Taiwan Today

Taiwanese shoppers with an eye for affordable foreign fashion have found plenty to get excited about in recent years. In October 2010, they stormed the newly opened Taipei flagship store belonging to UNIQLO Co. Ltd., the parent company of a popular Japanese brand with the same name that focuses on mid-priced casual wear. One year later, local fashionistas were busy checking out clothing bearing the ZARA brand when the retailer opened its first store in the same neighborhood as the UNIQLO flagship store. Made by Spain’s Inditex Group, ZARA’s garments also focus on the moderately priced but fashionable market niche. Rumors have also circulated for a few years that Hennes & Mauritz AB, the Swedish company behind the H&M brand of everyday clothing, is preparing to open its first store in Taipei, although H&M has thus far denied making concrete plans to do so.

The introduction of international mid-priced fashion brands has put great pressure on Taiwanese clothing companies, says Alexander Wu (吳東澤), head designer for men’s wear at Shiatzy International Co. Ltd., the Taiwan-based company behind the famous Shiatzy Chen label. “International brands have an appeal in Taiwan,” he says. “The fierce competiveness of those brands comes from their ability to launch medium-priced products at a high frequency. And they reduce costs by purchasing materials in large amounts from global suppliers. That means local designers have to develop highly distinctive name brands to survive.”

Intense Competition

Kuo Yun-chin (郭韻琴) is the executive director of the Taiwan Textile Federation’s (TTF) Design Center. The TTF is funded by both the government and the private sector. Despite the intense competition created by the arrival of overseas retailers such as UNIQLO and ZARA, Kuo still believes that local brands can compete. “Many express fear about big foreign brands entering the Taiwan market, but if everyone buys their products, it’ll be like everyone is wearing a uniform and people will lose their individuality,” she says.

Some Taiwanese clothing companies are thriving in the increasingly crowded market. Mego Co. Ltd., for example, launched its Lativ brand of reasonably priced clothing in 2007. In 2011, Lativ, which sells exclusively online, generated revenue of NT$4 billion (US$133 million).

For actual production of garments, Lativ relies on Makalot Industrial Co., which was founded in Taiwan in 1990 and has become one of the country’s largest garment makers. Makalot generates most of its revenue as a contract manufacturer, but began looking into establishing its own brands about seven years ago. The company has yet to do so, but Frank Chou (周理平), Makalot’s chief executive officer, remains determined. “We’ve never given up trying to develop in this direction,” he says.

There is also the encouraging success of established Taiwanese designers in the high-end fashion world who have built a solid overseas presence. Sophie Hong (洪麗芬), for example, started a boutique bearing her name near the historic Palais Royal building in Paris in 2010 after years of participating in shows in the world capital of fashion. Chen Shao-yen (陳劭彥), who once designed outfits for the Icelandic singer Bjork, has presented his designs five times as part of London Fashion Week since he moved to that city in 2003. In mainland China, Taiwanese designer Gioia Pan (潘怡良), one of the award winners in the category of women’s wear during China Fashion Week in Beijing in 2007 and 2011, has since opened a boutique in the mainland Chinese capital.

In terms of international presence, however, Shiatzy Chen remains Taiwan’s most recognizable fashion brand. Run by design director and co-founder Wang Chen Tsai-hsia (王陳彩霞), the company opened in 1978 and has since gained a worldwide reputation for its unique embroidery as well as Chinese aesthetics. Shiatzy Chen became a formal member of the Fédération Française de la Couture in 2010 and remains the only brand created by an ethnic Chinese designer to have joined the prestigious fashion organization. Shiatzy Chen operates 38 stores in Taiwan; 20 in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau; and one each in Paris, Zurich and Kuala Lumpur.

To encourage the emergence of more firms like Shiatzy Chen, in May 2011 the TTF Design Center began operating the Fashion Institute of Taipei (FIT) in Taipei’s Wanhua District. FIT is a clothing design hub commissioned by the Industrial Development Bureau (IDB), which operates under the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Hong Huei-song (洪輝嵩), deputy director of the IDB’s Consumer Goods and Chemical Industries Division, says FIT is an indicator of the government’s commitment to developing Taiwan’s fashion industry. The one-year-old hub was created in line with a 2010 central government policy that targets six emerging industries for further development, Hong Huei-song says. Fashion design falls under the cultural and creative industry, which is one of the targeted sectors. “The IDB hopes the Wanhua hub ultimately can become a mecca for fashion designers and a popular platform where designers can interact with prospective customers and other people in the fashion circle,” Hong Huei-song says.

