Argox has opened a new branch office in Guangzhou, China, to serve our customers in south China. There is a growing market for barcode devices in this part of China due to the large amount of business investment there. Over the past six years Argox has operated through agents and distributors; however, slow growth in this area prompted Argox to reevaluate our sales strategy. The new office is to carry out a multi-channel strategy and go directly to resellers. This will strengthen our competitiveness and increase our market share. Argox has branch offices in cities throughout China with headquarters in Shanghai.

Argox is exhibiting at Scan-China, October 10~12, at the Shanghai Exhibition Center. Our booth will be hosted by staff from our local Shanghai office. China is a major market for Argox, and each year we host one of the show's largest booths. To address the needs of manufacturers and other enterprises with large logistics and inventory requirements, this year we are featuring our new PT Series portable data terminals as well as our line of industrial barcode printers. If you are in Shanghai for the show, please stop by and say hello.

Argox began as a wisp of an idea by a group of Acer managers who would meet in a stairwell to chat and have a smoke. "You could say Acer's non-smoking policy is what started our company," said Carlson Tao, VP of Business Development. Four of the company's founders, Tom, Jimmy, Carlson, and Chiu would use these impromptu sessions to discuss potential business opportunities. Carlson explains, "We had a very strong team at Acer. Our products were fax machines, scanners, cell phones, and printers. But we were a side business. The stars at Acer were the PC team and the monitor team." In the stairwell there was often talk about how underappreciated the team was. "We kept saying ‘we should do something big.’ Finally we decided to start looking for a business that we could all go into," said Carlson.

One of the future partners had heard that barcode printers were making a good profit, so Carlson was assigned to do market research. He went to a local distributor and bought a barcode printer. When he opened it up he was surprised to see the same type of components used in fax machines, scanners, and printers—the focus of his team. They future partners held their first meeting on Christmas day 1995, and compared the cost of components with the barcode printer's dealer price. Carlson said, "It looked as though this would be an easy way to make money..." (to be continued).