Taiwan Today

When he was a university student, Zhou Rang-ting, 27, often got to enjoy specialty food from across the island brought by his returning classmates at the beginning of each semester. There were sun cakes, a round flaky pastry with a sweet filling from Taichung, central Taiwan; chewy rice noodles and meatballs from Hsinchu, in the north; and handmade mochi, small cakes made from ground rice, from Hualien in the eastern part of the island.

In his junior year, Zhou wanted to pay back these favors. It occurred to him that he could make smaller versions of his father’s products—embroidered robes used to “clothe” statues of local gods—and give them as gifts. Zhou used his vacation time back home to sew several “miniature deity outfits” and included two red threads on them to tie a lucky charm inside. His classmates were amazed and thrilled with the cute gifts, which also carried with them the promise of divine protection. The mini robes turned out to be the most sought-after gifts among Zhou’s classmates.

Based on Chinese religious traditions, a variety of statues of traditional folk deities are placed in temples, where they are worshipped, or in business places and homes to bestow blessings. The robes placed around the statues are believed to bring luck and expel evil. Parents thus ask for the old robes from temple statues to put near their children’s beds and drivers place them in their vehicles.

The embroidery trade in Zhou’s hometown, Puzi City in Chiayi County, southern Taiwan, dates back to the 1950s, and embroidered clothing for religious statues is something of a local specialty. With its exquisite workmanship, the name “Puzi embroidery” won a reputation at home and abroad in the 1960s and 1970s, with a range of products exported as far as the Middle East.

Robes for Special Occasions

At the peak of the embroidery business in Puzi, there were more than 30 workshops making embroidered items for occasions like the Lunar New Year, new residences, temple festival parades and wedding or inauguration ceremonies, as well as robes for religious statues, glove puppets and costumes for Taiwanese Opera. About a half of local residents were involved in embroidery work then.

Puzi resident Yang Fu-shan, 58, still remembers those days, saying that when he was a child, a multitude of embroidery factories were in operation in the neighborhood of Peitian Temple, a temple dedicated to the worship of Mazu, alternately known as the Goddess of the Sea or the Queen of Heaven. Employees worked embroidery by machine and by hand on brightly colored cloth. The busy scenes created a festive atmosphere for the entire street.

“In the old days, residents in Puzi could only make a living from the sugarcane plantations. It wasn’t until the Chinese Qing court era (1684–1895) that immigrants from mainland China’s Fujian province brought their embroidery skills with them and the profession started to take root here,” Yang says. “At that time, girls largely stayed at home after they graduated from junior high school. Many of them began to make embroidered clothes, shoes, bed sheets and pillowcases to help improve their family’s financial situation. It was due to this trade that our village was able to gradually prosper.”

Zhou Rang-ting’s grandfather was good at design, while his grandmother excelled at embroidery, so they set up a workshop in 1955 and began developing their business islandwide. Because of the quality of both the designs and the handiwork, the market response was good and purchase orders came pouring in. At times when market demand ran high, the company commissioned up to 200 suppliers working out of their homes.

Little competition, high profit margins and low labor costs meant that business fared well for many years. Zhou’s father, Zhou Zhi-yun, took over the embroidery factory in 1985, but by then, changes that impacted the business were already occurring. Local wages began to surge following the enactment of the Labor Standards Act in 1984 and an increasing number of men and women alike were pursuing higher education. On the other hand, by 1988 lottery fever had swept the island, while the weighted index of the Taiwan Stock Exchange skyrocketed past 10,000 points. For some people that created a mindset of seeking “easy money,” given that scores of people made fortunes overnight.

All these factors led to a chronic labor shortage and propelled Zhou Zhi-yun to relocate production lines across the Taiwan Strait to Guangdong province in 1990. He retained only a few master craftsmen in Taiwan to handle product research and development (R&D), as well as customer service representatives.

Drawing on his knowhow, as well as the low labor and material costs in the mainland, Zhou Zhi-yun successfully marketed his products back in Taiwan and grabbed around 70 percent of the local market to become the largest supplier for deity garments and other embroidered goods. Nevertheless, a new challenge would come in the late 1990s as stores in Taiwan started to import low-priced products directly from mainland China. The changes dealt a serious blow to Zhou Zhi-yun’s business, with the company’s market share falling to 40 percent in Taiwan. As a result, he had to slash the number of workers in his mainland factory from a peak of 1,000 to fewer than 200 in 2005.

