Fighting for their rights
To survive, towel manufacturers banded together in late 2004 to found a self-support organization. They held a public hearing in Taipei to petition the government to ban the import of fake-labeled mainland Chinese towels, and asked government agencies (such as the military) to purchase Taiwan-made towels.
Lin Kuo-lung formed the Yunlin Towel Industrial Technology and Development Association, serving as its first executive director, and petitioned the government to increase import tariffs on mainland Chinese towels. In March 2006, he chartered 25 tour buses to bring more than 1,000 towel makers to Taipei and protest the Taipei visit of Chen Yunlin, president of the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, fighting for the industry's right to survive.
Soon afterwards, the Ministry of Finance carried out an investigation, confirming that the mainland had dumped low-priced towels in Taiwan, and announced that starting September 2006, an anti-dumping tariff of 204.1% would be imposed on towels for five years. Taiwan's towel industry has bounced back under this protective umbrella.
However, the umbrella cannot remain open forever; the industry has to change to stay afloat. As Lin struggles to fight for Taiwan's towel industry, his son Michael has been vigorously searching for ways to transform the industry.
In fact, the popular Cake Towel was something that Michael Lin's wife folded together by hand during a family meeting.
But the road from idea to finished product was fraught with pitfalls. After several attempts and improvements, SL Towel was finally able to secure a Taiwanese patent for the Cake Towel via a cylindrical paper mold. Once that was in place, profits began to rise such that a small square towel worth little more than NT$10 tripled in value after being transformed into a cake.
A former Internet firm employee, Michael Lin returned home in 2004 to help the family business set up an online sales channel, and soon orders started pouring in, not only creating a market for the Cake Towel, but also boosting the added value of the towel industry.
In 2007, Michael Lin learned that the Ministry of Economic Affairs' Central Region Office was launching a tourist factory support program, and this jibed with Lin's ideas. Soon he began transforming the 30-year-old SL Towel factory into a tourist factory.
A towel is born
Unlike at other companies in the service industry, the guides at SL Towel's tourist factory do it the old fashioned way, carrying megaphones as they personally describe the process through which a towel is born, from design through weaving, eliciting the visitors' support for Taiwan's traditional industries.
SL Towel takes cotton imported from Pakistan and feeds it into the loom for warp knitting. To strengthen the yarn and prevent splitting, it's sized with cornmeal, then woven into cloth mechanically. After dyeing, it's cut into three or four strips, and then embellished with embroidery and other techniques. The towel thus becomes a finished work.
Cotton fibers fly around during the manufacturing process, so not only do employees need to be fully equipped with safety clothing, but visitors are only allowed to observe the weaving and production process through a glass partition.
But visitors can't view the dyeing and embroidering processes. Lin Kuo-lung explains that there are no longer any towel manufacturers in Taiwan whose manufacturing is entirely in house, and the work is farmed out to other small companies.
The manufacturing process for a tiny towel is complex, with eight processes altogether; moreover, if they're not carried out meticulously, numerous problems can crop up. Lin Kuo-lung says that towels are products that people apply to their skin daily, so quality is of utmost importance. A towel must be absorbent, colorfast, soft to the touch, and also non-toxic.
Have you used towels that become stickier and less absorbent the more you use them? Have you ever washed your face only to find colored dye on it? Lin Kuo-lung elucidates: some makers use artificial gums in place of food-grade cornmeal for sizing, making the towels stickier the more you wash with them. And before dyeing, the fabric must undergo six hours of steaming in order to bleach it white and cook away the sizing agent; otherwise impurities will render the towel less absorbent. As for colored dye ending up on your face, it's due to poor quality bleaching and non-colorfast dyes.
Moreover, dye safety is vital. If residues of inferior dyes on the towel are absorbed through the skin into the body, there's the risk of bladder cancer.
A father brings his daughter to the DIY workshop to fold towels. The girl's glowing smile is part of the added value that the tourist factory strives for.