Taiwan Today

Taiwan was the world’s largest umbrella manufacturer from the 1960s through the 1980s, supplying three-fourths of the umbrellas produced worldwide. At the time, hundreds of small companies on the island generated NT$12 billion (US$300 million at the exchange rate then) each year in export revenue. Although rising labor and land costs since the late 1980s have forced the labor-intensive manufacturing sector to move overseas, Taiwanese companies are still active in the industry, overseeing 30 percent of all global umbrella production.

T.Z. Wu entered the umbrella trade 48 years ago and has experienced all the changes the industry has undergone since then. Wu worked for 30 years for Fu Tai Umbrella Works Ltd., which was founded in 1953 as Taiwan’s first umbrella manufacturer and is still the world’s largest. Eighteen years ago, Wu decided to retire from his position in Fu Tai’s research department. At 58 years old, Wu thought that it was time for him to relax and enjoy life.

The industry, however, was not quite ready to leave him alone. Shortly after his retirement, totes, the world’s largest umbrella brand and part of the totes ISOTONER Corp., contacted Wu and asked him to manufacture umbrellas under its brand. Employees of totes flew to Taiwan and managed to persuade Wu to put off retirement. In 1993, Wu made a new start in the industry, founding Enson International Ltd. in order to manufacture high-end umbrellas for totes.

Yvonne Mao, Wu’s daughter-in-law and Enson’s brand manager, notes that totes wanted to work with her father-in-law because of his experience and ability to innovate, as he had invented many revolutionary products. The world’s first one-button automatically opening and closing umbrella, for example, was invented by Wu 20 years ago when he was working for Fu Tai. “Though he wanted to retire, my father-in-law was still full of passion and ideas about what he had been doing for decades,” Mao says. “I guess the offer from totes was kind of irresistible.”

When Enson was founded, it did not have its own production facility, which Mao says is not an uncommon practice in the trade. She explains that umbrella manufacturing is normally done by a chain of many small factories specializing in making specific parts—canopies, ribs, handles, rivets—while other small factories assemble them. It was not until two years after its establishment that Enson set up its own manufacturing facility in Huiyang, Guangdong province, mainland China, although the marketing department remains in its Taipei headquarters.

Huiyang has a lot of umbrella manufacturers and most of them have adopted the “chain factory” production model. This production model was perfect for a developing economy—such as Taiwan a few decades ago and mainland China today—since the investments for individual companies are much more affordable than setting up an operation for complete production. The production model also has disadvantages, however, including difficulties in quality-control, since there are many companies involved. To maintain the quality of its products, Enson therefore decided that it would directly perform as many of the steps in the manufacturing process as possible. Currently, about 80 percent of the process—building the structure, cutting and sewing the canvas, and preparing the springs and the ferrule at the umbrella’s tip—is done in-house by Enson.

Parts Plethora

Philip Wu, Mao’s husband and the Enson staffer who is responsible for taking foreign orders, explains that a typical umbrella is assembled from some 300 parts. While all of those parts are machine made, the assembly process is still done by hand, making umbrella manufacturing a labor-intensive industry. Currently, Enson has about 1,000 employees who turn out around 8 million umbrellas a year. In addition to totes and other companies, Enson also makes umbrellas for well-established brands such as the Burberry Group plc, as well as United Colors of Benetton and Sisley, two brands owned by the Benetton Group S.p.A.

Enson’s main product is the automatic opening and closing umbrella T.Z. Wu invented. Since the patent for his original design is owned by Fu Tai, his former employer, the senior Wu modified the structure when Enson was set up and filed for a new patent. According to Philip Wu, Enson’s manufacturing sophistication has enabled the company to gain its spot as the world’s largest manufacturer of automatically opening and closing umbrellas.

While Mao and Philip Wu are responsible for brand marketing and foreign orders, T.Z. Wu backs them up by leading the company’s research and design team, which employs a dozen staffers. “He just loves experimenting with different umbrella structures and materials,” Mao says of her father-in-law. “The structure of an umbrella is not rocket science, but small improvements here and there can always be made to better the product.” Umbrellas that fold as many as three to five times, for example, are a big improvement over the typical two-fold design of the past, making them more compact and portable, and T.Z. Wu has contributed to the trend by coming up with his own multi-folding designs.

In addition to the structure, T.Z. Wu has also spent a lot of time experimenting with different materials for umbrellas. Umbrella frames, for example, used to be made mostly of steel or aluminum, which are susceptible to corrosion. The long-time designer produces frames from titanium, making them sturdy in strong winds and resistant to chemical erosion and rust. He has also developed frames from light—but sturdy and pliable—glass fiber, which enables umbrellas to easily bounce back into shape if strong gusts blow them inside out. The elder Wu has also created canopies from materials that enhance both water repellency and protection from the sun’s ultraviolet rays.

All the improvements in materials and structural designs were arrived at through a prolonged process of trial and error. To date, T.Z. Wu has applied for more than 100 umbrella-related patents. Some of those original patents can be found in the automatically opening and closing umbrella, but there is also a flat, compact umbrella that can be stowed in a jacket pocket, a feather-light, foldable mini-umbrella weighing only 160 grams and a wind-resistant, dual layer umbrella with vents in the top layer to reduce wind pressure during storms.

Since starting Enson, Wu has won a gold medal at the Geneva International Invention Exhibition for the design of his modified automatic umbrella, which has been a longtime bestseller. Another design that has been very popular in the market is an umbrella with an LED light at the bottom of the handle, enabling it to double as a flashlight bright enough to help people read their watches or find a keyhole in the dark. The design was chosen by totes as one of its main products for the 2006 Christmas sales season. The company sold 1 million units in the first year and between 400,000 to 500,000 units in each year since.