Battling the Imports

In 2006, Zhou Rang-ting graduated from university and joined his two elder brothers in his father’s business. Zhou Rang-ting believed that to counter the cheap imports from mainland China, it was essential to build the company’s brand and differentiate its products from those of its competitors. He thus started to research brand building, engaged a professional designer to create a logo, product catalog and marketing materials, as well as set up a website.

Branding, however, is no easy task and by launching its own brand the company began to compete directly with those it had previously supplied on a contract manufacturing basis. The move eventually ruptured ties with more than 1,000 distributors and retailers that the Zhou family had worked with for decades. The young man says he first had to undergo a “family revolution” in which he and his brothers had to convince their father that the changes were necessary. He appealed to his father by saying, “This is your last battle, but it’s just the first for us three brothers. If we don’t build our own brand, how can we compete when cross-strait trade is liberalized and mainland products start flooding in?”

A basic made-in Taiwan deity garment with no frills costs around NT$2,000 (US$70), but manufacturers in the mainland can quickly make knockoffs and sell them for less than half that price, so without brand power there would be no way to survive, Zhou Rang-ting says. In 2007, after gaining their father’s approval, the three brothers established the brand name Shen Fu Creative Embroidery and set about reforming the overall operations of the firm. The words shen fu refer to the idea of making a drastic change in the business of religious embroidery.

In the past, the Zhou family’s primary product had been the robes for religious statues and the main clients were individual believers who bought items for the statues in their businesses, homes or at temples. To sustain and expand business, Zhou Rang-ting felt the need to broaden the company’s product line and reach out to young customers as well as tourists.

Zhou then recalled the popularity of the miniature robes he created for his university classmates and thought they might sell well on the market. So in late 2009, Zhou and his R&D team launched a series of mini robes, each in a different color, including a “peaceful green” for Guan Gong, the god of loyalty, justice, integrity and courage, a “wise blue outfit” for the Earth God and a “lucky red outfit” for the God of Wealth.

Actually, there are historical texts that indicate what colors each kind of deity should wear and the type of patterns that should be embroidered on their robes. For example, the Emperor of Heaven, the highest ranking god, wears yellow; the goddess Mazu wears a yellow or orange robe with phoenix embroidery; the God of Marriage wears red; and the bodhisattva Guanyin, the goddess of compassion, wears an outfit with lotus flowers and willow branches embroidered over a red, orange, white or yellow base.

There are exceptions, though, Zhou adds. Sometimes, believers will toss divination blocks to ask a deity which outfit or which color they would prefer. As such, modifications are sometimes made in line with the individual god’s own “will.”

The mini robes produced by Shen Fu come in two sizes, 5 or 10 centimeters tall, and are sold as lucky charms for key chains or mobile phones at NT$190 (US$7) apiece. Many customers tie talismans or incense pouches from local temples inside the mini robes in order to ward off evil and ensure peace and happiness in their life. The robes became a hit with consumers in 2010, when some 100,000 pieces were sold. The most popular design is the mini Mazu robe, which is a favorite among tourists from Japan, Singapore and mainland China, who buy the good luck charms as Taiwanese souvenirs.

A popular saying holds that “worshipping the gods will bring protection,” while believers often ask the gods for business success, good academic performance, wealth, marriage and offspring. Repaying the gods for prayers answered often includes buying them new clothes or accessories. Zhou Rang-ting notes that there are more than 20,000 temples around Taiwan, in addition to the religious statues kept in homes or businesses, so there is still considerable market demand for deity outfits.

Shen Fu thus continues developing a variety of deity garments with innovative designs, while concentrating on ways to lower their sales prices, for instance, from the NT$5,000 to $10,000 (US$172 to $345) price range for average-quality robes to NT$3,000 to $5,000 (US$103 to $172). The company has been able to achieve the savings by keeping its production base in mainland China. Zhou Rang-ting hopes the strategy will accelerate the rate that believers replace the robes from every three to five years to one to two years. Shen Fu also plans to stimulate demand further by introducing seasonal wear so that believers can change the deity’s clothing from season to season.

