Why are Taiwanese attracted to New York City and its immediate environs? Friends and relatives already living there. Excellent educational and employment opportunities. And a good environment for launching small businesses.
Gone are the days when local laws restricted Chinese entrepreneurs to running businesses such as laundries and restaurants. Today Taiwanese in the New York metropolitan area manufacture baseball caps and umbrellas. They own real estate agencies, banks, and bookstores. True, some still open laundries or restaurants, but many more begin businesses they expect will earn windfall profits or help them pursue their personal interests. Frequently a new immigrant will start one business in hopes trading up to a larger, more glamorous, or more profitable one. "Many Chinese run candy stores often as stepping stones to capitalize larger businesses," finds Hsiang-shui Chen, author of Chinatown No More, a book on the Chinese in the Flushing area of New York City.
The majority of Taiwanese investments on the East Coast are concentrated in trade, wholesale, banking, and other services. In the New York metropolitan area, there are more than eighty companies involved in computers and associated equipment, according to the latest Directory of Taiwan Companies in North America . After computers, jewelry draws the highest number of Taiwanese business owners.
These small business owners bear little resemblance to earlier waves of impoverished Chinese immigrants. Taiwanese entrepreneurs often boast advanced degrees. They count savings in the bank. Unlike the first wave of Chinese newcomers--an exclusively male group fleeing from Southeast China in the late nineteenth century--men, women, even whole families now move to the United States. Rather than viewing their US stint as temporary, Chinese build new lives in America.
Taiwanese entrepreneurs Lucia and Tsing-fang (T.F.) Chen started their first US venture in 1976. T.F., who today enjoys international acclaim for his "neo-iconography" painting style, and whose art appears in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, knew nothing about business. Nor did his wife. But, dismayed with the performance of dealers whom they had appointed to sell T.F.'s work, the couple decided to strike out on their own. "The dealers never sold anything. We never got any money. Sometimes we didn't even get our art back," recalls T.F., who earned a Ph.D. in art history from the Sorbonne.
To embark on her new role as art dealer, Lucia began inviting friends and neighbors to their home in Silver Springs, Maryland (a Washington suburb) to view T.F.'s paintings. His canvases combine a range of styles, for example, a Japanese kabuki dancer on one side and a Picasso cubist musician strumming a mandolin on the other. Lucia also started taking her husband's works to exhibit at art shows around the United States and at international art centers. Meanwhile, T.F. stayed home with the couple's two small children and painted constantly. "We had very little money, but lots of art to sell," he recalls.
Three years into the business, the Chens recognized they needed to move to a cosmopolitan center in order to capture the sophisticated and affluent art-buying audience that would appreciate T.F.'s work. By 1980, the couple managed to cobble together $20,000 from friends and family for a down payment on a $120,000 townhouse in the trendy Georgetown section of Washington. On the first floor of their Wisconsin Avenue home they opened Gallery New World to showcase T.F's work.
To find new customers, Lucia turned to methods unheard of in the conservative art business. She went through the yellow pages of the local phone book and began sending invitations for special previews to doctors, lawyers, and other well -to-do professionals she deemed part of their target audience. Sales picked up. Lucia experimented with different marketing strategies. Instead of just selling T.F.'s canvases, she offered limited edition prints for $90 (which today she says are worth $2,000). Lucia also licensed her husband's images to gift-makers who put them on T-shirts, coffee mugs, and calendars. (In 1996, fees from licenses brought in close to $50,000.)
By 1984 the Chens had moved to New York. The couple found a loft in Soho, then becoming a fashionable location for galleries and art dealers, and inaugurated Lucia Gallery. Soon, T.F. began gaining attention from reviewers. In 1986, CNN ran a feature on T.F. and his "Spirit of Liberty" series. "At that point my art took off--I was getting calls from major dealers who wanted to carry me," he says. Indeed, annual sales for that year hit $500,000.
In 1987 the couple opened their first gallery in Taipei, and a second in 1995. In New York they purchased a six-floor townhouse a few blocks from their first gallery and, in 1996, inaugurated the New World Art Center. Situated on Lafayette Street between Prince and Spring, where even the graffiti looks artistic, the New World Art Center draws a regular clientele as well as walk-ins, including art dealers, well-dressed tourists, and the occasional art student. The top of its six 3,500 square foot floors serves as T.F.'s studio. It showcases his latest work, a series of 100 paintings of Princess Diana. In one, T.F. painted an image of the late Princess, whom he calls the twentieth century's last icon, from a Paris Match magazine photo, and set her portrait against a Matisse background. A cafe sits on the second floor, and T.F.'s massive earlier works line the walls of the first floor. The New World Art Center also exhibits other artists, as well as holding art classes, lectures, auctions, and art galas.
