Family-run motorcycle business transformed with modern management

Taipei, March 1 (CNA) As a child, Huang Po-jung (黃柏容) had never thought of going into his family’s motorcycle repair business.

Motorcycle repair craftsmen in Taiwan are nicknamed “black hands,” referring to their dirty and greasy hands stained with the lubricants of the vehicles they work with, and as a boy Huang had disliked this image.

But all this changed after a chance conversation with a university teacher when Huang was an undergraduate majoring in business administration at the Taipei Chengshih University of Science and Technology.

The chair of his department persuaded him to take advantage of his newly-acquired management skills to upgrade his parents’ motorcycle shop as part of an internship program in his course.

Working in his father’s shop would give him an opportunity to employ all the knowledge of marketing and managing that he had learned at school.

Enthused, Huang drew on a passion for custom motorcycles to organize for the family shop to sell custom motorcycle accessories online. He also computerized the management of the shop, allowing the family business to reduce its stock of spare parts and lower operating costs.

Huang also renovated his parents’ motorcycle repair shop. He persuaded his father to invest in interior design to make the shop more fashionable and stylish and introduced motorcycle graphics with themes from the movie “Iron Man,” in order to entice the younger generation and netizens on the Internet.

Through attractive graphic designs, Huang was able to sell some of the custom motorcycle accessories and spare parts at several times their usual price.

Now that he has graduated with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, Huang is prepared to take over his father’s shop and develop even more innovative services for his customers.

(By Chen Chih-chung and Kuo Chung-han)
Enditem/JR

Family-run motorcycle business transformed with modern management