Argox kicked off the New Year with our first annual World Tour, starting with a Southeast Asia road show. In the first three weeks of January, Argox engineers conducted training classes and demoed products for over 20 distributors in Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

The purpose of the Argox road shows is to visit new and existing customers, instruct them on the use of our standard products, and introduce new products and applications. This also gives Argox an opportunity to understand our customers' technical capabilities, learn about local market conditions, and suggest products that are relevant to their markets.

Over the coming months Argox plans to conduct similar activities in other parts of the world, with more road shows in Southeast Asia, India, and South America. Together this series of road shows will become the Argox World Tour of 2005.

Just before the Chinese New Year break Argox held it's year-end party to celebrate a prosperous 2004 and to thank employees, suppliers, and customers for their help. The party was held at the new Agora Garden Hotel, near Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world.

Around 300 people attended the outdoor gathering, which featured an extensive buffet and a band singing pop and jazz standards. Employees hosted the event, telling jokes and holding a prize drawing for televisions, vacuum cleaners, DVD players, and little red envelopes filled with money.

As the evening progressed each of the company's top managers had a chance to express their appreciation for a successful year. It was also time to hand the reins over to the new CEO, Tom Wei. The management of Argox rotates the responsibility of CEO among the five original founders, who each serve in the position for two years. The new CEO talked of the challenges ahead and shared his optimism that Argox would reach its goals.

The year-end party was a great success and some were already wondering how Argox would top it next year. The good news is that they have another whole year to think about it.

The CeBIT show is set for March 10~16 in Hannover. The full range of Argox products will be on display. The annual show is one of the world's largest for information products. Argox will have a chance to meet with important partners and dealers to discuss next year's plan for the pan-European marketplace. We look forward to discussing marketing, products and applications, and seeing what new products the show has to offer this year.

The Labelshow 2005 is scheduled for March 14~17. This is the second year Argox exhibits in Moscow and we will have a booth with product demonstrations. Our goal is to begin establishing brand recognition and image in Russia. Since we are officially setting up our distribution network, we are sending a senior sales team to staff our booth.

We always enjoy seeing old friends and meeting new ones, so if you are in Hannover or Moscow for the shows, please stop by and say hello.

By the end of `97, Argox was starting to break even from sales of their first printer, and the five partners were discussing the direction to follow. Of course there were five different opinions, but as they talked two points of view began to emerge. One was to quickly develop many new products, and the other was to do deeper research into which products to make. These two points of view clashed in discussions of their next product.

At the time there were no companies in Taiwan producing a heavy-duty commercial barcode printer. There was a good reason – global competition in this segment was especially fierce. In Japan there were 10 makers, in the U.S. 15 makers, and in Europe there were 10 makers. With so many competitors, should Argox enter this segment? One group of partners said yes, let's invest in this product. The other group said no, since the first product had just broke even, and they had concerns about the potential ROI for the new product.

The partners argued for two months on whether to go ahead, even to the point of pounding on tables. Finally after much wrangling back and forth, all were persuaded to invest in the new product. The project developed quickly and the new printer was ready within six months. The printer was launched in the summer of `98, but sales were disappointingly low. In the meeting room opinions and comments flew back and forth, and there were arguments that would raise the ceiling. Why were sales so bad? And what could Argox do about it? (to be continued)