Steve Woo used to fly business class every other week to Asia for Walnut-based ViewSonic Corp. to check on manufacturing for the computer monitor and TV maker’s liquid crystal displays screens.
Now he’s taking the same flights,but in coach,to get his fledging LCD television company off the ground.
“I was flying back and forth so much,” said Woo, chief executive of Mission Viejo-based EQD Corp. “I thought, ‘Why am I doing this for somebody else, when I could be doing this for myself?'”
Woo launched EQD in November, six months after leaving VeiwSonic. Like his former employer, Woo is selling TVs made by big producers in Taiwan and South Korea and slapping his brand name,Auria,on them.
There also are parallels to Irvine’s Vizio Inc., which has grown into one of the largest sellers of flat-panel TVs by selling low-cost sets made in Taiwan.
In fact, Woo even sounds like Vizio founder William Wang when he talks about bringing flat TVs to the masses.
“It seemed like only the super rich could afford flat-panel TVs,” Woo said. “My objective is to be an entry-level product.”
But the Vizio comparisons stop there.
EQD just started selling TVs in April via a handful of online retailers, including Aliso Viejo-based Buy.com Inc. and Seattle’s Amazon.com Inc. Vizio has yearly sales of about $2 billion and is big at Costco and Wal-Mart.
For now, Woo’s ambitions are modest: “I’m not looking to be a first tier player. I’m happy to play in the second and third tiers.”
Woo took EQD from idea to TV seller in about two months last year, just before January’s International Consumer Electron-ics Show in Las Vegas.
Like Vizio, EQD is competing on price. The company’s sets sell for up to 20% less than those of the big companies that dominate TV sales.
EQD plans to focus on smaller TVs ranging from 16- to 32-inch screens.
“The goal is to sell 90% of my TVs at 32-inch and below,” Woo said.
He said he’s not concerned about competing with Japan’s Sony Corp., South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. or Vizio in bigger TVs.
“I’m not interested in going up against them,” Woo said.
Flat TV sales have held up during the downturn. February U.S. sales of LCD TVs rose 39% from a year earlier, according to market tracker NPD Group Inc.
“As the economy continues to sour, people aren’t going to travel as much,” Woo said. “So families are going to stay home and watch TV.”
Woo’s Past
Woo spent the past 25 years working for ViewSonic, Toshiba Corp., Xerox Corp. and Western Digital Corp.
Most recently, he was vice president and general manager of ViewSonic’s LCD TV division. He was part of a bid by ViewSonic,known for computer monitors,to expand into TVs.
He helped ViewSonic go after parts of the market that weren’t already dominated by the big guys,a scenario he hopes to repeat with EQD by focusing on smaller TVs.
The company is hoping to attract attention with a two-year warranty on its TVs, taking a page from Fountain Valley’s Hyundai Motor America, which originally offered a 100,000-mile warranty on all of its cars.
“I know the longevity and quality of these TVs because I have sold them for years,” Woo said. “If a TV is going to die, it’s going to be in the first 30 days.”
All of EQD’s TVs are being produced by the same factories that make ViewSonic’s, according to Woo.
“These are the exact same guys that I used to work with at ViewSonic and other companies,” Woo said. “The only difference now is I’m there on my time and dime.”
EQD is contracting with Fremont-based Synnex Corp. to handle warehousing and shipping for its TVs.
For now, Woo doesn’t plan to get his TVs in stores.
“It’s take an enormous amount of work to be on a shelf,” he said. “The shelves are the territory of the big boys.”
Nor does EQD plan to spend much money on advertising, leaving that to Amazon.com and other online stores to promote the products on their Web sites.
“I’ll pay the Web sites to advertise on their sites, but only to let consumers know that I’m here,” Woo said.
Woo is EDQ’s only fulltime employee on the books. He said he has several partners who work on an as-needed basis.
“When the business develops and grows, maybe I’ll have to add more employees,” he said.
