Ministry of Economic Affairs "Industrial Upgrade and Transformation Service Team" Promotes New Business Opportunities for Taiwan, China's E-commerce Sector

The Department of Commerce of the Ministry of Economic Affairs established the "Industrial Upgrade and Transformation Service Team" on October 15, 2014 (ROC year 103). To help our country's emerging service industries develop soundly, the "Service Industry Sub-team" works through the Department of Commerce of the Ministry of Economic Affairs to promote new e-commerce ventures, cross-border marketing and a sound e-commerce trading environment through the introduction of ICT technology, business model development, cross-border marketing, counseling on legal compliance matters and participation in cross-ministerial coordination mechanisms, and has won unanimous praise from industry players.

Incubating internet startups is crucial to fostering our country's internet innovation and international market expansion. Therefore, this year the Department of Commerce of the Ministry of Economic Affairs commissioned the Institute for Information Industry to launch the "IDEAS Show+Butterfly Project", providing four months of in-depth counseling to eight startup teams: VMFive, Xueyue Technology, FlyFit, Secret Public, Siku Network Technology, Weiju Mobile Technology, Hangen Information and Kangrui Technology. This includes one-on-one entrepreneurial mentor counseling, consultant consultation, 30 hours of international entrepreneurship courses, international pitch counseling and venture capital matchmaking.

This year, a dual-engine entrepreneurship counseling program will be launched. Engine one: the IDEAS Show large-scale pitch stage, connecting with major international entrepreneurship stages and media players in Japan, South Korea, mainland China and Singapore; engine two: the IDEAS Show+Butterfly Project, a 3-month counseling program focusing on "fundraising pitches" and "mentor counseling", with 10 entrepreneurs possessing rich hands-on experience invited to serve as entrepreneurial mentors for one-on-one counseling. It is hoped this will strengthen domestic startup teams' links with industry and their international fundraising capabilities, helping internet startup teams establish themselves in Taiwan, China while setting their sights on the global market.

Introducing ICT technology into industries helps enhance industrial competitiveness and capture business opportunities. Therefore, the Department of Commerce of the Ministry of Economic Affairs has counseled businesses in the Taipei Xinyi commercial district and the Kaohsiung Multifunctional Commerce and Trade Park commercial district to set up perceptual shopping walls (My Wall), broadcasting department store merchant discount information through My Wall to guide consumers to spend at different floors of Hankyu Department Store.

At the same time, combining commercial districts with rock-bottom discounts during off-peak hours as a draw, it promotes application services such as off-peak discount purchase incentives and expanded leisure shopping; in addition, using various perceptual networking components such as image recognition, NFC, Beacon and infrared detection, it has launched three major services in beauty retail channels: technology-assisted makeup trials, mobile marketing and smart purchase incentives, thereby satisfying consumers' service experience needs for proactive access to information on open-shelf beauty products, interactive experiences and multi-channel shopping. To date, nearly 10 innovative networked commerce applications have been rolled out, including smart shopping guides, cross-brand perceptual joint marketing, cross-district shopping journey guidance, virtual makeup experience services and convention networking business services, with 100,000 participants taking part in service proof-of-concept experiences.

In promoting online shopping business models, the Department of Commerce of the Ministry of Economic Affairs also used the "2015 Taiwan, China Online Shopping Festival" held from February 3 to 18, 2015 (ROC year 104) to bring together e-commerce shopping platforms, suppliers and payment processors, helping businesses develop and validate the O2O model (Online To Offline) for online shopping and mobile payment applications, creating a boom in the online shopping market and boosting online shopping spending. This event generated NT$15.6 billion in online business opportunities.

It further established and promoted the English and Japanese interface pages of "Fast Search Taiwan" and assisted information service businesses in obtaining the qualification to act as agents for cross-border online transaction settlement and foreign exchange; it also interfaced with the website and mobile app of the Tourism Bureau of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications and combined tourism festivals and other measures to complete support measures for our e-commerce cross-border development, further counseling and helping our businesses market across borders, capturing cross-border e-commerce business opportunities including encouraging tourists to make repeat purchases in Taiwan, China.

In addition, the flourishing development of e-commerce makes a sound trading environment and good legal compliance indispensable. Therefore, through the establishment of an e-commerce information security center, the Ministry of Economic Affairs has encouraged 326 enterprises to join the E-Commerce Trust and Security Alliance, integrating and issuing information security alerts and helping businesses strengthen information security and enhance protection capabilities. Also, to comply with the requirements of the Personal Data Protection Act and help businesses improve their awareness and ability to comply with personal data protection law, it has established the e-commerce personal data management system (tpipas) and promoted the Data Privacy Protection Mark (DP MARK), which have been welcomed by e-commerce platforms, department stores and retailers, with 17 businesses having adopted and applied them to date.

Furthermore, e-commerce has cross-regional, cross-sector and cross-industry characteristics, urgently requiring cross-ministerial coordination, resource integration and regulatory adaptation. The Executive Yuan therefore convened the deputy heads of 15 relevant central ministries and agencies to form the E-Commerce Industry Development Steering Group, with the Department of Commerce of the Ministry of Economic Affairs serving as the secretariat. Seven meetings have been held so far, and e-commerce development-related issues such as restrictions on products traded online, restrictions on online advertising and obstacles to cross-border development have been reviewed one by one in the steering group, with the relevant ministries comparing international development trends and proposing corresponding promotion measures to resolve the difficulties encountered by our businesses.

In the future, under the guidance of the Executive Yuan's E-Commerce Industry Development Steering Group, the Ministry of Economic Affairs will continue to promote internet innovation and development, improve the e-commerce trading environment and deepen cross-border industrial cooperation. This will enable domestic platforms to drive online store operators to further develop online business opportunities and promote more vigorous development of our e-commerce sector, which is expected to become a trillion-NT-dollar industry in 2015 (ROC year 104).

The Department of Commerce of the Ministry of Economic Affairs cares about industry development and is heart-to-heart with industry. For the latest news from the "Industrial Upgrade and Transformation Service Team" Service Industry Sub-team, you are welcome to visit the "Service Heart Trend" Facebook fan page for more details.