Tsai Chi-jui (
But Tsai, the son of humble weavers, is rarely seen on the cover of a magazine or even in a business suit. An intensely private man, he kept a low profile yesterday even as one of his companies joined Hong Kong's blue-chip stock index.
Associates of the 65-year-old businessman say you would have a tough time picking him out in a crowd.
His main characteristics -- laughing eyes and a smile that reveals a golden tooth -- belie his strategic mind and clout from Beijing to Taipei, they say.
"If you run into him at work, you'd never think he's the boss," said a senior executive and 25-year veteran of Tsai's Pou Chen Corp (
Described by colleagues as an incurable optimist, Tsai heads the world's biggest manufacturer of branded shoes with a 16 percent global market share. His empire employs a quarter of a million people in factories spanning China, Indonesia, Vietnam and the US.
The family-run Pou Chen is the biggest supplier of sports shoes for the world's top five athletic brands -- Nike Inc, Reebok International Ltd, Adidas-Salomon AG, New Balance Athletic Shoe Inc and Asics Corp.
It also makes casual shoes for Timberland Co, Reebok unit Rockport Co Inc, privately owned Clarks of the United Kingdom and Jones Apparel Group Inc's Easy Spirit.
Like many Taiwanese businessmen who have quietly amassed fortunes by investing in low-cost China, Tsai hobnobs with political and business leaders on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, helping to turn the greater China region into the world's most well-oiled export machine.
It's an industry that has had its share of controversy -- especially after Tsai's Pou Chen got bad press in 1997 over alleged poor working conditions. When a supervisor at its Vietnam plant, which made shoes for Nike, was sentenced to six months jail for physically abusing workers, critics slammed Nike and its contract manufacturers. Pou Chen pledged to do better.
Tsai's empire is once again back into the limelight as his Hong Kong-based Yue Yuen Industrial (Holdings) Ltd with an annual turnover approaching US$2 billion, joined the Hang Seng Index on Monday, cementing its stature among the territory's blue chips.
Tsai started out as a fine arts teacher at a small high school, earning extra income by doing piecework for various factories in the evenings.
Full of creative ideas on how to improve production, Tsai went into business himself in 1969, setting up a factory making rubber shoes in Changhua with three brothers.
The family business prospered in the 1970s, mirroring the rise of Taiwan's export-driven economy, and Pou Chen signed on Adidas as its first big-name client in 1980.
The deal gave the firm the international exposure that soon brought in other multinational athletic wear companies.
Faced with rising labor costs and an appreciating Taiwan dollar, Pou Chen's exports started to lose their competitive edge so Tsai began to move his factories to China in 1988 -- among the first wave of Taiwanese investment there.
"Tsai Chi-jui sees problems in a three to five-year timeframe and is a real strategist," said the senior executive, who declined to be identified.
At weekly brainstorming strategy meetings, the biggest and most ambitious ideas always come from Tsai, he said.
In recent years, Tsai has folded most of his shoe business into Yue Yuen and steered Pou Chen into the high-tech industry, producing PC components, motherboards and integrated circuit (IC) design. Tsai has also invested in a bank in China.
While critics say Pou Chen is late in entering the electronics sector, Tsai pays them no heed. Many had labelled the shoe business as a sunset industry before Pou Chen turned it around, he said in a rare interview with the local Win-Win Weekly (
"Pou Chen cannot depend only on Yue Yuen for growth, so we have to plan technology investments one by one, wait for them to be profitable for six months before absorbing them into Pou Chen," the magazine quoted Tsai as saying in late November.
Pou Chen's first-quarter profit nearly tripled to NT$3.18 billion (US$92 million), even as the economy struggles to recover from its worst ever recession in 2001.
Tsai's personal assistant, Alvin Hu, credits his boss' success to a modest style, mild manner and willingness to swallow unfavorable terms when negotiating with new business partners.
"He told me once: Only people with big stomachs have good fortunes," said Hu, quoting a common Taiwanese saying.
COMPETITION: AMD, Intel and Qualcomm are unveiling new laptop and desktop parts in Las Vegas, arguing their technologies provide the best performance for AI workloads Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD), the second-biggest maker of computer processors, said its chips are to be used by Dell Technologies Inc for the first time in PCs sold to businesses. The chipmaker unveiled new processors it says would make AMD-based PCs the best at running artificial intelligence (AI) software. Dell has decided to use the chips in some of its computers aimed at business customers, AMD executives said at CES in Las Vegas on Monday. Dell’s embrace of AMD for corporate PCs — it already uses the chipmaker for consumer devices — is another blow for Intel Corp as the company
STIMULUS PLANS: An official said that China would increase funding from special treasury bonds and expand another program focused on key strategic sectors China is to sharply increase funding from ultra-long treasury bonds this year to spur business investment and consumer-boosting initiatives, a state planner official told a news conference yesterday, as Beijing cranks up fiscal stimulus to revitalize its faltering economy. Special treasury bonds would be used to fund large-scale equipment upgrades and consumer goods trade-ins, said Yuan Da (袁達), deputy secretary-general of the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission. “The size of ultra-long special government bond funds will be sharply increased this year to intensify and expand the implementation of the two new initiatives,” Yuan said. Under the program launched last year, consumers can
Citigroup Inc and Bank of America Corp said they are leaving a global climate-banking group, becoming the latest Wall Street lenders to exit the coalition in the past month. In a statement, Citigroup said while it remains committed to achieving net zero emissions, it is exiting the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA). Bank of America said separately on Tuesday that it is also leaving NZBA, adding that it would continue to work with clients on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The banks’ departure from NZBA follows Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Wells Fargo & Co. The largest US financial institutions are under increasing pressure
FUTURE TECH: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang would give the keynote speech at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, which is also expected to highlight autonomous vehicles Gadgets, robots and vehicles imbued with artificial intelligence (AI) would once again vie for attention at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week, as vendors behind the scenes would seek ways to deal with tariffs threatened by US president-elect Donald Trump. The annual Consumer Electronics Show opens formally in Las Vegas tomorrow, but preceding days are packed with product announcements. AI would be a major theme of the show, along with autonomous vehicles ranging from tractors and boats to lawn mowers and golf club trollies. “Everybody is going to be talking about AI,” Creative Strategies Inc analyst Carolina Milanesi said. “From fridges to ovens
RSS