From the US Independence Day to Israel's Peace Day, he is busy with many a country's celebrations. In fact, it's hard to find another person who would be even half as enthusiastic as him with such celebrations.

And he has more than a good reason for that, for he supplies decorative lighting equipment to light up many cities across the globe.

Meet Ben Fan, a Pearl River Delta region-based Taiwan businessman. In his 50s, Fan is chairman of Neo-Neon International Ltd, one of the world's biggest companies of its kind. One of its strongest points is the high-tech light-emitting diode (LED) products.

But what is a LED? Fan says that unlike the traditional bulb, a LED product doesn't need a filament and lights up when electricity passes through it.

The revolutionary technology can yield, at least in theory, tens of thousands of colours, and is smaller and safer, and far cooler to touch than the ordinary bulb. But the products' greatest unique selling point is its environmentally-friendly quality because it saves energy. It is more durable, too, says Fan.

Fan bases his business in Jiangmen, a small town in South China's Guangdong Province, and claims to have a 60 per cent share of the global market for Christmas lights. For other decorative lighting products, it accounts for 30 per cent each of the US and the Chinese mainland markets and 20 and 15 per cent of the Asian (excluding the Chinese mainland) and European markets.

Thanks to large overseas investments, the mainland has become one of the world's main lighting facilities' producers. The country exported 55 billion yuan (US$6.8 billion) worth of lighting instruments in 2004, according to China Illuminating Engineering Society (CIES) Secretary-General Liu Shiping. As such, the two coastal provinces of Guangdong (most noticeably its Pearl River Delta region) and Jiangsu have grown into the world's important lighting production bases.

Neo-Neon's facility in Jiangmen is like a city by itself. It has 30 factories and 20 work sites manned by 10,000 employees. But Fan's strength is not only his sprawling production facility. His path of growth has always been lit by innovation.

Starting from scratch

He began with a small private venture in Taiwan in 1978, with only one engineer and two workers. Initially, he didn't make much headway untill 1985, the year he invented the decorative Duralight by inserting traditional small bulbs. Soon, international orders started pouring in.

The other milestone year for him was 1990, the year he decided to shift his production base to Jiangmen. Though his initial investment in the Pearl River Delta region venture was only 4 million yuan (US$500,000), the decision to shift base started to pay off quickly. The "handsomely" lower production costs made Neo-Neon more competitive and he got the maximum out of his 80 workers, he says.

That Fan has made it big in Jiangmen and not in Guzhen makes his achievement even greater. For Guzhen is renowned across the world as the mainland's top city and "physical market" for lighting equipment. Located near Zhongshan of Guangdong, Guzhen exports these products to 83 countries and regions and accounts for as much as 60 per cent of the domestic market. Its more than 5,000 factories yielded a gross domestic product of 7.65 billion yuan (US$943 million) and reportedly exported over US320 million worth of goods every year.

Fan's shift to Jiangmen was followed by an almost exponential growth that, Fan quotes industry analysts as saying, was expected to rise from US$3.2 billion in 2004 to US$5.6 billion in 2008. Neo-Neon's sales revenue in 2004 was 1.2 billion yuan (US$147.97 million), US$60 million of which came from exports. Fan expected a yearly increase of 30 per cent in sales revenue in 2005.

"Decorative lighting is increasingly becoming a high-tech business," he says. "Only if a company invests generously in R&D (research and development) can it maintain a firm foothold in the market."

Fan's firm has 120 engineers in its Jiangmen R&D centre, and another 200 on its production line, and its yearly R&D budget exceeds 10 million yuan (US$1.23 million). Neo-Neon employs about 50 designers from Australia, Italy and the United States, and has more than 400 patents registered at home and abroad.

Fan says his company supplies 10,000 varieties of lighting products and has been diversifying its range by 30 per cent a year. He begins work on a product three to five years before actually launching it.

And while working on a new product, his greatest concerns are how to save energy and make them environmentally friendly. Many economies, including the Chinese mainland, are encouraging such new-generation lighting products. "So our R&D efforts have to meet market expectations."

Fan is confident that his company, because of the advantages it enjoys in technologies and resources, would be able to finance its own R&D. What he is worried about is rampant IPR (intellectual property rights) violation on the mainland.

Since 2001, Neo-Neon has filed complaints against 50 domestic companies that had either copied its product designs or catalogues, or its trademark and patents. It has won 16 cases and received more than 2.37 million yuan (US$300,000) in compensation, while the other cases are still pending.

For sales, Neo-Neon depends heavily on its franchise plan. According to Fan, 40 outlets were due to come up in large cites, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu, by the end of 2005.

Editor: Yan