China might be close and a large growing market but Sonar Auto Parts believes that its quality replacement head and tail lamps are far better suited to the European and North American markets.

“China has cheap costs and labour,” said president Milton Yang. “So we have to do something that China can’t do, and that is small production. We can’t compete on mass production. Our product is more niche, so we have to do more designs each year.”

The company was established in 1964 by the father of Milton Yang and his brother Hubert Yang, the firm’s vice president.

“In North America and Europe, they need good quality control,” said Milton, “so we are focussed on that.”

And the strategy is working. The company employs 400 people and has three factories in Taiwan, one of which is being expanded.

“Three more buildings are being added,” he said, “but that won’t be enough so we are looking at building more.”

The company makes both traditional and LED lamps and has a catalogue that covers just about all the major car makers.

“We do everything from design to production,” said Hubert.

He said there were five steps the company followed when designing a replacement lamp starting with a thorough analysis of the production version of the lamp.

“We then reverse engineer the original lamp,” he said. “We have to follow the same approvals so we need to understand the original design.”

The third stage is to design something that fits with current trends.

“We have to look at all new cars including concept cars,” said Hubert. “We go to all the world’s car shows to see the trends in car development.”

The fourth and fifth stages are where the engineers get their hands on the design, altering the mechanics and optics, respectively. This is why the company steers away from the OEM market.

“We only do aftermarket,” said Milton. “The margins are not good enough to do the OEM market.”