lly -- by sending an expedition to the highest mountains on the seven continents of the world. The idea came from Chen Kun, president of Atunas, as an event marketing strategy to promote his company's products. All members of the "Seven Summits" expedition -- there are six of them -- will wear clothes of the Atunas brand.
The expedition is a NT$25 million project and will be completed by 2008. It has received support from several government agencies including the National Council on Physical Fitness and Sports and the Executive Yuan Southern Taiwan Service Center.
"Taiwanese have been on top of Mount Everest. But no Taiwanese had ever done the near-impossible mission of climbing all the seven highest peaks in the world," Chen said.
"What we want to do is to send a message to the rest of the world that Taiwan-made outdoors garments are of the highest quality," he continued. "Our products can withstand any type of high-altitude climate and protect the wearer against extreme cold. On some of the mountains we are going to climb, temperatures may drop to as low as minus 40 degrees Celsius."
Atunas is the brand of Taichung City-based Sun Own Industrial Co., Ltd. The company, founded by Chen's father, began as a manufacturer of beach sandals. With Taiwanese textile manufacturers migrating to China en masse in the 1980s, Sun Own decided to stay on the island and shift its focus to high value-added products, such as surfboards and other water sports accessories.
An avid outdoor adventurer, the junior Chen founded his own business focusing mostly on sportswear and outdoor garments under the Atunas brand. The business eventually became profitable and was merged into the Sun Own Group. Today, Atunas is the leading brand in Taiwan's outdoor garments market.
Among Atunas products are mountain climbing jackets, pants, underwear and accessories under its Gore-Tex, Windstopper, Polartec and X-Static series. The company is now developing a range of biking clothes as part of its goal to become a leading bicycle clothes and accessories supplier by 2008.
Despite the company's success, Chen is not complacent. He wants to expand the Atunas brand to the rest of the world. "Our company focuses mostly on the domestic market. Exports only account for a small portion of Atunas' business," he said.
For this, Chen has sought help from different organizations, including the Taiwan Textile Research Institute (TTRI), which provided invaluable marketing research data, Chen said.
Thomas Huang, TTRI chairman, said he has been impressed by what Atunas had done in marketing its products. "As a research and development organization, TTRI does not do marketing for a particular company. Yet we can provide market research data to help textile firms expand their products to other parts of the world," he said.
Promoting a brand in Japan, North America and Europe is no easy task, as they already have their own brands. Believing that more effort needs to be made to make Taiwanese brands visible internationally, Chen came up with the idea of the "Seven Summits" project. The adventurers, who have already climbed two of the seven mountains, are now on their way to the third, Aconcagua in South America.
To make sure Atunas products can withstand the extremely low temperatures on those mountains, Chen tested Atunas clothes at TTRI's cutting-edge atmospheric laboratories, where temperatures were lowered to minus 40 degrees Celsius to simulate high-altitude environments.
"We were glad to extend a helping hand," TTRI's Huang said. "It's important to get everything set up before you engage in something as challenging as this."
Chen said the Seven Summits project will not only put Taiwan on top of the world but also provide something for him and his staff to remember.
"Years from now when I look back at this, I can tell my children that our company took part in an event that truly put Taiwan on the top," he said.
