Winner Machine: A SME success story

Most businesses in Taiwan are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Therefore, it is assumed that financial general conditions influence the investment and innovation behavior of companies and vice versa. They are perceived to be incapable of competing with large enterprises. However, there is evidence that Taiwanese SMEs are playing a decisive role in technology assimilation as well as in the implementation of further technological advancements because of their entrepreneurial characteristics.

The success of SMEs in Taiwan has been well acknowledged. They have played a vital role in promoting rapid growth during Taiwan's economic transition. The scale, scope, organisation, and management of SMEs have changed over time in response to evolving markets, technologies, and economic conditions.

Winner Machine is a classic example of an SME who has played a key role in Taiwan's rapid economic development. Ms. Karen Ho, Marketing and Sales Manager shared with INTERNATIONAL METALWORKING NEWS FOR ASIA (IMNA) about finding its own specific market(s). She believes in cultivating many markets at the same time, and see which one works.

IMNA: How did you optimise trade in 2015?

Ho: We have been cultivating our brand in the ASEAN market for about three years since 2012. You never know what is going to happen next, so you better put your eggs in different baskets. At first, Thailand market was doing well in 2012, after a year it went down due to many uncontrollable factors. In 2013, the Indonesian market has given us more sales leads. Our company’s machine sales amount was still in two digits, which means we still sold machine tools in small scale.

In ASEAN, our operation grows from meagre sales orders to quantitative amount of orders due to our wide-network policy. Right now, we are in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Business cycle is “boom and bust” as always, we cannot change it but we can adjust our strategies. As I mentioned, most of our ASEAN orders came from Indonesia in 2013, but later this market went down as what happen in Thailand, then our business order shifted to Malaysia. Now Malaysia is very good for us, but we still are working very hard in all these four main ASEAN markets. In addition, we are also looking at Myanmar as a potential market in the future.

IMNA: What is the industry applications of your machine tool products?

Ho: Our machine tools are mostly for motorcycle and automotive industries. Our VMC-750, VMC-1000, and VMC-1300 are best sellers in the ASEAN market, not because of its prices, but the customisation services it offers. In 2015, after several trials, we were able to develop our specific application niche together that brought huge orders. Compared with 2014, our business in the ASEAN market grew for about 20%.

Winner Machine is a typical SME. We do not have great resources in the pocket to spend. Every penny we spend, we do with caution. Now we have found out how to customise our machines for motorcycle and automotive manufacturers according to their specific production lines.

Accordingly, I can say that the machine performance itself is not our main concern. I say so not because we do not care about it. I say so because in truth many of our competitors can produce machines whose performance are similar to ours, because we are after all a SMEs, so actually machine products are basically the same regarding its ordinary functions.

We are more concerned of the potentiality of our service. Due to this fact, Winner Machine’s R&D team focuses on what the local markets need. We listen to our customers’ feedback and then customise our models to fit into their specific productions lines. In short, we solve their problem by our engineering competence rather than our machines. This is our competitiveness.

IMNA: How do you promote your brand in ASEAN?

Ho: We pour our resources on our local agents. They can help us to localise. Word of mouth marketing is our primary strategy in ASEAN. With limited budget, we cannot participate in all the trade fairs and post our ads on all the media publishing. This is good but not possible for us to do. We build our brand based on word of mouth marketing because it is the feasible way for us.

In the future, we will keep our steps in R&D coordination with local users, together with our dealers, in order to expand our business in the ASEAN market. Winner Machine will deliver customised solutions for local manufacturers as we always do.