Fujian Wideplus is a large, Hong Kong owned company established in 1991 to produce quartz analog timepieces, including watch and clock movements. Total sales for all of its products amounted to US$20 million last year.

Fujian Wideplus started increasing its watch output in 2003, the same year it started assembling watch movements. Last year, the ISO9001:2000-certified company sold US$4million worth of watches, all of which were exported.

Export sales grew 200 percent in2004, with Europe and the US as main markets. OEM work takes up 100 percent of export business.

Products
Quartz movements are the company's main product, which accounted for about 80 percent of its total sales in2004. Because of its focus on movements, Fujian Wideplus offers mostly quartz analog watches although analog-digital models are also available. The company does not make mechanical watches.

Classic models account for the majority of watch output. Because the company makes movements in-house, Fujian Wideplus can offer watches priced as much as 30 percent lower than those available from other makers in the province.

Fujian Wideplus only offers low end watches. Apart from quartz analog movements, all components such as straps and cases are outsourced.

Even with the focus on low end, the company invests heavily in R&D, spending as much as US$3 million annually. This, however, is used mainly to develop or improve movements.

Its 15-member R&D team can produce watch samples in 10 to 35 days. To strengthen its R&D capability further, Fujian Wideplushas hired two designers and plans to add more highly skilled staff to this department within the year.

Alloy, stainless steel and plastic are the preferred materials for cases while PVC and PU are used for straps. Watches are packed in cartons, bubblebags and metal boxes.

Manufacturing
Fujian Wideplus operates a 30,000sqmfactory run by more than 1,200workers. The factory has six watch assembly lines on the fourth floor, each with around 600 workers.

Main production processes are plastic injection and molding, watch assembly, quality control and packing. Most of the processes are done by hand with the exception of plastic injection and molding.

Fujian Wideplus follows a strict quality control system and uses timing machines imported from Germany and Japan to check whether products pass the company's standard rate of ± 1 second. The company's 35-memberQC team inspects the watches following AQL 1.0 and 1.5. Its defectrate is one watch per batch of 100.

With the rapid growth in its watch sales and exports, the company will be increasing its capacity by 20 to 50percent in the next 12 months. It will be upgrading its existing facilities to make room for additional equipment and will purchase a new 20,000sqmproperty to boost capacity further.

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