Chan Chung Bun

Right after Chan graduated from secondary school in 1976, he was introduced by a friend (factory owner’s relatives) to work at Kai Ngai Embroidery Factory as a clerk and a trainee. The boss, Chat Siu, was from Chaozhou, the same native region as Chan. Kai Ngai was home-style factory located in Tam Kung Mansion, Tam Kung Road, To Kwa Wan.  It was opened in three connected residential units with 70 to 80 workers.  At that time, there were many similar small factories in the area.  Secondary school graduates in those days generally wanted to get office jobs, but Chan thought that clerical work was competitive and replaceable. In view of the booming manufacturing sector, he went to work as a clerk at a factory and learnt to sew so as to equip himself with a professional skill. He gave up an opportunity to be an accounting clerk for this factory job. He spent three hours each day to complete the office work and then engaged himself in cutting and packaging in the workshop.  He later even bought his own sewing machine for sewing shirts.

(Editor's Note: Chan Chung Bun added that he used to work from 8.30am each day.  His duties ranged from cleaning, following up orders, collecting money, processing accounts, cutting, packaging, posting advertisements on the streets to delivering goods. He even tutored the son of his boss. When deadline was close, he sometimes had to work as late as 10pm. The work was tiring. On his holidays, Chan would work additional shifts at his friends’ and foreman’s workshops, where he learnt procedures such as blinding, button holing and buttoning.)

Kai Ngai Embroidery Factory was a small factory with 60-70 workers.  It was a licensed factory located in a residential unit on the 3rd floor of Tam Kung Mansion on Tam Kung Road.  The building had nine storeys.  It housed mainly residential units with only one or two factories.  It had a general elevator that was also used as freight elevator.  The factory plant was about 2,000 to 3,000 square feet in size.  It was narrow and had no independent office area.  Furthermore, it only had two desks, which was used by the boss and Chan in alternate turns.

The factory produced mainly children's clothes.  Orders were taken through the Hongs and the finished products were exported to the United Kingdom. The factory consisted of different departments, working in cutting, sewing, trimming threads, ironing and packaging. The cutting process was managed by the boss, the boss’s brother-in-law and Chan. The sewing section, which employed more than 40 workers, carried out shirt sewing, overlocking and blinding. The trimming department hired a permanent female worker and other helpers who were housewives in the same building recruited through street advertisements. Ironing was not a permanent procedure, but a special one that took place in the late stages of production. The ironing department needed to deliver their products within short period of time, therefore it employed a contracting system with a male foreman working on a monthly salary of 1,000 dollars.  When there was work to be completed, the foreman would hire two or three other male workers on a piece work basis.  The packaging department was also managed by the boss and Chan.

Other special processes, such as button holing, buttoning, collar sewing, smocking and embroidering, etc., required specialised technicians or machines to complete and thus incurred a high cost. These processes would only be outsourced depending on the style of the product being made.  Kai Ngai would first distribute flyers to embroidery factories.  If price was reasonable and delivery date was mutually agreeable, then the two sides would cooperate with each other. Kai Ngai worked with neighbouring factories in order to save on shipping fees. For example, button holing, buttoning would be outsourced to Thirteen Streets; smocking and embroidering would go to Hau Wong Road, Nga Tsin Long Road and Nam Kok Road in Kowloon City. Those cooperating factories were mostly small-scale, home-based workshops located on the first floor of residential buildings. Collar cutting, which was a part of collar man’s job, would be sub-contracted privately to people living in the neighbourhood. Chan thought that labour power was sufficient in To Kwa Wan until the 1990s. The female workers of Kai Ngai came from nearby housing estates and old buildings. Few people would cross to other districts to work. The factory needed not worry about shortage of workers, as they could easily hire someone by posting job notices on the roads.

In the early 1980s, “gift redemption" was a popular promotional strategy.  Many brands launched their peripheral products with their own logos.  When consumers purchased specified goods, they would be entitled the right to exchange for gifts at discounted prices.  After working three and a half years at Kai Ngai Embroidery Factory, Chan was commissioned by a secondary school classmate of his, who was then working for an advertising agency, to make gift travel bags.  With a capital of 2000 dollars, he applied for a factory license from the Trade and Industry Department. He rented a 400 square-foot flat on the 10th floor of Mei King Mansion Phase 2 on Mei King Street in To Kwa Wan for 450 dollars a month, and renovated it himself into a factory. (Editor's note: the predecessor of Prospectful Garment Factory.)