After a strict screening process aimed at evaluating their design skills and commercial promise, five designers were selected to work at FIT on one-year, renewable contracts. “The working conditions are great. You also can get much more exposure working here,” says Andre Kao (高勝忠), 36, one of FIT’s current designers. Along with access to all of the hub’s facilities, Kao and the other FIT designers receive a monthly government grant.

FIT’s free-standing, three-story structure houses an individual working area for each designer, a showroom featuring regularly updated exhibits by Taiwanese designers and a multifunctional space for special exhibitions and fashion shows. In 2011, the layout of the building’s public spaces was honored with the Taiwan Interior Design Award, which is conferred by the Chinese Society of Interior Designers, a professional organization in Taiwan.

FIT’s functions include holding lectures and courses on fashion trends and serving as a venue for sales meetings in which retailers can view newly designed garments. Many of those buyers represent clothing shops and boutiques from as close as Wanhua itself, which is home to a major cluster of apparel retailers. According to Charlotte Chiang (江夏碧), design director of TTF’s Design Center, visitors from mainland China, Japan and the United States have all been quite impressed by the hub’s atmosphere and the multiple roles it plays. “Those from Shanghai said they planned to set up a similar center there,” she says.

In May 2011, the TTF set up the Design Atelier, a facility in which three pattern makers and five sewers endeavor to turn the ideas of FIT designers and other selected local designers into prototype garments. “We handle a large variety of clothing styles. The workers here all have to be experts in their fields,” says Apple Chiu (邱小蘋), who manages the workshop.

Producing and Selling

By early April this year, the TTF’s Apparel Pilot Workshop began turning out small production runs based on the prototype garments. While FIT’s designs are given priority, the workshop is also available to process external orders. Clothing produced for FIT is sold at the Wanhua hub.

The TTF has backed other long-running efforts to develop fashion design in Taiwan. The federation has organized the annual Taiwan Fashion Design Award for 26 years, for example, to encourage rising stars in the local fashion circle such as Kao, who received an award in 2009.

In 1997, the TTF launched the Taipei Innovative Textile Application Show (TITAS) to promote products ranging from fabrics to branded finished items. In 2006, the Taipei IN Style show was spun off to focus exclusively on finished garments, whereas TITAS now concentrates on upstream and midstream textile products. The shows are held at the same time at side-by-side venues in Taipei; this year’s events will run for three days in mid-October.

The TTF also organizes and partially funds overseas trips to introduce designers from Taiwan to international buyers. The project sent around 20 local brands to Hong Kong and Tokyo earlier this year, for example, and is planning to organize more such events in New York City and mainland China in September.

Government support can be crucial for designers who have an ambition to tap foreign markets. “It’s of great significance, allowing you to have an opportunity to explore fashion outside of Taiwan,” says Sophie Hong. In 1994, she participated in a government-organized trip in which 11 local designers displayed their works in Paris. After that she spent one-and-a-half years living and studying in the city on a scholarship jointly funded by the Republic of China and French governments.

In addition to her Paris boutique, Sophie Hong has long operated another in Taipei’s Da-an District. The label is known for its use of “mud silk,” a unique material produced in southern mainland China that is known for its breathability and ease of manipulation. Sophie Hong’s emphasis on comfort and use of materials such as mud silk have helped her become one of the few Taiwanese designers to gain a retail sales presence in the French capital today.

She says, however, that participating in government-backed opportunities to experience the international fashion scene is only one part of a designer’s education. “You have to broaden your life experience and interact with people from various circles,” she says. Her endeavors to branch out into other fields include running the French-language bookstore Le Pigeonnier in Taipei and designing wardrobes for theater productions.

While it is important for young designers to nurture creativity, they need to do so with an eye toward turning out clothes that people will actually wear. Chang Yi-ching (章以慶) is dean of the College of Design at Taipei’s Shih Chien University, which is known for its fashion design courses. Chang warns that if local designers do not spend enough time researching market trends, they can end up producing highly creative works that are commercial failures. “Those are artworks that should be displayed in a gallery. If we’re talking about industry, we need to see designers launching products that regular consumers find acceptable,” she says. “Not a few Taiwanese designers have won awards abroad, but we need to ask how marketable their works are.”

