Around then BTC was retained by a Taiwanese manufacturer to design a keyboard that could be sold as part of an inexpensive Apple-clone system. Chu wanted BTC to make keyboards from the same design and sell to Taiwanese companies exporting to Europe and the U.S. Su went along with Chu's plan. By August of 1984 Chu was attracting so many orders that for the next three years BTC's plant could only fill half the orders.
"Every time I talked to a foreign buyers," Chu recalls, "there were two questions: Which keyboard is cheapest and which one is highest?" The mid-priced brands were ignored. Competition was the most intense at the low end. "High price had high visibility. Low price had high visibility. We had a high price, our quality was poor. We had [the] choice [of charging the] lowest price, but there would be no way to pick up [the quality]. So only one choice, the high price."
The owner went with Chu's recommendation to price their keyboards at the high end. That gave BTC the profits with which to improve quality.
"Even if the first batch was poor quality," Chu says, "when the second batch hits the street, the average still looks okay. If they find defects, you say, 'Don't worry, we have two versions available already. Which one are you talking about?' So they forget [about the first batch]. That bought us time.
"At that time 95% [of buyers] went for the low priced product, 5% went for the high. If the buyer is willing to pay more money for better quality, that's another choice. We had enough profits to buy the best components to make things happen as needed. So be creative first, then make a product to meet expectations."
The company's keyboard shipments grew 30% a month. By the time Chu left BTC in 1987 it had 200 employees.
But years of selling English-language tapes had done little to improve Chu's English. That hindered dealings with American and European buyers.
"At the Taipei computer show," he recalls, "I didn't know how to speak English. I tried to practice a few sentences, 'How are you?' Very few sentences I continued to repeat, I always pronounced slowly. My sales assistants at the booth said, 'Jim, you have very good English.' I had many opportunities to meet people and talk and talk. So I had an opportunity to learn. Products are sold with talk. How can you talk too much?"
For the first two years Chu was BTC's sole salesperson. When he hired an assistant it was just to turn away orders that couldn't be filled and to explain production delays.
Despite all the orders past debts and the need to finance more inventory to fill orders kept BTC short of cash. Each time it was in danger of bouncing a check, Chu scrambled to get loans from his sister who now owned a small but thriving jewelry business.
Chu's salary then was about $1,000 U.S. per month, equivalent to about $1,800 in today's dollars. "I felt it was acceptable [so I could] continue learning. It gave me [the freedom to be] involved. Some people think, 'I need a good company with good operations,' but I feel it was great for me. There were no rules, so I set the rules for the company. I set the rules for manufacturing, for accounting, for everybody, including my boss.
"If I had a better education, I could have gone to some bigger company, but I wouldn't have had that opportunity. When I left the company it was [one of the top five] keyboard manufacturers in the world. So this cycle [of failure to success] helped me a lot. It was better than if I started on my own. I've experienced the whole cycle already."
Lily graduated from college in June of 1985. Chu asked her to join him in Taipei. They married on June 30.
Chu made his first overseas sales trip later that summer. He flew to Los Angeles with Steel Su, then went to Van Nuys where one of Su's friends lived. Their first difficulty was renting a car for the drive up to San Jose. At that time Taiwanese law forbade the issuance of credit cards. Chu and Su were ushered to the back office to present their passports and Chu's international driver's license. In the end they managed to drive away with the cheapest car on the lot.
"We were very poor," Chu recalls. "I forgot how much money we had, something like $100. I was scared that we wouldn't have money to eat so I borrowed some money from my sister." The pair ended up needing that $200.
In San Jose they visited a series of no-name clonemakers. To save money they bought bread and canned meat at a market and ate in the car. They stayed in the cheapest motel they could find.
They returned to Taiwan with new orders. In the short term, at least, that meant more struggling to finance more inventory. That November cashflow got so bad no one was paid through the following January.
"So many times I borrowed money for the company," Chu recalls. "Huge demand but very slow output--that caused the problem. But fortunately, nobody left [the company] at that time. For me it was very difficult, going for three months without salary. I thought, how can I survive?"
In early 1986 Chu saw BTC's potential for a bright future. He borrowed about $60,000 from his sister and invested gave it to Su as his investment.
Chu's success in selling for BTC might have been rewarded. Unfortunately, that wasn't how Su saw things. Now that BTC was becoming successful, he began to chafe at Chu's importance to it.
"When a small company is poor," Chu says, "the owner will take any medicine that can cure the company's problem. It doesn't matter if the medicine is difficult to swallow. I'm a person who was difficult to swallow, but very good for its health. I pushed very very hard. I would say to the production manager, 'Why didn't it happen? Why do you have too many spools today and tomorrow you have no cable? Why can't you plan a little better?'"
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BTC hired a new generation of credentialed managers who resented Chu's interference. Worse yet, Chu's success on BTC's behalf gave him recognition in the industry. That became a sore point with Steel Su. He came to see Chu as a rival for the spotlight.
"I wanted to please my boss," Chu recalls. "But my philosophy was, 'If the company is not growing, even if my boss likes me, loves me, what's the use? It's still a small company. My teacher still is no teacher.' So if I can grow the company, even if it causes problems with my boss, I will become a big sales manager in a big company. So I'm thinking how to keep this a growing company, not keep a good relationship. 'This is bad with the production manager, this is bad with the accounting manger'. I pushed so much. At management meetings I pushed hard. I didn't want the company to stop growing."
BTC still had a long way to go, Chu felt, but Su preferred listening to his new managers telling him how well things were going. There was little question who would lose that political game.
Chu's solution was to physically remove himself from Su's presence. They had been traveling frequently to the U.S. Chu suggested that BTC open a branch office in U.S. that he would head up. In 1986 he moved alone to Fremont to open BTC USA. Lily would join him the following June. BTC USA was successful beyond expectations, selling $1.1 million in its third month.
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