Toronto business award winner uses Hong Kong for product development

April 12th, 2010

For Round 5 Corporation, the Canadian company which won the “Best Asia Pacific Business Award” in Toronto last weekend, one of the formulas of its success is to set up an office in Hong Kong to look after product development and quality control.

With its popular collectible figurines of athletes involved in the UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) fighting competitions being manufactured in mainland China, Round 5’s mixed martial arts (MMA) related products are now available in over 6,000 retail outlets in North American, including Walmart, Toys“R”Us, Target, Kmart, Zellers, and Best Buy, etc.

The “Best Asia Pacific Business Award,” newly introduced by the Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office (HKETO) in Canada, and the Association of Chinese Canadian Entrepreneurs (ACCE), for the 14^th Chinese Canadian Entrepreneur Awards, was the highlight of the presentation ceremony held last weekend at the Hilton Suites Hotel.

“I welcome Canadian companies to come to Hong Kong, to find out how doing business there is not so hard,” said HKETO Director, Ms Maureen Siu, while presenting the award to Damon Lau, president and co-founder of Round 5. “There are so many success stories about how Canadian businesses use Hong Kong as a platform to expand their operations in Asia.”

“We introduced the Best Asia Pacific Business Award to showcase success stories of Canadian companies using Hong Kong as the platform for their Asia Pacific expansion,” said Royson Ng, President of the ACCE.

Ng added that this year, entries came from as far as British Columbia to compete for the eight award categories, including “Entrepreneur of the Year” and “Lifetime Achievement.”

Round 5’s staple product is a six-inch plastic collectible with caricature type style. “They have really big heads and really big fists, but the faces look very real,” Lau said. The Toronto-based company now sells more than 30 figures, retailing in Canada for C$14.99 and it plans to boost that number to more than 100 before 2012.

Lau said after signing a licensing agreement with the UFC last July, his company’s sales skyrocketed 700 per cent. “We then opened a Hong Kong office and are planning to launch six new product lines by 2011.

“Round 5 believes in quality over volume. Fans can expect our products to always get better and the line-ups always stronger,” said Lau. He said he was very involved in the production process. “We have most of the product development done in our Hong Kong Office.”

Lau said the United States is Round 5’s main market, while Canada accounts for 20 per cent of their sales. However, they also want to use Hong Kong as a gateway to expand their market in the Asia Pacific region.

Some of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) action figurines produced by “Round 5”.

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For more information, please contact: Stephen Siu, Assistant Director (Public Relations), Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office, at Tel: 416-924-5544, e-mail: Stephen_siu@hketotoronto.gov.hk, or Elison Chu, Senior Information Officer of the HKETO, at (416)924-7374 or email elison_chu@hketotoronto.gov.hk

Chinese version on next page.

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