What elder brother says, goes
Outsiders can't help asking, although orders have been on the rise, how can they keep all of the ever-increasing number of team members happy?
Lin explains that there are three levels to the group. The first consists of 15 core firms in the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park, the second of Central Taiwan firms within 72 kilometers, and the third of firms anywhere in Taiwan. If the first tier can handle an order, they get it; whatever they can't cope with goes to the second and third tiers.
"TTG is a fair and unselfish platform," says Foundation's Window Lin. Members really trust "Chairman Lin's" judgment, so they don't worry that some other guy is getting more, and they don't withhold raw materials from each other.
He says there are two reasons why firms can honestly work together through TTG: One is that the upstream supplier Taiwan Glass Industrial Corporation offers stable and transparent pricing of materials. The other is that Jackson Lin has earned the trust of downstream firms.
"Usually you have to pay up front when you get glass, but Chairman Lin lets us take materials on credit and pay when we get the money. He even built a huge warehouse to keep a supply of glass on hand," says Window Lin. It's not just talk that has kept more than 100 company bosses convinced.
"I'm proud to serve TTG," says Feng Zongqing, the head of design at TGA Glass Enterprise in Tainan. He joined TTG as an unpaid advisor because he was inspired by Lin's vision and willingness to sacrifice. "TMG covers all the costs of the Glass Hall alone, and at the 2008 furniture exhibition put up the money and manpower for 60 stands."
Perfect competition
The success of TTG has even impressed IKEA's 83-year-old founder Ingvar Kamprad, who came to Taiwan from Sweden in March 2008 to figure out how TTG was able to grow year after year while other Taiwanese traditional industries were surrendering to low-cost mainland competition.
Chu Chih-ning, an assistant professor in Chung Yuan Christian University's Business Administration Department who has followed TMG and TTG closely, says that Lin's selflessness and foresight stem from his grasp of the reality of perfect competition, which has enabled him to build long-term relationships of trust between group members. No one dares strike out on his own for fear of losing the support of the closely knit network.
"There are low barriers to entry in the glass processing industry, technology is transparent, and substitutability is high, so buyers are in a strong position to force suppliers to cut prices to the bone." Chu explains that this "perfect competition" means that survival is almost impossible without cooperation, which has been a powerful condition contributing to TTG's strength.
As Lin perceived, in a market of perfect competition, expanding one's own scale and swallowing up competitors is not the most efficient strategy. On the other hand, if each cooperating plant has room to maneuver and there is flexible negotiation, this gets the most out of group scale. You can see how efficient this has been for TMG, as over the last ten years revenues have increased by five times, but the number of employees has increased by only 10%.
Safe thru the storm
The advantages of TTG's organization have been especially obvious since the financial tsunami of 2008.
"No single tree among us is very large, but our 'forest' has a strong foundation, so we won't topple." Lin says that although orders have unavoidably been affected, no TTG member has laid off workers. Unless bosses engage in private financial speculation, all the members of the group should get through the storm OK.
What is most gratifying to Lin is that at first Taiwan Glass Industrial Corporation strongly opposed Lin's efforts to organize collaboration. They argued that glass is too fragile to move around from company to company, so it is not suited to a division of labor. But now that the effectiveness of collaboration is making itself obvious, Taiwan Glass-which had previously frozen all new investment in Taiwan-returned in 2005 to put over NT$2 billion into a new plant in the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park, and recently has even been talking about providing money to TTG to shore up its finances.
Collective branding
Lin says that TTG has two directions for the future: ODM on the one hand, plus R&D and design on the other, to build a "TTG" brand name.
"There's still a lot of room for development in the glass industry," says Feng Zongqing, who racked up six patents in six months at TGA Glass Enterprise. A lot of operators only need advice on identifying specific problems; then the possibilities for development will open up. Since joining TTG he has brought in a lot of research from the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) to help firms upgrade.
Lee Chein-dhau, a researcher in the Material & Chemical Research Laboratories at ITRI, says that ITRI's Glass Industy Promotion Project has helped over 135 firms in upgrading in the last three years, including materials development, production process improvements, and product and technical development. For example, it is helping TMG make high-grade construction glass out of recycled bottles. Though the project is still embryonic because of the high technical barriers, there is enormous potential because recyclables are low in cost and there is no similar technology anywhere else.
Over the last three years TTG has also actively participated in international industry fairs, generating name recognition. Lin knows that branding is a long road, but "it is dreams that make people great."
Having served as chairman of the management committee for the Tianhou Temple in Lugang, Lin quips that he "was sent by the deities to inspire people to dream." In fact, he is now building a temple made almost entirely of glass and built on environmental principles. The interior decor will be based on ideas gathered from throughout the glass industry.
Having wrought a miracle out of Taiwan's OEM glass industry, TTG now aims to fix an "equals" sign between "Taiwan" and "glass" in the minds of the world.