"I told my wife to start making a lot of money so she could help support the
business," Chen recalls. He became Sunrider's one-man production
department. Using small, manual equipment, he turned raw herbs into
extract, a miniature version of the process performed now by equipment a
thousand times larger. He was also the one-man sales force.
"I never thought I could make money selling herbs," Chen recalls. "Nobody
did. I was very fortunate." First-year sales were an impressive $330,000.
Since then, according to Chen, sales have doubled every year until 1990 at
which time it hit the $300 million mark.
The Chens' fifth child, a son, was born in 1984, when Sunrider was beginning
to earn the Chens a more comfortable living.
In 1988 Chen moved his center of operations to Southern California.
Currently about half of Sunrider's sales is in the U.S. Taiwan is the second
biggest market, with about a sixth of the sales volume. Third largest is
Canada. Sunrider's U.S. operations are housed in six large buildings in
Torrance and the City of Industry totaling over a half million square feet, all
of it reflecting the enormous profits Chen has reinvested into expanding
research and production. Over the last five years Sunrider has built two
plants in Taiwan and corporate offices in Canada, Taiwan, Hong Kong,
Thailand, Korea, Australia, Malaysia, Japan, New Zealand and The
Netherlands.
ear Kao Shiung, in Southern Taiwan, Sunrider owns a botanical garden which
Chen uses to produce high quality herbs to compare with those provided by
suppliers. "We research everything, how to make it better, when is best time
to harvest. So the raw material we use are the best in the world."
[CONTINUED BELOW]
Raw herbs are shipped to Sunrider's washing plant in Hong Kong where they
are thoroughly cleansed. "All the water that goes into the products have
been filtered through activated charcoal, reverse osmosis, and ultraviolet
light sterilized. This is a health product so we like to keep it pure, no
preservatives in the products, all pure.
To produce the herbal extract that form the basis of many Sunrider products,
four to seven pounds of raw herbs are dried to produce one pound of raw
material. That pound is then boiled to produce a kind of tea, thereby
separating the active ingredients from bulky fibers. The solution is then
condensed to remove most of the water and spray-dried to produce a fine
powder. The powder is later remixed with purified water to produce a half
pound of concentrate.
Passionate about quality, Chen perforsonally conceives and develops new or
improved products. He shows me scent strips he is currently working with in
developing a new line of herbal cosmetics in consultation with Oi Lin. He goes
into minute detail about specific research and production techniques. "I get
my hands wet," he tells me with a gentle smile. Though he is dressed in a
tasteful blue-gray suit and subdued blue tie, I am convinced that Chen
regularly dons a white smock and spends long hours in Sunrider's main
laboratory in its City of Industry building.
PAGE 8
ear Kao Shiung, in Southern Taiwan, Sunrider owns a botanical garden which
Chen uses to produce high quality herbs to compare with those provided by
suppliers. "We research everything, how to make it better, when is best time
to harvest. So the raw material we use are the best in the world."
