HOW TO BE AN IMPORTER
Reality set in (as it always does) and I returned to my small retail shop in Salem, Oregon, and Art went back to doing remodel construction, but the vision lingered. Now I can’t really comment on other state capitals, but entrepreneurship was not a good choice if you wanted to continue having a roof over your head and hot meals daily. About the only folks thriving in Oregon’s capital city in the late 1980’s were the state government offices and State Farm Insurance. My shop barely made enough to pay the rent, and construction was pretty much tied up by the few companies owned by the “good ol’ boys. It was time to make some kind of change, so when we heard about an import/export class being offered in the evenings at a Seattle university, we thought “why not?” and signed up.

Seattle is a 200 mile, five hour drive from Salem, and for six weeks we made the trip twice a week for the evening class, stopping at a rest area on the way back for a few hours sleep before getting back to town in time to go to work the following morning. Although we really didn’t get much practical information on importing, we did meet Mr. Lou Woo, our instructor and self claimed “King of Taiwan”. Towards the end of the six weeks, Lou extended an offer to his students to take them with him (for a fee, of course) on his upcoming trip to Taiwan and Hong Kong, where he would personally introduce us to the movers and shakers of the import world. “I will take you to factories, and you will meet brokers and agents. I know them all and they will give you special treatment since I am the ‘King of Taiwan’”.

WEST MEETS EAST
How could we pass up an opportunity like that? We already had a product we wanted to produce, a ribbon shredder that turned a piece of ordinary, wide curling ribbon into lots of curly narrow strands, and with 43 little hand set straight pins, we knew that no one in the U.S. was going to produce it. And the icing on the cake was that we would be traveling with royalty! So, we paid the King and off we went with him and one other intrepid student to Asia to learn to be importers.

The first time in the Orient for any Occidental is always a bit boggling, but in the mid 80’s much of the “westernization” had not yet taken place. Lou Woo had arranged for a driver to pick us up, a roly-poly Chinese fellow we were advised to refer to as Mr. Tsi (pronounced “sigh”). Mr. Tsi had arrived in a car the size of a large roller skate that looked like it had been “rode hard and put away wet”. He sized up the amount of luggage we had and gave it (and us) a look that only the Chinese can pull off – and in fairness, there was LOT of it. Art and I had done pretty well, after all when you always wear Levi’s you don’t need a lot of extra clothes or jewelry to accessorize. But James, the other student, fancied himself a true western wrangler and had brought along a different pair of cowboy boots for his many wardrobe changes. Mr. Tsi, with the quiet stoicism of the Buddha he resembled, simply packed everything and everyone into the trunk and backseat of the tiny car. Art and Jim were a tight fit, with me perched on Art’s lap, and James buried beneath two of his three suitcases of boots. The King took his rightful place in the front seat, nearly castrating James when he shot his seat back to give himself a bit more legroom.

Taipei at night is a worthy rival of Las Vegas. Lights, lights EVERYWHERE, and since we couldn’t read anything it all looked like fabulous, exotic artwork in neon. I did, however, notice an inordinate amount of barbershops, the familiar colored, stripped pole seeming to appear about every four or five shops. Now we had not been in Taipei long enough for me to make a firm judgement, but so far the people had not struck me as being THAT well groomed that all these barbershops would be required. “Just how often do these guys need to get haircuts?” I asked. Lou Woo choked, muttered a few things to Mr. Tsi who just shook his head, then turning to his backseat audience advised us that perhaps other services were performed that were “suitable for the businessman”. Guess that shut me up.

The Chinese drive like no other people I have ever been with, and that includes Mexican taxi drivers. Speed is everything, the lanes are only a suggestion of where the drivers may want to position their cars, and as long as you stick your arm out the window and point in the direction that you are planning on going, you are free to head off that way, even if that means making a left turn from the far right side of the road. And EVERYWHERE there are motor scooters zipping in and out of the traffic, often with an entire family of four or five lined up like dominoes on the little bike’s back. After one particularly close call I asked Lou Woo if there were ever accidents with so much apparent chaos. “Oh yes, very, very bad accidents many times, sometimes lose arms and legs” he replied cheerfully. For foreigners the freeways are best experienced with eyes closed.

As we raced from the airport toward the heart of the city we were startled (but not necessarily surprised) to hear a back tire blow out. The narrow little strip of dirt alongside the freeway in no way seemed adequate to me for stopping and changing a tire with cars, delivery vans, and huge trailer trucks roaring past us at what looked to be close to the speed of light. “This is nuts, it’s too dangerous, we can’t stop here” I complained, as we all piled out of our cramped space. The King mumbled something in Chinese to Mr. Tsi, who immediately unloaded ALL of our luggage from the backseat and trunk, then carefully lined it up, one in back of the other from the back of the car and down the freeway toward the oncoming traffic. He was very careful to place each piece strategically and evenly spaced down the roadway. Satisfied with his handiwork, he returned to the car and got on with the business of changing the tire. “Is ok now, very good barricade” the King hollered at us over the din of hundreds of engines, but by this time Art, James and I had scrambled down the side of the embankment, with just our heads peeking over the exhaust dead grass, to try to put at least a bit of distance between us and the traffic flow. In spite of the King’s repeatedly hollered assurances, we decided to continue clinging to the side of the steep roadside, with the threat of losing our grip and somersaulting down into the ditch at the bottom of the embankment preferable to the dubious safety of crouching behind a row of Samsonite.

