Taiwan Today

A Taiwanese maker of children’s clothes has managed to maintain growth by constantly reinventing its business over the last four decades.

Sister: Wow! The wind is blowing hard. All the clothes are blowing away.
Clothes, clothes, where are you going?
All the clothes are blowing into that elephant-shaped building.
Brother, quick! Let’s see what they’re doing there!
Brother: Those clothes look very happy, as if they’re having a party.
Sister: Why are they having a party?
Brother: I know! It’s because these clothes were born here. Today is their birthday so they’ve come here to celebrate it. In fact, before their birth here, they had to go through a long journey. Look at the wool shaved off the sheep and cotton harvested from the fields. They’re delivered to the mill and then cleaned and spun into thread and woven into fabric. Sister, look! Those fabrics are flying toward the sky and passing through that colorful rainbow. Wow, now they’re dyed different colors. It’s wonderful!

So goes the opening dialogue from a 3-D animated film titled The Journey of a Piece of Clothing, which is shown in the theater of the textile tourism factory in Taoyuan County, northern Taiwan operat-
ed by Les Enphants Co. The cartoon illustrating the complicated processes of turning fiber into a finished clothing item captures the attention of a group of young visitors to the factory and makes a good start to their tour.

Les Enphants has been Tai-wan’s largest baby and children’s clothing company since it was founded in Taipei in 1971. Its elephant logo was chosen to suggest a mature and reliable enterprise that moves ahead with steady, solid strides. The name is a play on the words elephant and les enfants, which means children in French.

After viewing the film at the tourism factory, visitors are directed to another room that showcases the common types of fabrics used for making garments and various accessories, as well as the designers’ working process and the tools they use. There is also a play area where children can use interactive devices to design an item of clothing, and a fitting room with many outfits in a big closet for the young visitors to try on and wear while they take photos. From there, a staff member leads visitors through a hallway where windows open onto the company’s production line and explains every step in the manufacturing process. After that, the children can go to a classroom to try their hand at cutting patterns from fabric and creating an item of their own that they can take home.

Chen Cai-yin (陳采吟), director of Leader Kindergarten in Taoyuan County, organized a field trip to the factory for the school’s 8- to 12-year-old students in early October and says the tour is both educational and entertaining. “After touring the facility, the kids came to realize that making clothes takes the effort of many people working together. It’s not just things being made by machines as they thought before,” Chen says. “And as well as getting to know about different kinds of fabrics, the children gain hands-on experience designing and making clothing and accessories and they really enjoy that.”

Lan Xin-hua (藍欣華), a mother of two, says she found out about the textile tourism factory at a Les Enphants store. “[The factory] offers a range of exciting and educational activities in a comfortable and safe setting for children to play and learn in,” she says. “Kids just love DIY [do-it-yourself] projects to make their own stuff. I’m surprised to see that my 5-year-old boy can use the scissors so well and stay focused on what he’s making. We’d come back again!”

Similarly, Song Xin-jin (宋欣錦), who was at the factory with her two girls, says the facility’s clean and safe environment makes it a suitable place for young children. “The showroom is lovely and brightly decorated, and somehow has a dreamlike quality. It’s visually pleasant,” she says. “The different activities they design can spur children’s interest and creativity. We all have fun!”

Along with the children, parents and teachers visiting the factory recently was Chris Wang (王士銘), a research assistant at the Commerce Development Research Institute (CDRI) established under the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Wang made the trip together with several of his colleagues as part of a fact-finding tour researching successful marketing and business models. Wang says the CDRI, the first think tank in Taiwan dedicated to promoting the service industry, aims to help service providers upgrade their operations, thereby promoting the island’s economic growth. Wang says Les Enphants’ operational style is a good case study for CDRI, as the company has been able to expand both at home and abroad. It is hoped that by studying the firm’s overall operations and customer service in detail, the CDRI can pass on helpful information to other domestic service providers, he says.

According to Wang, what is special about Les Enphants is the breadth of its operations, as it is not only a designer and manufacturer, but also a distributor of several internationally renowned brands for children’s apparel, accessories, shoes, toys and everyday goods. In addition to its proprietary brands of les enphants, SCCORE, my nuno and nac nac, the company is the distributor or authorized manufacturer for prominent brands including OshKosh B’gosh, Nike Kids, and Disney Baby from the United States, Italy’s Armani Junior, France’s catimini, Germany’s Adidas Kids and Japan’s Combi.

Multiple Brands, More Customers

Les Enphants’ strategy of managing multiple brands with various fashion styles and pricing levels has helped the company enlarge the scope of its business, Wang says, by allowing it to cater to a wide range of customer groups. The firm also sells its products online and through directly operated stores, franchises, department stores and wholesale outlets. The development of manifold distribution channels increases the exposure of the brands and available products to potential customers, he adds.

Moreover, Les Enphants is devoted to consolidating its relationship with customers via a range of regular activities, thus building strong customer loyalty, the research assistant observes, adding that the newly established tourism factory, for instance, is another such effort. “Most companies offer their goods or services only at their sales outlets. But Les Enphants goes beyond that by establishing classes for mothers and organizing educational programs, as well as working with hospitals to provide nutrition tips for pregnant women,” Wang says. “Its textile tourism factory is very sophisticated in the design of both its [facilities and educational program] and appeals to customers and general tourists, all of which enhances its corporate and brand image.”

