Living an Excellent Lifestyle: The Taiwan Excellence Campaign

With Christmas fast approaching, everyone is saving up for their holiday shopping. It’s the time of the year where it’s a bit more reasonable to spend, although sometimes we don‘t really have much choice when the kids already use their puppy eyes to make us buy those expensive gifts. My nephew for example is asking for a new schoolbag, and I might also get him a new laptop for school. With money really hard to come by these days, I have to make sure that the things I buy during my Christmas shopping are worth the buck – gifts that would last long and are of high quality of course.

In my case, since I’m looking for a laptop, I asked around my tech-blogger friends for recommendations and some tips of what to look for in the things that I buy. A friend recommended that if I wanted a guarantee that the products I’m considering are of good quality, I may want to stick to those products which are awarded with the Taiwan Excellence Seal.

Taiwan Excellence is a campaign that recognizes high-quality Taiwanese brands, guaranteeing their superior quality and value. To qualify for these awards, the products go through a rigorous screening process to ensure that they are of the highest standard and can proudly represent the unique and innovative culture of Taiwan. Some or the brands which were awarded were the popular ones like Acer, Asus, BenQ, Draytek, HCG, KingCom, KW Trio, Kymco, MSI, Silicon Power, Sym,  and Transcend. I for one, is using an Asus laptop  - I might consider buying my nephew one as well!

But it’s not just the techy brands that get awarded. All Taiwan based brands are eligible to be part of the campaign including those from the fashion, arts and culture, sports, and even the education and transportation sectors.

Each product is scored based on its R&D, design, quality, and marketing by an international panel of judges. Each product must score evenly in all four categories. After careful evaluation, those selected are allowed to carry the Taiwan Excellence Seal.

From among the selected products, the judges choose those who deserve the Silver and Gold Award recognition.  They will select thirty from the original winners, with only ten to be given the Gold Award, the highest recognition under the campaign, while the remaining finalists will be given the Silver Award.

It’s a good thing that this campaign has been introduced to the Philippines this year. With the barrage of imported products coming in the country, we need to have some sort of standard to make sure that we are doing educated purchases, and that the products we are getting are of high quality, helping us enjoy an “excellent lifestyle”. You can learn more about Taiwan Excellence here and here.

Now about that Asus laptop, I wonder what model I should buy…