As seen in clothing produced by Shiatzy Chen and Sophie Hong, the ability of Taiwanese designers to tap the country’s rich cultural environment is a major source of strength. “They have Chinese and local traditions on the island to draw inspiration from,” Chang says. “The dramatic rise of mainland China in recent years has also caused the world to shift its attention to anything Chinese.” As for Taiwan’s local cultural influences, Andre Kao, for example, has found success by incorporating motifs from the country’s aboriginal peoples in his designs. Kao displayed such works during TTF-organized trips to Paris in September 2011 and Hong Kong early this year.

Although Taiwan’s comparatively high cost of labor has led virtually all of the country’s large garment makers to open factories overseas, production of high-end clothing is still done locally. Sophie Hong, for example, has always insisted on having items made in Taiwan by masters who have decades of experience in the trade. “It’s not easy to control costs and product quality if the production takes place abroad,” she says.

Jack Lee (李新智) is president of the Taipei-based Shirley House brand, which designs its own clothing and sells it via the Internet and television shopping channels. Currently, most of Shirley House’s clothes are made at Taiwanese-run factories in mainland China, but Lee is interested in the possibility of having the IDB’s new factory produce items for his company. “It’s inevitably more expensive to manufacture products in Taiwan,” he says, “but locally made products are more stable in quality. I think the higher costs [of local production] could be offset by the time and money I’d save by cutting down on the inspection trips I now have to make between Taiwan and mainland China.”

Aggressive Invasion

While what Shih Chien dean Chang Yi-ching calls “the aggressive invasion of foreign brands” poses a large threat to Taiwan’s brands, the relatively diminutive size of the domestic market leads to other challenges. “Clothing companies have a better chance of surviving in Japan, since even a small share of the domestic market there is much larger than Taiwan’s,” she says. Taiwan’s small market can also prevent designers from working more closely with local textile makers, which the TTF’s Kuo Yun-chin says are quite innovative, especially in the production of functional fabrics. “Manufacturers usually don’t produce any given fabric in small amounts,” Kuo observes, “but that changes once the designer receives enough orders to schedule a larger production run.” Taiwan’s textiles are internationally competitive, she adds, so it would be a pity if Taiwan’s fashion design sector failed to grow enough to take advantage of them.

Of course, expanding into mainland China would give Taiwan’s clothing companies access to a much larger market. To that end, Kuo says the TTF is working on a project that involves putting top-notch Taiwanese designers on mainland China-based shopping websites under a common brand and building actual showrooms in key cities there. It is not easy, however, for a brand or company to gain a foothold in mainland China. One reason for that is that country’s notorious copycats, which are always ready to pirate commercially successful products, Kuo says. Another deterrent is the sheer size of the country itself. “For now, Taiwan’s products still can be attractive to mainland Chinese,” she says. “But such a vast and populous place makes it very challenging to build your image by setting up physical shops.”

Shiatzy Chen designer Alexander Wu believes it could be too late for Taiwan’s clothing brands to explore mainland China. “Today the mainland market, which features more international brands than Taiwan’s, is already quite competitive,” he says, adding that mainland China’s creative designers are also catching up very quickly to their counterparts in Taiwan.

Shiatzy Chen built a relatively early presence in mainland China by opening its first store in Shanghai in 2003, but as newcomers do not share that advantage, they could be better off looking elsewhere, Wu says. “Taiwan’s designers shouldn’t necessarily focus on the mainland market,” he says. “They should look beyond that. In the past, they might have found it impossible to offer products in other markets around the world, but today the Internet can help them overcome that barrier.”

In March, FIT held a fashion show for prospective customers that featured clothing from Taiwanese designers and brands. The event attracted around 20 buyers including Kuo Wen-bin (郭文彬), who has long scouted for clothes in mainland China and South Korea for retailers based in Tainan, southern Taiwan. “It was so great that I could see so many well-designed clothes at one time in Taiwan,” he says of the FIT show. In fact, he was so impressed that he placed orders for 300 items at the show.

Kuo Wen-bin hedges his bets, however, by saying that the market’s response will ultimately govern his future purchases of FIT’s clothes, which in general are higher in price and quality than lines he has carried previously. “If the clothes sell well, I’ll probably only look for clothes [at FIT] in the future,” he says. Alexander Wu is also taking a wait-and-see approach. “It’s a good start,” he says of the FIT initiative. “Maybe the institute’s injection of new blood into the fashion design sector will give birth to another international brand. Hopefully this newest effort by the government will be sustained.” Thus, if the opinions of local experts are anything to go by, there is reason to be optimistic about the possibility for another Shiatzy Chen to emerge in Taiwan, but at least for now, such optimism should remain guarded.

Write to Oscar Chung at mhchung@mofa.gov.tw