Businesses with an eye on Asia are headed for Taiwan this month on a trade mission led by the Colorado International Trade Office.
For companies targeting China’s growing economy for potential business, Taiwan can be a “springboard” into the mainland Chinese market, said Jack Chen, director general of the Taipei Economic & Cultural Office in Kansas City, Mo., whose territory includes Colorado.
Som Sidara, international sales manager for Lafayette-based RMI Laser LLC, will be taking one of the company’s laser marking machines on the mission, hoping to gain business. The machines can make laser markings such as bar codes, text, serial numbers, logos or graphics on metal, plastic and other materials.
“Anymore, when you want to do business in China, you have to go to Taiwan,” Sidara said. “A lot of Taiwanese have companies in mainland China.”
Ultimately, Sidara’s goal is to target the mainland China market, and he hopes to have a distributor in China within a few months.
“Our goal for this trip is to just get our foot in the door,” Sidara said. “I’m just hoping to get some brand recognition out there.”
Boulder-based data storage company LeftHand Networks Inc. chief executive Bill Chambers also is going on the mission. Taiwan looks like a good fit for his business to expand its sales and marketing operations, he said, “in that it really can serve as a beachhead into what I consider the greater China market – including Taiwan, China and Hong Kong.”
Pacific Western Technologies Ltd. chief executive Tai-Dan Hsu, who is from Taiwan and is going on the mission, calls it “the gateway to China, Hong Kong, Singapore and all that.” He thinks Taiwan understands international business culture and is “more attuned to Western business practice.”
“China, even though their economy is very progressed, some of their business culture is a little bit different,” he said. Examples include how procurement and contracts work.
Taiwan became Colorado’s third-largest export market last year, with $706.7 million in exports, according to the World Trade Center Denver. Taiwan came in behind Canada and Mexico, and was followed by mainland China.
On the state-organized mission, June 25-28, companies pay their own way. The international trade office organizes events and meetings with high-level officials and executives.
Fort Collins-based Advanced Energy Industries Inc., which makes power supplies and mass flow controllers for the semiconductor and related industries, already has about 55 employees in Taiwan and is sending two employees on the mission, one from Fort Collins and one from Taiwan.
There’s a whole trend toward moving manufacturing to Asia, said Bruno Doetsch, the company’s vice president of international sales, who is going on the mission.
But there are challenges. At Pacific Western Technologies, “the primary concern is intellectual property,” Hsu said. “If you sell through Taiwan, they may sell to other countries. Within the process, if your design is not protected enough, people may copyright that, or so-called ‘reverse engineer’ the product.”
Doetsch said his company also has had issues with smaller companies in Asia that try to reverse engineer Advanced Energy’s equipment and even use its logo.
“We try to protect ourselves with IP (intellectual property) as much as possible,” Doetsch said.
While local businesses look for connections with Asia, metro-area economic development leaders have been working to persuade an airline to start a nonstop flight from Denver to Japan or China.
The lack of a nonstop flight to Asia is “a big issue,” Doetsch said.
When he lived in the San Francisco Bay area, “it was much more convenient to fly out of San Francisco,” he said. “Leaving from Denver, I have to go either via San Francisco or Seattle or Los Angeles.
“Shanghai or Taipei – it takes me about 16 hours” not including the stopover, Doetsch said. “If I’m going to Singapore, it takes about 22 hours.”
Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi can be reached at 303-954-1488 or kyamanouchi@denverpost.com.