Despite their success, the Chens continue to work long hours. Lucia, 50, recently returned from an art fair in Taipei and her first trip to a painting show in Guangzhou, where she investigated the styles and skills of young mainland Chinese artists. T.F., 61, who wrote his dissertation on the relationship between Eastern and Western art and how they could combine to form a universal culture, still wakes as early as 2:30 in the morning to paint until 6:00 or 7:00 A.M., when he stops to read or write. Today he is driven more by the pursuit of world peace than financial gain. "We need a culture based on love instead of power, humanism instead of materialism--not just hardware and software, but soulware," he says.
The Chen's approach to business is instructive. Many Taiwanese entrepreneurs rely on their own hard work or that of siblings and other family members to help run their businesses. Very often a husband and wife team works twelve-hour days, seven days a week, in hopes of turning a profit. This helps to keep costs low, and to eliminate problems associated with outside employees, such as theft, but it can prove exhausting.
Galinda Wang, for instance, turned to her brother for help when she launched her clothing design firm, La Chine Classic, Inc., from her garage in New Jersey. She knew a good deal about designing a new evening gown, but nothing about bookkeeping, so she persuaded her brother to handle that task. She also talked an uncle in Taiwan into making up her first dresses. Even after Wang moved La Chine's offices to Manhattan, became known in haute couture circles, and was selling to more than 3,000 stores across the nation, she kept her brother on as bookkeeper.
Taiwanese stress saving money, and all but a few immigrants come to the United States with significant assets. Once settled, they build reserves by scrimping on luxuries, even necessities. Still, starting a business can cost as much as $100,000. When they don't have enough, some Chinese entrepreneurs turn to a popular Taiwanese source: rotating credit associations. Similar to credit unions, these are operated by labor unions, employee clubs, and other groups to provide credit to a different member on a regular basis. Members in turn contribute from $100 to several thousand dollars annually to the associations, which can accumulate up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
When Paul Shu eventually decided to shift careers and go the entrepreneurial route, he also embraced long hours and relied on family support. In 1974, Shu left Taipei to study chemistry at the University of Michigan, where he earned a Ph.D. After completing post-doctoral work at Johns Hopkins University, he spent a total of seventeen years as a research scientist at 3M corporation and Mobil. During that time, his work led to seventy-two patents. "Mobil announced it was shutting down our location, and the choice was retirement or moving elsewhere," Shu says. "I was frustrated with its corporate politics, so I decided to take the package." After retiring in 1995, he pooled his retirement pension and some savings for a total of roughly $100,000 in order to launch Holsome, a tea and herbal medicine shop near the Big Apple.
In April 1996, Holsome opened on Nassau Street, the main thoroughfare of historic Princeton, New Jersey. Shu recognized the risks in becoming an entrepreneur--giving up a secure salary, health care, and limited work hours--but he liked the idea of being his own boss. "My grandfathers on both sides of the family were traditional medicine doctors in China," he explains. "I have always been interested in health issues, but didn't want to open just another health food store."
Shu's advice is as important as the roots, barks, and brews he dispenses. Customers come to Holsome to talk with him about rashes and weight loss, fertility and arthritis. "No health food or vitamin shop knows their products like I know mine," points out 56-year-old Shu, who looks not a day over 40. Holsome is open every day, and he typically works up to 60 hours a week, serving customers from 9:30 A.M. until 5:30 P.M., when his wife, who holds a full-time job in budget analysis at a nearby non-profit organization, takes over. She closes the shop around 8:00 every night. On Sunday the couple finds a few hours to relax: Holsome doesn't open until 11:00 A.M. and closes at 6:00 in evening. Sometimes the couple's four children help out. For instance, Shu's youngest daughter, Gail, assisted customers over her recent winter holiday from Johns Hopkins University, where she is enrolled in the premed program.
Like a conscientious pharmacist or medical doctor, Shu listens carefully to each customer's complaint before offering a suggestion. "As an entrepreneur, you get appraisals from customers instantly--you know right away whether or not they like a product. In a corporation you often have to wait until your annual appraisal, which is usually disappointing," he points out. Although the store always seems to have customers, eighteen months since opening Holsome the Shus say they are not yet earning profits. They have no direct competition, but a vitamin store down the street draws on their customer base.
Shu admits that he made many mistakes while learning the business in his first year. His experience as a research scientist failed to teach him the skills required to run a small business: he knew very little about bookkeeping, public relations, or marketing. At first, he wasted money running advertisements for Holsome in newspapers, before realizing they did not bring in new customers. Now he is setting up a database marketing program on his computer, which he expects will improve business. He has collected at least 400 customer listings, with their product needs, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, and other key information. Soon he plans to launch a newsletter that he will send to customers via e-mail. Shu also hosts regular lectures by experts in traditional Chinese medicine and herbal teas to draw customers. "It's a lot of work," he says, "but my daughters have grown up. I need a baby."
Weld Royal, a freelance writer based in New York, has written for Christian Science Monitor Radio, The New York Times, and Money magazine.
Copyright 1998 by Weld Royal.