As well, Shen Fu has begun to incorporate fashion design and new materials and technologies into its products. For example, given that baseball is a popular sport in Taiwan, the company designed a baseball outfit for Mazu comprising a singlet, long-sleeved undershirt, short-sleeved outer shirt, imperial robe, cape and hat with a phoenix design. The items were intended to highlight the company’s design skill and have not been commercialized. At Peitian Temple’s celebration for Mazu’s birthday in 2008, however, Shen Fu craftsmen sewed 1,800 Swarovski crystals onto the deity robe of each of Mazu’s bodyguards: General Qianliyan, who can see for a thousand miles, and General Shunfenger, known for his powerful hearing. The intention was to make the two statues more flamboyant when they took part in the parade of Mazu’s statue. The dazzling accessories caught the attention of many onlookers, with a number of affluent believers asking for deity clothes studded with crystals since then.

Among Shen Fu’s other innovations are embroidered garments adorned with layers of lace, which have become popular for the statues of female deities, as well as items fitted with LED lights for statues used in nighttime festival processions. The company also offers a made-to-measure service, which includes the selection of fabrics and accessories for individual statues.

So far, Shen Fu has released more than 1,000 designs for altar statues and large body puppets of gods, in addition to items used in temple parades such as canopies, banners and flags. There are some 150 designs for miniature robes and everyday goods like coasters and embroidered chopstick holders. Most of the company’s products now come with both Chinese and English descriptions, aimed at explaining local beliefs and the customs associated with them to both Taiwanese and international customers.

“In the face of the low-priced competition from mainland manufacturers, what we can do to stay above water is to turn out high-quality products with unique designs at a rapid pace,” Zhou Rang-ting says. “We try to develop a deity outfit a week and three products that combine embroidery with a practical use on a monthly basis so that our competitors can’t catch up with us.”

With regard to sales channels, the company sells its products at its factory in Puzi, a dedicated store in Xinzhuang District, New Taipei City and on its own website. Shen Fu also has outlets at Eslite Bookstore, the island’s largest bookstore chain, the Tainan branch of the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi department store in southern Taiwan and the National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute in Nantou County, central Taiwan.

In addition, Shen Fu has worked with the Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Taichung City Government for Jenn Lann Temple’s annual pilgrimage of its Mazu statue. For the last few years the company has held an embroidery exhibition in a local district art center during the annual event. This year the company will also assist in a moviemaking project by providing traditional costumes for performers in a temple parade.

Shen Fu also opened a display center for tourists in a former sugar refinery of the Taiwan Sugar Corp. in Chiayi County. The exhibit introduces the origins, development and production processes of embroidered goods. A few of the embroidered robes for the gods have even been produced in large sizes so that visitors can try them on and have their pictures taken wearing them.

Wu Ming-ru, 47, who is the director of general affairs at National Tung Shih Senior High School in Puzi, says embroidery was once the city’s distinctive industry. He says he is glad to see that Shen Fu is generating innovative styles and applications for the traditional craft. Wu made the trip to Shen Fu’s factory to buy souvenirs for the principal of his school, who will visit a sister school in Japan. “We would like to use this chance to introduce Taiwan’s interesting religious culture and folk beliefs to our foreign friends,” Wu says. “Moreover, we want to show our support for Shen Fu by patronizing its products. Hopefully, someday embroidery can once again become a driving force of local economic development.”

Peggy Chen, 22, says she learned about Shen Fu through a friend. She found creative and attractive products in many colors on the company’s website, so she traveled from neighboring Tainan City to visit the factory and do a little shopping. “I like embroidered goods a lot. There’s something exquisite and very ‘Taiwanese’ about them. It’s a pity that they’re not widely available now,” Chen says. “What’s special about Shen Fu’s products is that they combine tradition with innovation, as well as creativity with practicality. I intend to buy some key chains of the miniature deity robes. I think they’ll be cool gifts to give to my friends.”

Skilled Local Workers

Currently, Zhou Rang-ting is responsible for R&D and business promotion in southern Taiwan, his eldest brother is in charge of the factory in mainland China as well as development of the international market and his second elder brother handles business promotion in northern Taiwan. In their efforts to produce more higher-end products, they plan to raise the production volume in Taiwan from the current 10 percent to 40 percent in the near future to take advantage of the skill of local embroidery workers.

The three brothers have been putting their creativity to good use in reinventing the deity clothing business and employing it as the basis for new market opportunities. At the same time, they seem to have found a way to make a traditional religious custom more attractive to younger generations of Taiwanese.

“As the third generation of the family business and the last embroidery factory in town, we have to face any market challenge and hang on regardless. That’s our mission,” Zhou Rang-ting says. “We believe that working to combine Taiwan’s vibrant religious culture with creativity will help us find our way.”

Write to Kelly Her at kelly@mail.gio.gov.tw