New Face for an Old Firm

Lam Sam Yick Brushes, on Taipei City’s Chongqing North Road, has passed through four generations of the Lin family, and today stands as one of fewer than 10 specialist calligraphy brush stores left in Taiwan. Over the century since its founding, the company has carved out a niche for itself through constant innovation.

Lam Sam Yick Brushes was founded in 1917 in Fuzhou, China, by Lin Wanwu. In the firm’s name, spelled according to the Cantonese pronunciation, “Lam” is the family name Lin, while “Sam Yick” is a reference to a quote from Confucius in The Analects about the san yi, or “three advantageous friendships”: “Friendship with the upright, friendship with the sincere, and friendship with the man of much observation: these are advantageous.” In 1946, the chaos of the Chinese Civil War led to Lin and his family packing up and moving to Taiwan, setting up shop on Yanping North Road in Dadaocheng, now a part of Taipei City.

Lin gained a reputation for his skill in making writing brushes, with his store attracting not only aspiring calligraphers, but also many high-level officials and other VIPs. The sign hanging above the door today, for instance, is in fact the work of former president of the Control Yuan and renowned calligrapher Yu Youren; and also hanging on the storefront is a piece by former minister of foreign affairs George K.C. Yeh.

In recent years, though, this historic store has been undergoing a transformation, with the traditional calligraphy brushes, paper, ink, and inkstones beginning to be accompanied by representatives of a different kind of beauty—makeup brushes and accoutrements in pink, cream, lemon yellow, and light purple, arranged in the shapes of hearts and flowers.

Amongst the traditional regular and semi-cursive script calligraphy on the walls also hang promotional posters for the local television series I Love You So Much, including one of leading man Blue Lan holding a pink brush inlaid with a glittering diamond—a brush that came from Lam Sam Yick Brushes.

So how is this traditional and historic business undergoing such a makeover?

Lam Sam Yick’s store window, once full solely of traditional calligraphic tools, now features fashionable makeup tools as well, attracting many young women to the store.

Lin Changlong, 38, a graduate of Tunghai University’s College of Law, is the fourth-generation manager of Lam Sam Yick. Well aware that his naturally outgoing nature wasn’t going to make him a good fit for the strictness of the legal profession, before graduation he decided to head overseas and study restaurant management. He eventually had to give up on this when tuition fees proved to be too much, and in 2000 he returned home to help with the family business at the behest of his grandfather Lin Shixiu.

At that time, though, the traditional brush business was in a decline, with Lam Sam Yick selling only 60% of what they had at their peak. As he rode the streets of Taipei picking up goods and making deliveries, Lin Changlong began wondering if there were any other uses for brushes beyond calligraphy, anxiously looking for a way for the family business to break into a new market. He realized that the company was stuck thinking of brushes as solely a calligraphic thing, overlooking the other kinds of brush. Inspired, Lin began carving out a new, innovative path for Lam Sam Yick.

He tried visiting businesses that specialize in crafting Buddha statues, thinking they might have use for brushes when making final touch-ups on the statues; he tried visiting bakeries, thinking the bakers might have use for brushes when applying egg wash. Then one day, he was hit by inspiration as he walked past a nail salon. Opening the door and walking in, he handed a business card to one of the nail technicians as he introduced himself.

Unsurprisingly, on seeing a card from Lam Sam Yick Brushes, the technician responded by saying they didn’t need anything from there. Undaunted, Lin returned the next day with samples of some of their finer brushes, and over future visits he tested different thicknesses and hardnesses of brush, even forgoing the usual bamboo or wood brush handles and getting their factories to work on plastic and acrylic ones. Eventually, after constant adjustment and adaptation, Lin won the salon over.

The venerable firm of Lam Sam Yick Brushes has successfully reinvented itself, bringing color into the world of brushes.

Lin Changlong then began thinking about the manufacturing process. Lam Sam Yick’s calligraphy brushes go through a strict process, with all materials for the brush heads being hand-picked by master brushmakers and rigorously shaped into full heads before being shipped to Lam Sam Yick’s store to be attached to the handles. The actual process is a stringent 48-step one, and one that could equally be applied to the production of makeup brushes.

