Taiwan Today

The Lin brothers have breathed new life into their family’s four-generation cleansing product business.

On a wall of the building at the entrance of Sansia Old Street in Taipei County there is a large poster of an old woman doing laundry along the bank of Sansia Creek. The scene by the river was once a common sight in many of Taiwan’s rural areas. For several generations of those living in Sansia, however, the chore was made easier by using a laundry soap manufactured by “the factory on the little hill,” Mei Sheng Tang Chemical Co. Besides the fact that the soap could be conveniently purchased, it was also more gentle to the skin than other laundry soaps on the market, and it was easy to retrieve if dropped in the water since it floated.

Whether a bar of soap floats or irritates sensitive skin is basically a result of the amount of lye it contains. Lin Jyun-cheng, Mei Sheng Tang’s general manager, explains that lye is necessary in order for the soap to set. Decreasing the amount in the final product, however, requires it to be extracted little by little during manufacturing, rather than by simply using less in the beginning. “Making soap is simply a process of mixing the correct proportions of water, vegetable or animal fats and lye. And extracting the lye isn’t exactly rocket science,” he says. Removing more lye also makes soap less dense, enabling it to float. “It’s a matter of what quality of soap you want to make and how much extra work you want to put into it,” Lin says. In fact, most manufacturers do not seem to think the investment justifiable. To the best of Lin’s knowledge, the only other soap that can float is the American brand Ivory.

The “factory on the hill,” as the townspeople like to call it, was founded by Lin Jyun-cheng’s grandfather Lin Yi-cai and granduncle Lin Deng-sian in 1957 in Taipei County’s Banciao City, then relocated to Sansia in 1981. Lin Yi-cai, who is now 80, started learning to make soap some 10 years before Mei Sheng Tang was set up. He began learning the trade during his late twenties, which was somewhat unusual, but his reason was quite simple. “I suffered from dermatitis on my hands,” he says. “I probably tried all the brands of soap on the market and couldn’t find anything I could comfortably use. I just wanted to see if a non-irritating soap could be made.” While learning the basics of soap making at a soap factory, he developed a system for extracting lye and went on to start his own operation with his younger brother.

The Science of Soap

Lin Jyun-cheng explains that there are two methods of making soap. The cold process method mixes fats, lye and water and leaves it to naturally saponify, or convert into soap, which takes about 30 to 40 days. This method does not need a lot of equipment and can be done easily at home, but it is more difficult to reach a uniform quality since factors such as temperature and humidity can cause unforeseen changes during the long saponification process. Commercial production, on the other hand, uses the hot process method, shortening the production time to about a week by boiling the mixture of fats, lye and water to accelerate saponification.

When the Lin brothers started their operation, soap making was a trade with a lot of competitors--there were more than 100 factories in the Taipei area alone, according to Lin Jyun-cheng. But because it quickly earned a reputation for being the most gentle soap on the market, the Fuletuo brand of soap made by Mei Sheng Tang became very popular. And much to the brothers’ surprise, the “side effect” of being able to float made Fuletuo a hit with the military.

“Soldiers probably couldn’t care less about the condition of their skin,” Lin Jyun-cheng says. “But since they had to bathe using basins and by sharing water from large tanks in a communal bathroom, a bar of floating soap could obviously save a lot of trouble if it were dropped into the water tank.” At its production peak in the 1970s, Mei Sheng Tang produced 60,000 bars of soap a month, keeping Lin Yi-cai, Lin Deng-sian and other family members busy all year.

Although there are not a lot of industrial secrets when it comes to making soap, each manufacturer does employ a few small tricks here and there to distinguish its products. For Mei Sheng Tang, one trick is the amount of lye that is extracted. The good thing about a small family business is that these tricks are less likely to be leaked to other manufacturers. The bad thing is that if the market declines, all of the family members suffer. Unfortunately, Mei Sheng Tang was hit by the popularity of body shampoo in the early 1980s. The business shrank to a few small production runs of laundry soap for old customers, and the Fuletuo body soap went completely out of production. Lacking skills other than making soap, most of the family members experienced financial difficulties. Unable to afford tuition, Lin Jyun-cheng and his elder brother Lin You-an both had to drop out of university after their freshman year.

After leaving school, You-an opened a teashop in Sansia and Jyun-cheng, who graduated from the film department of a vocational high school, found a job producing tourism programs for local television channels. While both enjoyed their jobs, You-an was able to spend much more time with the family than his younger brother, whose work forced him to travel often. You-an worried that some of his family members had nothing to do and that the machines Mei Sheng Tang used to make soap--many of them designed by his grandfather--were being left to rust.

