Mold Industry Association Chairman Hsu Hsu-ming "Hong Chun-pei Culture and Education Foundation" Public Welfare Lecture

(Taiwan Business News) When "Depo" is mentioned, many people may instinctively think of the luxury residence in Taipei, but in the small town of Lukang in central Taiwan, there is also a majestic "Depo Industrial" headquarters building, standing tall over the rice paddies of the Changhua Plain, dominating the area.

Depo Industrial has a longer history than Taipei's Hongsheng Depo Construction; it was established as early as 1977 and is a well-known leading domestic manufacturer of automotive lamps. Relying on its "small volume, high variety" production characteristic, it captured the largest market share in Europe's aftermarket auto lamp repair market and was consecutively ranked among Taiwan's top 20 international brands from 2005 to 2010.

Mold Industry Association Chairman Hsu Hsu-ming Public Welfare Lecture: Depo Mold Industry, Quality Creates High Gross Margins

The Hong Chun-pei Education Foundation and Taiwan Business News invited Chairman Hsu Ming of the Taiwan Regional Mold Industry Association to speak on "Mold Industry, Innovative Breakthroughs" on May 11. Chairman Hsu drew on his years of experience in mold industry management and service to the industry to share his insights, and the public benefited greatly.

Hsu Hsu-ming, president of Taiwan's major automotive lamp manufacturer Depo, has been able to make automotive components into one of the top ten most profitable domestic enterprises over the past decade. Starting from nothing, Depo now has more than 30,000 types of molds, the most diverse in the world, with products sold across the globe. From 2005 to 2010, for six consecutive years, it was selected by an international brand evaluation agency as one of the "Top 20 International Brands of Taiwan."

What seems like hard manual labor became something Hsu Hsu-ming grew passionate about. Whether it was automotive lamp production, design and research, or mold development and manufacturing, he wanted to study it all, and he decided to found Ming Yang Hang and strike out on his own. After that, Hsu Hsu-ming threw himself into the work day and night. Working excessively, while making an automotive lamp mold one time, he had a momentary lapse in attention, and his right hand was instantly deeply cut by a sharp stamping machine, leaving a curved automotive-lamp-shaped wound. After being rushed to the hospital, his index finger, middle finger, and ring finger still had to be amputated, and even his thumb and little finger bore cut marks.

When controlling costs, Hsu Hsu-ming would cut anything except production equipment, which had to be the best, both for quality and for employee safety. A senior employee recalled that 36 years ago, when Depo began building this nearly 15,300-ping corporate headquarters, the first thing completed was the factory equipped with brand-new advanced equipment, while the office area could only be crammed into the newly finished basement. There was not even a meeting room, nor a place to seat clients, showing how much the chairman prioritized technology. Taking the soon-to-be-completed R&D center in Yongkang as an example, in order to give employees a better environment, he specially asked a designer to create a multifunctional sky garden with a badminton court, pool table area, indoor gym, and cafe, plus a Baroque-style exterior, all to give employees a good working environment and increase cohesion.

For many years, Hsu Hsu-ming spent every day either in the factory studying the production process or outside learning innovative production methods and bringing them back to the plant to experiment with. Whenever possible, all processes were kept in-house rather than outsourced, so that he could stay on top of production progress at the earliest moment and adjust at any time according to market dynamics.

Whenever he saw employees, Hsu Hsu-ming most liked to ask, "Is it possible to shorten the production time further?", "Can the cost be lowered further?", and "Have we designed any more innovative automotive lamp products?" This kept the pressure on colleagues in the production department quite heavy.

Although Depo Industrial is now the Depo Group with 5 subsidiaries, Hsu Hsu-ming still often stays in the various production factories, observing and thinking about better production models. Depo employees all say: "When it comes to technology, you can't fool him."

Depo's two main growth drivers come from the AM market in Europe and the United States (After Market, non-original automotive lamps used for after-sales repair) and the OEM market in mainland China (Original Equipment

Manufacturing, designing in cooperation with original manufacturers and producing automotive lamps for use in new vehicles). After more than 30 years of effort, Depo has established a competitive threshold in the after-sales service market, capturing nearly 40 percent market share in North America.

However, Chairman Hsu Hsu-ming is not at all hesitant about investing in new production lines and new molds, and is committed to building the most complete product line. Any randomly opened Depo product catalog contains three to four thousand kinds of automotive lamps, and peers jokingly call it a "automotive lamp database." If you want to know what automotive lamp styles exist in recent years, just look at Depo's catalog.

In addition, the quality requirements for repair automotive lamps are no lower than those for new vehicles. Hsu Hsu-ming also actively required that products pass quality testing and certification under Europe's ECE (Economic Commission for Europe) and the United States' SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers), establishing a high-quality brand image to differentiate itself from peers, so that today repair shops in Europe and the United States all specify the purchase of Depo automotive lamps that "rival original equipment." Depo has repeatedly innovated its production model, constantly trying various process designs, and maintained high gross margins, making this today one of its most competitive product categories.

Hsu Hsu-ming is a "man of true feeling." Over the years of running his business, he still keeps his promises and holds to the philosophy of "others may wrong me, but I will not wrong others," so that in his business operations he has always had "benefactors" helping him. For example, in the early days of running the company, when funds were owed, there were benefactors who supported him; when sales were low, there were also benefactors who helped, and orders followed. He said this is the "blessing" of keeping one's promises.

Hsu Hsu-ming said Depo's automotive lamps are already sold all over the world, with the only exceptions being the South and North Poles. When Professor Chuang Ming-kuo of Dayeh University intended to plan a global museum of coins and national flags at Depo's headquarters, he readily agreed. Later, when Chuang could not find the coins and national flags of the remaining 4 countries, Depo asked its business clients to fill in the gaps, and this became a much-told story locally.

Hsu Hsu-ming also fully incorporated aesthetics into his products. He believed that exposure to art exhibitions could enhance colleagues' visual sense of beauty, allowing automotive lamp design to be combined with art, so that automotive lamps would not just be automotive lamps, but works of art.

Mold Industry Association Chairman Hsu Hsu-ming Profile

Chairman Hsu Ming graduated from the 37th Business Management Executive Program of Tunghai University; he has served as general manager and chairman of Depo Industrial Co., Ltd., chairman of the 11th and 12th Changhua County Industrial Association, founding chairman of the Changhua County Small and Medium Enterprise Association, fifth president of the Changhua County International Business Management Research Society, president of the Central Taiwan Elite Association of Listed and OTC Companies in Central Taiwan, a model of the 20th Youth Entrepreneurship of the Republic of China, and chairman of the 15th Federation of the Republic of China International Business Management Research Societies; he currently serves as president of Depo Industrial Co., Ltd., a director of the 9th National Federation of Industries of the Republic of China, managing director of the 12th General Association of Small and Medium Enterprises of the Republic of China, and chairman of the 8th Taiwan Regional Mold Industry Association.

Hong Chun-pei Culture and Education Foundation 103rd Year Public Welfare Lecture