… hermit bags packed away for the fortnight before the next long-haul trip to the US….

Taiwan Show 07

Four days, 32 meetings, 52 new business cards, about 100 To+Do’s, three blinding ideas, several beers, and a bevvy of Taiwan’s finest, kindest people.

I’m glad it’s over but Taipei ’07 was a blast – addictive stuff, just watch this space…

Charles de Gaule is falling down…

Normally I detest CDG airport, not only a rubbish layout, but also the site of the famous terminal 2E

While demolition and re-construction work continues – at least part of the wing is now back in operation, for US flights at least.

A welcome change then to come back to a France where the first taste of French soil is normally the stupid immigration 1000+ passenger rugby scrum. Instead you are led down the interior walkway of a very serene pale wood and concrete structure….

Homewards

I have little concept of time, place or space now, it’s been a bit of a long day, some 30 hours since I woke up.

Yesterday we were out of the hotel early (a tough job as we’d been out ‘till 2am with the wonderful Hubert from KT…) Although pretty groggy we made a few final factory visits.

Just round the corner from the final visit was the above temple, as we were running ok for time it was a great experience to stop and take a look. The temple keeper was the uncle of the factory owner, and he showed us around and offered us a tea. Am amazing building and I’ve posted more pictures over here.

Mid-afternoon we headed to the airport, flew to HK, and caught the red-eye to Paris.

By pure chance, Matthieu from Hutchinson and “Dangerous Momo” from Race Co (French distributors for Santa Cruz, Planet X amongst others) were on the same flight and sat within a few seats of us.

We didn’t chat too much on the plane, but spent over an hour with them this morning in the chaos that is Charles de Gaulle airport immigration quewe. We then pottered off and had brekkie together, before I rushed off like a loon in order to catch my train, arriving at the platform as the train rolled to a halt at my feet like absolute clockwork.

So this is where I am now, sitting here on the high-speed TGV from Paris to Lyon watching the French countryside rush by at 200KPH. Feeling just a little wired on too little sleep, too much coffee and too much to do these next few days and weeks.

Consolidate or Comiserate

Seemed to be the buz-words from this years show:

Consolidate: there’s a really palpable lack of direction within the trade this year. Less new product and needless change (a good thing IMHO), means that a trade geared up to constant revolution is facing the eternal question of how you can predict a market in evolution.

Commiserate: Intrinsically linked to the above – there are a lot of brands hurting right now. The last few years have seen prices driven to below any form of reasonable cost / value ratio. This means we have bred a generation of consumer who has no idea of “real value”.

98,99,100…101

In case you were looking for a bike industry product, sales, marketing or boss guy today – you’d probably have found them at the top of 101 tower in Taipei.

Without doubt it’s an amazing building, but it does feel like a a faintly ridiculous feat of engineering considering it’s still half empty. Oh, and the rice paddy farmers fields across the street tend to suggest it’s not been built due to lack of suitable land…?

Pics have been added here

Powered by TAiwan Beer

Tonight was “Bicycle Industry Exporters” night, courtesy of TAITRA & Taiwan beer. I think it probably had another, more formal name, but thanks to several bottles of gassy amber piss I honestly can’t remember much.

A table procured, myself, Dave, Vlaye and a very Fred Astaire looking Matthieu did Anglo-French relations proud.

And the winner is a carton of beer, borrowed…erm, procured from the TAITRA trade evening… they were handing out single bottles to everyone leaving, but a “ni-hao” later and a case of Taiwan Beer was liberated in aid of a good cause….

The long trek begins…

Finally the time has come, the long trek to Taipei begins with a 5am TGV to Paris.

Now the real hard work starts, four days of meetings (I’ve 37 scheduled….) chatting, strategising, going “oooh” and drinking Taiwan Beer.

And spending ages working out the flaw in iWeb that seems to mean I can’t flip the above photo of 101 tower 90deg to the right… answers on a e.mail please?

UPDATE: Aha! Found it! In the Inspector function you can re-orient text and images. Cool.

Tired in Taiwan

What a ride! Only been here three days and already feeling knackered!

Yesterday was a bit of an eye opener, a few visits to suppliers factories and meetings with the R&D guys.

Like ever, it’s not the done thing to say who, where or what, but as one of my colleagues used to say “you only have to find one good idea to pay for your trip”.. and I think I may have found that product already!

As always, it’s not currently in the format we’ll need it to be in, but with a few sketches, some advanced multi-cultural miming and a copy of Earthed DVD… we got the message across!

Spent most of today office based, sorting out some old dragging paperwork and, like I said, feeling unusually tired. Maybe it’s the paperwork…?

Off to dinner now, with a few of the team from our supplier, then I’ll hit the hay – it’s an early start in the morning to go down to Taichung and a long, long list of visits there!