Meanwhile, although body shampoo was still dominating the market, handmade soap with natural ingredients was gaining popularity as environmental and health awareness grew in Taiwan. By the early 2000s, Lin You-an began to wonder if the family business could be revived. After thinking things over and discussing his ideas with the family, he came up with the concept of mixing locally grown green tea into the soap.

He explains that the addition of green tea, which contains carbolic acids, antioxidants and other ingredients that, he says, help control oiliness and prevent the signs of aging, provided a good way to “advance” the family’s mild soap. It also fit in well with his teashop, and in fact, the bars of green tea soap were initially made to serve as gifts for teashop customers, although the new product did not take too long to establish a place in the soap market. Through the teashop and a few local traditional market vendors, sales climbed to 6,000 bars a month.

It was not big business, but it was enough to at least occupy some of the family members and prevent the machines from deteriorating. “Machines and people are the same in that they rust quickly if you leave them there doing nothing,” Lin You-an says. “I just wanted to find them something to do.”

But while other family members were upbeat about having the factory up and running again, Lin Jyun-cheng wanted to keep his own career. “Most of my family, starting from my grandpa and granduncle, have devoted all their life to soap making. They managed to raise their families by working at the only trade they know,” he says. “I respect that, but I had no intention of spending the rest of my life stirring a pot and cutting soap.”

Lin Jyun-cheng’ main interests were always music and the performing arts. He won a televised joke-telling competition and plays saxophone well enough to have gained enrollment in a university music department. “Producing tourism programs doesn’t exactly match those abilities, but it was at least part of show business and the closest I could get,” he says. The younger Lin, however, was finally persuaded by his brother, You-an, to take on the responsibility of marketing the family business’ products. “He told me that if I became a famous producer or something, it would mean my own success, but if I helped make Mei Sheng Tang famous, it would mean the success of the entire family,” Lin Jyun-cheng says. “He had a good point there.”

Getting the Word Out

Lin Jyun-cheng realizes there are marketing approaches that are more efficient than relying on word of mouth. To gain publicity, he convinced the family’s older generations to allow the media to visit their factory. The increased exposure seems to have paid off, judging from the number of customers at the Mei Sheng Tang shop he operates on Sansia Old Street. The shop, which opened in February 2007 during the Chinese New Year vacation, is always crowded, even on weekdays. Building on its success, Lin Jyun-cheng set up a shop at a Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department Store in and another at the National Center for Traditional Arts in Yilan. He also opened an online store, which now brings in about a quarter of Mei Sheng Tang’s revenue.

As Lin Jyun-cheng works to rebuild the market for the family’s soap, Lin You-an has been busy developing new products by adding natural ingredients to the original recipe, which is based on olive oil and coconut oil. Research has proven all the ingredients are healthy, he says, and the new soap products go through “human testing” on the extended Lin family before reaching the market. So far, about a dozen types of soap have been developed. Depending on the ingredients, a 100-gram bar of soap costs between NT$120 and $280 (US$4 and $9). The bestsellers are the green tea soap and original laundry soap, while fresh citrus soap, pearl and sweet osmanthus soap, and “imperial” soap, which draws its ingredients from different flowers, are also selling well. The company’s hand soap--cut into one-inch ( 2.5 cm) cubes that are threaded onto a piece of string and can be conveniently hung near a sink--has proven to be another popular new item.

With plenty of innovative products and an up-to-date marketing strategy, the 50-year-old business is now full of energy. Including grandfather Lin Yi-cai, a dozen family members spanning three generations work fulltime in the company’s shops and factory. When things get particularly busy, another 20 from the fourth generation--ranging from kindergarten kids to university students--pitch in. On average, Mei Sheng Tang now makes and sells 20,000 bars of soaps a month. In terms of production, there is still a gap between the quantity of soap the factory currently turns out and that of 30 years ago, when the company was at its peak. But the important thing for the Lins is that the family business has found a niche and every member enjoys what they are doing.

Even Lin Jyun-cheng, who was once reluctant to return to the family business, has begun to enjoy it by mixing his penchant for the performing arts into his work. On weekends and holidays, he puts on Japanese wooden clogs and an old-time street vendor’s outfit, shoulders a pole with bamboo containers on each end filled with Mei Sheng Tang soap, rings a bell and begins selling the company’s products along Sansia Old Street. Given the relatively small capacity of the containers on the pole, Lin Jyun-cheng does not appear to be carrying a great deal. But his burden is much heavier than it would seem, because the young man is actually shouldering the hopes of a four-generation family business.

Write to Jim Hwang at jim@mail.gio.gov.tw