KAMA CORPORATION. LTD

Elton was able to obtain the signature of Mr. Mark Spitz, then the U.S. 7 Gold Medal swim Champion at the Olympic competition, on the swim product packages that eventually created great impacts on its sales to all major department store chains and sporting goods store chains as well as other sales outlets throughout the whole United States. Years later Elton expanded its markets to Canada, Mexico, UK, Italy and Australia.


As Elton kept growing, KAMA kept growing with it. Aside from the large swim product line KAMA started making a range of professional scuba diving equipment for the export market. By way of trade exhibitions and advertisements on important trade magazines KAMA concluded agency agreements with AMF Voit (a group of 8 divisions) in the United States for the North American market and Barakuda GmbH (a subsidiary of Bayer Chemical) in Germany for the entire European continent.

Barakuda was the first company having KAMA made a range of windsurfing suits with quality neoprene sheets imported from Yamamoto and zippers from YKK in Japan. It sent engineers over to help out production and quality control. KAMA was then the only company capable of making neoprene wet suits in Taiwan.

Like a thunder in a blue sky Barakuda was suddenly disbanded by its parent company. As such, KAMA lost the entire European market. However, a silver lining in the clouds started beaming and Elton bought out AMF Voit and changed the company name to ?Voit Sports? with headquarters in Rochester and branch office and sports ball plant in California. The new Voit combined both swim and dive products into a water sports division and created a new fitness division to diversify its product supplies to its clients. Voit officially appointed KAMA as its agent in the Far East ? a far-sight step to explore the China market.


To keep up with Voit Sports growth KAMA was further expanded to have a large team of engineers to supervise production and quality control at 16 fitness production factories scattered all over Taiwan. Voit Sports started with a purchase of some half million American dollars in fitness equipment in the first year to over US$10 million five years later Voit Sports was then on the public stock market and its stock share kept growing.


Voit Sports sold its rubber sports ball factory to China under the promise that it would buy all sports balls bearing Voit brand from the same China factory. Voit then requested KAMA to have a branch office in China to oversee quality and production.


Since the government policies then prohibited Chinese on Taiwan to visit mainland China, Voit had to re-appoint a Hong Kong agent to oversee all China products. Voit?s success then turned sour from the millions of China sports balls which proved all leaked and its clients demanded Voit to remove the balls from the shelves. Voit stock began to fall and business kept going down.

Misfortune does not come alone. Mr. Dave Goldman(the owner) died of cancer. Voit Sports was finally sold to a Malaysian investment group that had both water-sports line and fitness products made in Malaysia. Thus, KAMA also lost the entire North American market.

In years that followed KAMA struggled to stand on its own feet by promoting its products through every possible avenue. It also moved part of the production facilities to China to lower the costs and to speed up deliveries of large orders. Now its exports span half of the world, using either its own logo ?KMAX? or customers? private brands at some additional cost. It keeps ?hope against hope? that KAMA could work with some major accounts since its experiences could be helpful to speed up your success.