Buena Park-based Walong Marketing Inc. hopes to become the biggest Asian food distributor in the country by working its way up to mainstream American supermarkets.
But, for now, the company is focusing on its mainstay customer,the venerable Asian corner store.
“Most of our customers are mom-and-pop type stores that range in size from 7,000 to 40,000 square feet,” said Walong project manager Jonson Chen. “We don’t serve many of the larger grocery chains as yet.”
One chain it does do business with is the 99 Ranch Market, owned by Tawa Supermarkets Inc., the sister company of the year-old Walong.
Roger Chen, Jonson’s father, helms both Walong and Tawa. The Chens came to the U.S. during the 1980s from Taipei, Taiwan.
Tawa in 1999 counted $189 million in revenue, putting it at No. 3 on the Business Journal’s list of minority-owned businesses. Walong expects to generate about $2 million in revenue this year.
Walong, already one of the biggest Asian food distributors in California, handles a colorful mix of more than 3,000 packaged Asian food products. The top-selling items: soy milk and jasmine rice.
The company imports most of its products from China, Taiwan and Thailand. The product range includes mainly Chinese, Thai, Filipino and Vietnamese foods, but the company also offers Japanese and Korean items.
In addition to a 200,000-square-foot distribution center in Buena Park and another in San Jose, Walong has a network that extends throughout the U.S. and Hawaii, as well as to Indonesia and Canada. Next year, the company plans to open distribution centers in Houston, which has a large Asian population, and in Jersey City, a facility that will cover the New York region.
Walong has 250 workers and expects to grow to more than 400 in about a year as it expands, according to Jonson Chen.
The company also is expanding to the Internet, a move that could prove even more challenging than the company’s geographical push. Walong launched its Web site in June and says it got more than 1,000 hits during the month.
But Jonson Chen said so far only a few of Walong’s 400 customers are using the site.
“Most of our customers are very pen-and-paper oriented,they’re not that tech-savvy,” Chen said. “A lot of them still want actual salespeople to show up and haggle with them in person,they’re more comfortable with that than they are placing orders through a Web site.”
Walong wants to get at least 50% of its current customers ordering through the Web site on a weekly basis, according to Chen.
“Also we plan to use the Web site to approach potential customers that normally we couldn’t because of language and cultural barriers,” Chen said.
Chen also said Walong plans to pursue larger, more mainstream outlets, since demand for Asian foods is growing, even among non-Asians.
“We want to supply Asian products to other markets, including regular American grocery stores,” Chen said. “We think each year more people are getting used to foods from cultures other than their own,products like soy milk now pretty much have achieved an across-the-board popularity, regardless of ethnicity.”
The company has a fleet of 15 trucks delivering products statewide, each hauling 20- to 40-foot containers.
Whatever Walong needs beyond that, it turns to contract trucking companies.
“Working with other truck companies takes a lot of phone calls, a lot of negotiations,” Chen said.
But Chen said that outsourcing trucking has an upside in that the industry is competitive,it’s easy to shop around.
“If a company doesn’t work out to our liking than we simply try a different company,” he said.
Walong’s biggest competitors include Pomona-based Tung Enterprise Inc., which recorded about $4 million in revenue last year. Another key competitor is Los Angeles-based Cathay LA Inc., according to Walong planning and development specialist Frank Hsu.
“A lot of our competitors are not big companies,” Chen said. “Much of our competition comes from smaller competitors that tightly specialize by focusing on selling only a few items.” n