The main differences between calligraphy brushes and makeup brushes stem from the fact that makeup brushes, being used on the face, need to be comfortable and soft. This makes them more complex to manufacture than standard calligraphy brushes, and so Lin consulted with specialist makeup instructors, along with surveying user opinion and tapping his own experience with brushmaking, to adjust the materials and design of the brushes. To create brushes for rouge or foundation, for example, the company began using soft sheep’s wool for the bristles, making them better suited to use on the face; to create brushes more suitable for eyeshadow and eyeliner, they instead began using strong-but-flexible marten hair.

The venerable firm of Lam Sam Yick Brushes has successfully reinvented itself, bringing color into the world of brushes.

Despite diligently consulting both his expert brushmaker father Lin Rengui and many cosmeticians in the process of transforming the historic Lam Sam Yick brand, the biggest obstacle to making a successful entry into the cosmetics market proved to be the company’s own history. Over the years, Lam Sam Yick had become almost inextricably linked to calligraphy brushes.

In 2004, Lam Sam Yick was invited to participate in an exhibition of ancient Chinese writing accoutrements by department store chain Shin Kong Mitsukoshi. During the exhibition, Lin took the opportunity to test consumer reaction to the company’s new cosmetics brushes. While many people were very interested, many also asked whether the brushes would leave black marks on their faces, a result of the company’s image as being mostly about calligraphy and ink brushes.

Frustrated, but inspired, Lin realized the company’s image needed a makeover to build customer loyalty. In 2008, he created a brand for Lam Sam Yick named LSY, marking the start of shaping a new, fashionable brand image. On the use of a seal script calligraphic style for the brand logo, Lin says, “Traditionally calligraphy has been associated with the pursuit of inner beauty, but with this new brand, we hope to combine the spirit of calligraphy with a sense of fashion, symbolizing the pursuit of both inner and outer beauty.”

Moving into the cosmetics industry, says Lin, had him feeling like he was riding a bicycle on a freeway—he had to work much harder than everyone else there just to keep up.

In the early days of the LSY brand, Lin and his wife Huang Yongjing traveled the length and breadth of Taiwan, attending 20-plus cosmetics exhibitions and trying to secure short-term space in department stores to display and promote their products. They also sent female staffers out to “go undercover” and check out the competition in department stores. Finally, to really pull in customers, they decided to set the prices of their brushes some 20% lower than the big international brands, pricing their brushes between NT$1000 and NT$5000.

Slowly but surely, LSY-brand brushes began to find a niche in the Taiwanese cosmetics market, not only in stores, but also online, and in 2012 the brand struck the jackpot, securing space in the hotly contested Nanjing West Road branch of Shin Kong Mitsukoshi.

That same year, Lin also obtained the chance to work with makeup artist Liu Yan, well known for her work on the women’s TV program Queen, developing a facial cleansing brush. He also signed an agreement with Japanese company Sanrio to license the image of Hello Kitty.

LSY’s exclusive Hello Kitty makeup brush set remains their top seller, moving as many as 1000 units a month. After almost eight years of hard work, LSY now accounts for some 40% of Lam Sam Yick’s sales.

Above the door of Lam Sam Yick Brushes hangs a sign using the calligraphy of former Control Yuan president and renowned calligrapher Yu Youren, an illustration of the esteem in which Lam Sam Yick’s brushes are held.

“Moving into makeup brushes was really just a matter of survival in a crisis,” says Lin. But this move doesn’t mean he’s forgotten the company’s past—the next step for the firm will be taking the lessons in creativity learned from the LSY project to repackage and promote their traditional calligraphy brushes, working to make them part of the souvenir and gift market.

Sitting quietly in a corner working on outbound orders, Lin Rengui smiles as he watches his son Lin Changlong rushing about. The elder Lin has already passed the business into the capable hands of the younger, who has taken to the challenge of giving this old company a new face with creativity and vigor.

Lin Changlong (left) took the reins of Lam Sam Yick Brushes from his father Lin Rengui (right), and has since injected a new sense of innovation to this historic company, expanding their business into cosmetics brushes.

Combining calligraphic tradition with cosmetics-industry innovation, Lam Sam Yick’s new LSY brand has helped this historic business develop a playful new face for the 21st century.