After about a decade of manufacturing totes umbrellas for the North American and European markets, Enson was asked by totes to design new products for and serve as the brand’s sole distributor in the Asian markets of Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. Mao notes that people from different regions have different preferences in umbrellas. Consumers in Western markets, for example, prefer their umbrellas in plain dark colors, she says, while Korean women like bright colors with bold designs and the Japanese are fond of lighter colors with more elegant designs. Taiwanese customers, meanwhile, have a penchant for products suggestive of a theme or image, such as the countryside, fashionable ladies or cute animals. “To design products for a specific market, you need to know what the market likes,” Mao says.

Partly to get a better handle on consumer preferences, Enson entered the retail market by opening its first RainStory shop in Seoul in 2004. It was a little surprising to Mao when the Seoul shop, which sells totes umbrellas designed by Enson, became so popular that it experienced sales of up to US$5,000 worth of umbrellas in a single day. Mao explains that the high sales volume is due to the fact that most Korean women have many umbrellas and select the design that best matches their outfit. “People choose different earrings, watches or handbags that go well with what they wear,” she says. “An umbrella is one of the ‘accessories’ that should also go well with the way one dresses.”

Fashion Accessory

The situation RainStory found when it began to look into the market in Taiwan, however, was not quite the same. “Few Taiwanese women considered an umbrella an accessory like earrings,” Mao says. “They used the same umbrella whatever they wore.” Therefore, cost and effectiveness were the only considerations for purchasing an umbrella for most Taiwanese consumers, who did not see a need to spend more on the aesthetics of a tool for rainy days.

There are also cultural and linguistic differences in Taiwan that prevent many umbrellas from being given as gifts, despite the fact that umbrellas are purchased in many places around the world for that purpose. The LED umbrellas Enson designed for totes, for example, were targeted primarily at Christmas gift shoppers when they first came out. The concept, however, did not translate well in the home market. Not only is Christmas not celebrated that widely in Taiwan, but the Mandarin word for umbrella, san, also has the same pronunciation as the word for separation, which precludes umbrellas from ever being considered a proper present.

Although they were aware that higher-end umbrellas had not sold well in Taiwan in the past, Enson and RainStory saw an opportunity, believing the domestic market had good potential provided that consumers could be persuaded that the previously neglected accessory could be fashionable. To cultivate the local market, RainStory opened its first shop in Taiwan shortly after opening its Seoul outlet in 2004. Housed in a Taipei department store, the new store was also the island’s first “specialty” retailer devoted entirely to selling raingear. Mao notes that buying an umbrella used to be a three-minute affair that involved picking one from the few options available, trying it out and dropping the money on the counter. “At RainStory, we usually have hundreds of choices,” she says. “We want to provide a place where people can take their time, learn something about the designs and find out what they really like.”

Enson and RainStory have discovered, however, that promoting the umbrella as a fashion accessory presents a new set of challenges. To keep up with fast-changing fashion trends and provide plenty of choices for people with different preferences, Enson studies the events and accomplishments of fashion weeks in Europe and North America for popular fashion elements, then includes those elements in its umbrella designs. In the past two years, for example, leopard prints and purple hues have been in vogue, and the company has reflected both trends in its canopy designs. Other fashion elements—bodices and sparkling rhinestones, for example—are more perennial, of course, and Enson continues to work those favorites into its designs. The company also uses illustrations by European artists on its canopies, as well as offers limited-edition umbrellas for special occasions like Valentine’s Day.

Obviously, most of the company’s seasonal products target urban women, who are known for being fashion-conscious. In fact, many members of that consumer group have warmed to the fashion umbrella trend. One loyal customer, according to Mao, has collected 98 of RainStory’s thousands of umbrella designs.

Although it offers them a smaller variety to choose from, RainStory has not forgotten other customer groups. The company, for example, has obtained authorization to use images of cartoon figures such as Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and Hello Kitty on its children’s umbrellas, while an oversized automatic umbrella designed for male customers has become one of this season’s bestsellers.

Including a flagship shop that opened in June 2010 in Taipei, RainStory now has 16 outlets around Taiwan that together sell more than 240,000 umbrellas annually. In addition to umbrellas, RainStory has expanded its product lines to include shower caps and handbags that are made from the same material as its umbrellas, and has also branched out into other weather-related merchandise such as raincoats and rain boots, as well as items like indoor slippers, gloves and socks.

At about the same time RainStory was setting up its Seoul retail outlet in 2004, Enson also started to develop its own brand-name umbrellas. “Making our own products helps keep all the production lines busy,” says Mao, who explains that different umbrellas have different structures and thus are made on different production lines. So while some production lines are occupied with making umbrellas under the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and original design manufacturer (ODM) models, other empty lines can make Enson’s own-branded umbrellas to keep the factory productive. Another reason the company decided to develop the Enson line was to produce small quantities of umbrellas under its own brand to test new designs in the market.

Currently, Enson-branded umbrellas and the RainStory shops generate about 15 percent of the company’s revenue, while the rest still comes from OEM and ODM orders. “Building a brand name is certainly an ambition for any OEM or ODM manufacturer,” says Mao, who hopes Enson’s step-by-step progress will make the umbrella a stylish symbol of femininity, as well as an inspiration for Taiwan’s emerging brand-name industries. Rain or shine, Enson will keep working to ensure that its rain story continues.

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