The Height of Success

 
With twenty years of Taiwanese management experience and a 300-strong Chinese manufacturing facility, Acme's iSolution range is set to take the installation lighting market by storm. mondo*dr talks to President Joe Chung to discover Acme's programme for success...

"Acme is pre-programmed!" says Acme President Joe Chung, echoing the tagline which runs throughout the company's latest advertising campaign. Principally a reference to the extensive range of intelligent effects that Acme produces, the statement, says Chung, is actually descriptive of the company as a whole: "For us it's not only a slogan but also the philosophy for our daily operation. We have the best pre-programmed lighting shows built in to our lighting fixtures; but also, the running of our company is pre-programmed, too. There are many programmes planned half a year to a year ago; and the focus of our team is to make sure these programmes all run smoothly."

As you would expect, these long-term plans all follow a similar theme: how to satisfy customers' needs. Over the last twenty years, Acme's 'programme' of gradually strengthening their competitive abilities step by step have helped the company to achieve its current position as a world player in effects lighting.

When Acme was first founded, their main business was in the supply of very simple effects, like beacons, pin spots and foggers. A concerted effort to gather information on a greater range of lighting products led the company on a transformation which has expanded their distribution across the world and moved them away completely from their original client base.

By the early '90s Acme had become a fully-fledged member of the international effects lighting industry. The operation based in Taiwan now had a committed R&D team and their main sales channels in America and Europe were well established.

"We kept in close discussion with customers about new product developments," says Sales Manager William Chang "However, the competition from China was getting bigger and bigger, so the challenge for us became when and how to move the facilities to China."

This move came five years ago, in what Acme refer to as the 'developing stage' of the company's history. Whilst the business HQ remained in Taiwan, the manufacturing arm of the production process moved to China. "In addition to Taiwan's managerial experience and China's low labour cost, our dedication to R&D and satisfying market needs differentiate us from other Chinese competitors," Chang notes.

The R&D team's first aim is always to make the traditional DMX lights as easy-to-use as possible, rather than to just make luminaires with more and more channels. As evidence, they point to the wide range of dyanamic pre-programmed lighting shows found in their lighting fixtures. This, along with fixtures' automatic switching between DMX and stand alone operations, allow users to, as Acme put it, "enjoy the active lighting shows at your fingertips."

"For product development, our priorities are: performance comes first, then reliability, convenience, and price comes last," says Joe Chung. "We have to entertain ourselves first, then we can entertain customers, and only with fabulous performance and easy operation, can one achieve this target."

iSolution, Acme's newest product line, best exemplifies the concept of performance, reliability, convenience, and price. The range caters for the needs of venues in terms of lighting variety, easy installation, and easy operation. iSolution is a new concept in that it integrates most of the popular lighting fixtures a nightclub needs into a control system, simplifying the troublesome procedures of installation and making the operation as easy as possible.

Users can, for example, set the DMX address of each lighting fixture remotely, with no need to memorise the channel configuration of the lights, or figure out the starting DMX address value when setting the DMX address.

Feedback on the iSolution from customers around the world is very enthusiastic. The UK distributors Prolight Concept Ltd are no exception: the launch of the iSolution range at this year's PLASA has already led to a great deal of interest from UK customers, with Prolight doubling their initial order with Acme just to keep up with demand.

"Prolight have been working with Acme since 1994," Business Development Manager Mark Walsh tells mondo*dr. "They are a pleasure to deal with, very efficient and a great team of dedicated people. The relationship we have built over the last ten years is second to none."

This is not just the usual polite spin, Acme have consistently delivered products that sell well. In the eighteen months since the launch of the Spot Knight 250w moving head, 3,000 units have already been sold. "Consistent reliability and innovation, unlike most far eastern suppliers, has been the key to our relationship'" continues Walsh. "They provide excellent quality equipment at a price that is affordable."

The growth in Acme's global popularity has led to an expansion of the 300-strong workforce at the Chinese facility. This has in turn enabled the company to shorten the lead time to meet customers' needs.

"We have a real passion for the lighting industry and are always looking to the future for new ideas, improving product quality and production efficiency," Joe Chung concludes. "We would very much like to thank our customers for their support, and promise we will always do our best to bring them goods with performance, reliability, convenience, and reasonable price."