MEET THE EXPORTERS
Like many of his American counterparts, the King tended to slightly over exaggerate his position and importance in the overall scheme of international trade. He did introduce us to one delightful little Chinese lady who, in turn, introduced us to three of her friends who assured us that “they could make anything”, but were adamant that the thing we really should consider selling was their patented “lost dog canister”, a little metal device you put on your dog’s collar that could be opened and a tiny paper scroll taken out which would supposedly have Fido’s pertinent information written on it. The only trouble was the paper was so small that IF you could get the information on it you would still need a magnifying glass to ever read it, and the snap on canister cap snapped on easily enough, never again to be willing to snap off.

These three gentlemen were the Taiwanese equivalent of the Three Stooges. Although they continued to tell us that they “could make anything”, they were obsessed and preoccupied with their “lost dog canister” and with an amazing focus of intention, it was the only thing that we were ever able to get them to talk about at all. Determined to convince us of the viability of their product, they would swoop down on us early in the morning, whisk us off to breakfast and on to their factory to discuss the ways we could market this incredibly desirable product, with possible spin-offs for cats and other assorted pets. Although we never showed any real interest in the concept, they courted and entertained us for three full days, topping it off with lunch at a “very special” place that served us a thin soup with dozens of tiny tree frogs (entirely whole and LOOKING like tree frogs, with their little legs stretched out behind them) floating in the broth with assorted greens; then a proposed drive to yet another factory.

We were ultimately spared one more trip to see the production capacity of yet more of their machinery when they could not agree on the way to get there. After much arguing, gesturing and shouting they eventually pulled over to the side of the road to ask the advice of another motorist and his two passengers, who just happened to be stopped by the roadside. More arguing, gesturing and shouting ensued, then another car pulled over and this driver’s advice was solicited, then argued about by the now six others. Soon another car, then another pulled over and after about 15 minutes we had a total of 18 people, all previously unknown to each other arguing, gesturing and shouting about which way to go. Somewhere along the way I think the conversation must have changed to where we should all consider having dinner, since as quickly as it had started it was over, everyone piled back into their respective vehicles and went back about whatever they had been doing. We did not discuss finding the factory again, the entire subject was simply dropped and we went on to dinner, where fortunately nothing recognizable was floating in my soup.

RELATIONSHIPS, OLD & NEW
Lou Woo did, in all fairness, shuffle us around to a number of factories, none of which did anything of any use to us or to James, who was there to find someone to make a specific type of baby carrier (how he came to this product idea is anybody’s guess since he was a confirmed bachelor, with no babies, to our knowledge, in his life). However, around the fifth day in Taiwan the King did introduce a young Chinese man to us who was also new to the import/export business and was trying to learn a few things from attending one of the King’s lectures. His name was Ein (short for Einstein, a name given him by one of his professors at college, where he had earned a degree as an aeronautical engineer). Ein spoke very little English, and we, of course, spoke NO Taiwanese, but sometimes the energy is just right between people and they still manage to communicate. Even though Ein had a degree in aeronautical engineering, what he really wanted to do was manufacture and export. He had no experience in exporting, and we, of course, had no experience in importing, so it immediately seemed to be a perfect match to all three of us. Perhaps we would never have become close friends if the King, who was sharing a room with James, had remembered he had an evening appointment with Ein, and had not locked both Ein and James out of the hotel room, where he was apparently entertaining one of his female subjects.

With our leader preoccupied, the four of us were left to our own devices for dinner, and after a wonderful seafood feast and many Taiwan beers, Ein, Art and I had decided to strike up a business relationship (which has lasted to this day, along with a very warm personal friendship with him and his wife). As I recall, the King never did let James back into their room and he ended up sleeping on the small sofa in our room.

Things tended to degenerate after the night Lou Woo locked James out of their hotel room. By the time we reached Hong Kong tempers were short and discovering we were booked into a hotel that made you feel like you needed a shower simply because you had sat on the furniture or slept in the bed did nothing to improve the student/teacher relationship between us and the King. After our second day in Hong Kong the King informed us that “he had friends in this town” and that “he didn’t need to stay in such a dump”. Apparently it had slipped his mind that he was the one who had made all the arrangements and reservations. At any rate, with that announcement, he packed up his bag, and left – just left, with some final words of “don’t worry, enough people in Hong Kong speak English that you should be ok”. And that was the last we ever saw or heard of his Majesty.

And that, Virginia, is how we started our business. We eventually made it back to the States, and in due time, 125,000 ribbon shredders arrived on our doorstep – literally, since we were working from home. But that, as they say, is another story.