Yeong Jin Braves Brand Market With "Strauss" Furniture Line

Founded over half a century ago, Yeong Jin Furniture Factory Corp. is one of Taiwan's most experienced manufacturers of quality wooden-furniture products. The company's "Strauss" brand of furniture is well known in the interior-decoration sector for businesses, and can be found at the Starbucks coffeehouses around Taiwan. The company says it uses the most advanced pre-fabrication technology for such projects as the Starbucks one.

In its early years, Yeong Jin concentrated on the production of the wooden casings used for such items as sewing machines, radio speakers, and television sets. At that time, Yeong Jin was one of the island's three manufacturers of wooden furniture and supplied wooden cases to Taiwan Television Enterprise Ltd.

In 1971, the company began to concentrate on high-end furniture, working strenuously to elevate its corporate image. Then in 1978 it began developing laminated bentwood and other machines for making sophisticated wooden furniture, including laminated bentwood furniture, for export to Europe, Japan, and other high-end markets. Today, bentwood furniture remains one of the company's specialties.

Technological Edge

"Thanks to our skill in designing sophisticated production equipment, we are capable of turning out state-of-the-art wooden furniture that is beyond the technical capability of our rivals," says Steve Chiang, president of the company. Chiang is the second-generation owner of the company.

Yeong Jin can handle such complicated manufacturing processes as pressing, molding, and cutting. "Our expertise in complicated processing processes has helped us turn out original designs with precision-control of piece thickness," Chiang notes.

Innovation has been another guiding commitment of the company over its 50-year history. "My father always appreciated the importance of unique design in distinguishing our products from others'," Chiang explains. "This principle has become more important over the past decade as Taiwan is losing its production advantage to neighboring developing nations."

At present Yeong Jin exports half of its output, mainly to Japan and Europe, and handles most on an original-equipment manufacturer (OEM) basis. "Many of our foreign customers have been dealing with us for a few decades, which shows they deeply trust our ability to make high-end furniture."

Chiang says his company tries to design furniture that harmonizes people with their living space. "We believe furniture is not just a physical thing, but also a medium for coping with the environment of one's living space," says Chiang. "All of our furniture designs follow the five basic elements in nature: metal, wood, water, fire and earth," by which he means that Yeong Jin mixes and matches a variety of materials from wood and plastic to stainless steel and aluminum.

In order to keep its design edge, Yeong Jin invests heavily in the cultivation of a product development team grounded in both architecture and industrial design.

Moving Up, Not Out

Chiang says that most furniture manufacturers in Taiwan are limited by capital and therefore rely on a small-batch production mode. "Over the past several years, many domestic furniture makers have moved overseas to reduce production costs," explains Chiang. "Those who have stayed in Taiwan are struggling to develop self-designed furniture and enhance their production capability to meet the special design needs of their customers."

In 1993 Yeong Jin began selling its "Strauss" line of furniture through domestic wholesalers. Items in the series share a basic design motif of squared, upside-down U-shapes. In the 12 years since its launch, the company has also expanded from bentwood models to items made with metal, plastics, and solid wood.

Encouraged by the success of its Strauss line, Yeong Jin opened a flagship retail outlet in Taichung City, central Taiwan, in 2001, to sell its high-quality furniture. Chiang estimates demand for high-end home and business furniture in Taiwan is about NT$60 billion (US$1.9 billion at US$1:NT$31.3) a year.

The company plans to open another shop in Taipei in the foreseeable future.

Yeong Jin says it will expand its marketing and R&D capability in the next few years to boost the Strauss brand, both at home and overseas. "Most domestic furniture manufacturers are weak in marketing and R&D," Chiang says. "As a manufacturer focusing on designer furniture, over the past several years we have been elevating our R&D capability and will continue to do so in the future. I believe that only by concentrating on continuous R&D can domestic furniture manufacturers survive in the international marketplace."