With an investment of some NT$30 million (US$1 million), the textile tourism factory was inaugurated in late April 2011. James Wang (王國城), CEO of Les Enphants, says nowadays children spend too much time on their own in front of a computer. He hopes the company’s tourism factory can provide a pleasant setting for parents and children to interact in and, moreover, for children to have the opportunity to make something with their hands. At the same time, the tourism factory, together with the classes for mothers and other activities such as sports events, fashion shows and charity events that his company organizes from time to time, helps foster a close relationship with customers, the CEO says.

Over the years, James Wang says, Les Enphants has built a comprehensive supply chain from product design and development, production and marketing to distribution and logistics, as well as improved its management know-how. This contributes to the firm’s sustained growth, along with its strategy to diversify its product lines through authorized brands and sales channels, such as through e-commerce, he adds.

While the CEO admits that Taiwan’s declining birthrate has drastically affected market demand for children’s apparel, it also means that many parents are willing to buy more expensive products for each child. This helps create higher sales value and offsets the decrease in demand to some extent.

As the company strives to produce not only stylish but also comfortable and high-quality clothes and shoes, James Wang says his design team visits Europe regularly to keep abreast of the latest fashion trends. In particular, Les Enphants designers include the use of high-tech fabrics, such as those with antibacterial properties, that can protect the wearer from ultraviolet rays, are able to wick away moisture and dry quickly, or are thermal and lightweight, he says. The company also places a premium on customer feedback through point of sale and customer relationship management systems installed at all of its retail stores. These practices enable the firm to track market trends and customer needs.

Overall, Les Enphants’ products target children from birth to 12 years old and its pricing strategy is geared toward the mid- to high-end segments. The company has around 6,000 employees including staff at 280 outlets in Taiwan, 1,800 in mainland China, 60 in Indonesia, 50 in Thailand and 18 in Singapore.

Taiwan’s leading baby and children’s products retailer generated NT$6.84 billion (US$216 million) in revenue in 2010, with sales in mainland China accounting for 65 percent of that amount and Taiwan sales 30 percent. Thanks to its increasing number of new products and store openings, the company projects its 2011 revenue to register a 20-percent increase.

The CEO says his company made an entry into the mainland Chinese market in 1993 and now has shops in more than 200 cities there. Its business in mainland China has increased 30 to 40 percent annually in recent years due to significant market demand given the country’s rising economic power and the fact that some 16 million babies are born there every year.

Mainland Logistics

To conduct effective inventory control and cope with its growing business across mainland China, Les Enphants invested US$7.62 million to set up a modern logistics center in the city of Taicang, Jiangsu province. The center was launched in March 2011. Looking ahead, the company plans to build similar facilities in Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou and Wuhan, as well as enhance its market presence by opening more shops in not only first- but also second- and third-tier mainland Chinese cities.

Meanwhile, James Wang empha-sizes that his company will remain “rooted” in Taiwan by maintaining a production line at the tourism factory and setting up more outlets throughout the island. Accordingly, Les Enphants opened its largest store, i-Baby Mall, in Taoyuan, northern Taiwan in July 2011. The outlet boasts one-stop shopping with nearly 20,000 items for mothers and children. If the mega-store proves successful, the company’s future expansion plans will include more such ventures, he says.

“I’m impressed by the wide variety of products on offer at this store. And they’re displayed in an orderly way in different categories so it’s easy for me to browse,” says Lu Mei-yan (呂美燕), a shopper at i-Baby Mall. “Plus, the store carries many brands and items at different pricing levels so I have plenty of options. It’s a pleasure to shop in such a spacious and bright environment!”

Lu describes herself as a loyal customer of Les Enphants, saying she feels the clothes and accessories sold at its stores are of good quality, nicely designed and reasonably priced. Moreover, the company allows customers to exchange the merchandise they have bought at any of its stores islandwide. “Les Enphants does offer very good, thoughtful customer services. The courses provided at its mother’s classes, for one, are very helpful to pregnant women,” she says. “I attended around 10 classes there before I gave birth to my first child and what I learned with regards to nutrition during pregnancy and how to deliver a baby, bathe a baby and breast-feed relieved my anxiety a lot before delivery.”

In its aggressive bid to expand sales at home and abroad, James Wang says his company has to tackle many challenges, which vary from one country to another. There is the considerable decrease in the number of newborns in Taiwan, for example, the problem of recruitment in mainland China and the hot, humid climate year ’round throughout Southeast Asia, which means the lack of dramatic seasonal variations in temperature. Hence, the company needs to consider local conditions and preferences and formulate different marketing strategies accordingly.

Still, it seems that over the years Les Enphants has developed a successful business model that has helped its business grow throughout Taiwan and overseas. “In the days ahead, we’ll continue to promote our brands, broaden product lines, cultivate sales channels and attend to customer needs to achieve our lofty goal of making our presence felt wherever there are children,” James Wang says. “By duplicating our Taiwan experience, we’re confident we’ll realize our ambition.”

Write to Kelly Her at kelly@mail.gio.gov.tw