If you want to get higher, it is best to take the bicycle at the Giant Group. A bicycle path winds around the base of the headquarters in Taichung, Taiwan, to a parking facility on the third floor.
Cars must remain in the basement; cyclists come first — even if you want to run this company, says Bonnie Tu, the 73-year-old chairman of the world’s largest bicycle manufacturer. “My successor will in any case also have to be a cycling enthusiast. Otherwise you cannot do this job.”
Giant started in 1972 as a Taiwanese family business and became big when it took over the production of the American bicycle brand Schwinn. After Schwinn chose a Chinese manufacturer, Giant developed its own bicycle brand and grew into a global player with more than 12,000 employees.
King Liu, the founder of Giant, is Bonnie Tu’s uncle. She succeeded him as chairman of the board in 2017. The British newspaper The Guardian called her the godmother of cycling (the godmother of cyclists). “A terrible nickname. I really don’t have that big an ego. I see myself more as the fairy from Cinderella; I’m trying to help, but I’m not sure if the spell works.”
Giant Group produces more than six million bicycles a year – also for other brands – and supplies the 80,000 YouBike shared bicycles that you will find in almost all Taiwanese cities. About a third of the turnover comes from e-bikes. Giant has factories in Taiwan, the Netherlands, Hungary, the US and China. A new factory in Vietnam is under construction.
Giant came to Europe in the 1980s through a joint venture with the Dutch Koga Miyata. The EU is the main market and Tu now heads a company with an annual turnover of 2.7 billion euros. Giant is one of the few manufacturers that makes its own bicycle frames – the carbon frames are factory spun from rolls of black carbon fiber and then painted.
The Taiwanese bicycle factory cannot yet be visited due to corona. NRC said Tu at the headquarters in Taichung in late September, ahead of the company’s 50th anniversary. The party was mainly limited to Taiwan. All of the company’s focus is on keeping up with the volatile bicycle market, which is facing serious supply problems due to the pandemic. Also at Giant.
Since the corona crisis, bicycles in Europe have been difficult to obtain. Do you already see an improvement?
“We are still struggling with long waiting times for parts and logistical problems. There are bright spots, such as the waiting time at Shimano, the Japanese supplier of gears and brakes. There the waiting time was 22 months, now it is 18 months. Still long, I know.
“Our warehouses are overflowing, there is three times as much stock as in 2019, before corona. Because some parts are missing, we cannot deliver the bicycles. The other parts must be kept until we have complete sets of bicycles that we can sell. In logistics, a domino effect occurred when the freighter Ever Given blocked the Suez Canal in 2021. Our containers were also on it. This was followed by problems with strikes in the ports, a lack of truck drivers and sky-high prices for container transport. It used to take three weeks to ship a bicycle from Taiwan to Europe, now three months is quite common.”
What was the Taiwanese bicycle industry like fifty years ago?
“When we just started, our factory was still at a different location in Taichung. When I came there for shareholder meetings, I asked: how can it be so quiet in our factory? That silence turned out not to be a good sign: we barely had any orders – made less than three thousand bicycles a year – and suffered a loss in the first few years. Everyone laughed at us.
Also read this piece from 2021: Need a new bicycle chain? Then just wait 55 weeks please
“But my uncle, King Liu, saw how good it was during a business trip just in timeToyota’s principle worked, and decided to also apply it in the Taiwanese bicycle industry: all your important suppliers within a radius of 50 or 60 kilometers, so that you have to keep as little stock as possible. That worked: our suppliers grew along with us and later came with us to China.”
Many Taiwanese still opt for a scooter instead of an e-bike. Why?
“A matter of culture, I think. People in Taiwan do not yet understand that an electric bicycle can replace their scooter. China does, but they are not actually electric bicycles – they are rather small electric mopeds where you no longer have to pedal at all. Electric scooters, as you see a lot in cities like Paris, are not our thing either. That’s not a real bike.”
For the fiftieth anniversary, you promise that Giant will become more sustainable. What Do You Mean By That?
“The bicycle is already sustainable in itself, but we want our CO2reduce emissions. This goes beyond purchasing green energy, so that you can say that your CO2– are neutral. We want to make the entire value chain of the bicycle industry more sustainable and we need the cooperation of dealers and suppliers to do so.
“There are many concerns in Europe about the amount of packaging we use [karton en kunststof], but that is only a small part of the problem. The entire manufacturing and design process needs to be improved, right down to the chemicals needed to apply the paint.”
One of the pain points: the battery life of e-bikes is limited, but repair or replacement is not always possible. How does Giant deal with that?
“We develop the software that controls the battery ourselves, and our batteries remain stable for quite a long time compared to competitors. But we are responsible for the entire chain. So if they do eventually need to be replaced, we recommend that customers recycle the battery. We cannot continue to produce new bicycle batteries, because that creates a major environmental problem. That is why we are investigating how we can refresh the bicycle battery [nieuwe batterijcellen erin]in consultation with our supplier, Panasonic.”
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Photo Bloomberg
What are your own future plans?
“I am 73 years old, I still come to the office every day. In any case, I won’t go on as long as my uncle. He did not retire until he was 84. I want to pass on my experiences first. Giant has its own brand for women, Liv, and wants to be an inspiration for women who discover cycling, also at a later age.
“As a small child on the bike to school I noticed how much joy and self-confidence you can get from that. The brand of my first bicycle was Xingfu, Chinese for ‘happy’. That’s how I felt. That basic feeling of moving yourself, having everything under control… Asian women learn during their upbringing that they have to give priority to their family. Cycling gives you freedom; it is good for your physical and your mental health.
“The sports bike industry is almost exclusively focused on products for men. That is a pity, instead of fighting for a larger market share in the existing market, it is better to expand the sales market. Other companies do not see that they are missing out on half of the population.”
Taiwan has relatively few female CEOs. Are you the exception that proves the rule
“No, the manufacturing industry has more top women. Velo, supplier of our bicycle saddles, is also located here in Taichung and also has a female CEO, Stella Yu. Queen of the saddlesthey call her.
“In large organizations it may be difficult to get to the top as a woman, but in smaller companies it is more common. When Giant started, the company consisted of family and friends, most of the shareholders also worked in the company.
“Taiwanese manufacturing companies often started out as a home factory in the 1970s. When men went out to do business, women held responsibility for production and oversaw the factory. We still do. Taiwanese women also speak better English than the men.”