Mei King Mansion was a private residential building, and on each of its floor lived 50 to 60 households.  Flats in the building were mainly for residential use, but some were made into quarters for restaurant staff.  There were also many factories (such as plastic flower and silk flower factories) and warehouse concentrating on the ground floor, the first as well as the second floors.  Chan believed that the building’s rent was low and labour supply was sufficient there, making it the ideal location for setting up factories.

Most of the floor area in the factory in Mei King Mansion was used for cutting and packaging. There were only a few sewing machines and female workers.  The sewing process mainly depended on the progress of production.  Job notice would be posted on the streets and those who had better skills would be picked for employment.  The female workers took orders depending on their schedule and capacity.  Through telephone contact with Chan, they collected and delivered products to the door.  “Outsource cards” were used to record the number of products made and date of delivery.  Everything was based on trust and honour system.  Through introduction by friends or through advertisements on Yellow Page, Chan outsourced the logo printing procedure to the stamping firm near Lui Seng Chun in Tai Kok Tsui.  The cutting of hard cloth was assigned to a cutting workshop on the ground floor of a government factory building in San Po Kong. (The cutting process could not be conducted in normal residential buildings because the pressing of cloths produced a lot of weight and noise.)

After receiving an order, Chan would spend 40% of the deposit on buying fabrics.  Day to day, he was responsible for arranging cutting, packaging and co-ordinating the work of female workers.  When deadline was close, he himself would take part in sewing.  Since the factory shared the same elevator with other residents, it would only load the cargo up and down the building during the night or non-peak hours to avoid causing nuisances to people in the neighbourhood.  It often had to do the ironing and packing at midnight, while transporting cargo to the ground floor and loading onto trucks early in the morning for delivery.  Two to three years after setting up the factory, Chan and his classmates also began helping an advertising company design more creative gifts, such as the Green Spot multi-purpose bag, which could be used as a travel bag and turned into a temporary changing stall when opened. That allowed swimmers to get changed directly on the beach.

By 1983, "gift redemption" was no longer a trend and production orders for gifts decreased.  Since Chan had already learnt drawing, cutting and sewing during his training days, he decided to switch to producing children’s clothes by the introduction of a friend who worked at a Hong (trading company). The factory still used the old cutting room and electric cutters, but it had to replace the parts in the sewing machines, changing from think and coarse ones to thin and coarse ones. The production process became more complicated: simple parts such as collars and cuffs were handled by 11 and six departments respectively. The parts were handed over to another department after they were sewed up by female workers.  The production of one shirt was shared by 30 to 40 departments. 

To cope with the needs of factory transformation, Chan invited one of his classmates to be the factory director. He also hired six to seven extra sewers through posting job notices and female workers’ referrals. The rest of were contracted workers, and the technical requirements on these workers were also higher. Normally contracted workers did not have overlocking machines, so the overlocking process was mainly carried out by the factory’s in-house female worker. Other remaining processes were outsourced. Female workers would be assigned different jobs according to their level of sewing skill.  The collection, distribution, coordination of those jobs was managed by Chan. The ironing department hired a male worker on a contract basis.  He was introduced by someone in the industry and was paid a monthly basic salary of 1,000 dollars.  When work was available, he would hire several additional male workers and pay them on a piecework basis.

Prospectful Garment Factory received export orders directly from four to five Hongs in Central, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kwai Chung and Kaiser Estate Phase 1 & 2 in Hung Hom.  He single-handedly managed the purchase of materials, production and delivery to the Kwai Chung Container Terminals.  Every morning, Chan was busy dealing with the logistics of outsourced work and sewing; at night, he would take charge of cutting and packaging.  Since Chan’s factory was reputable, the clients would contact Chan for business even though a certain Hong closed down later. Thus, Chan switched to producing shirts and trousers. After the Mei King Mansion plant changed to garment making for more than a year, Chan rented the sub-divided room opposite the factory and used it as a warehouse. This was because the original plant was only 400-500 square feet in size and space was limited. In 1985, he moved the factory to an industrial building in Kwun Tong.

In the mid-1980s, the factory zone in To Kwa Wan covered Mok Cheong Street, Sheung Heung Road and Ha Heung Road.  Opposite to the factories were all residential buildings such as Mei King Mansion Phase 2, Tam Kung Mansion and Kiu Yu Mansion.  There were factories set up inside the residential buildings, a small percentage of which were garment factories. Yuk Yat Street was part of the factory zone, where one could find large factories employing dozens or even up to hundreds of people. Garment factories were particularly concentrated on that street. The ground-level shops on the Thirteen Streets were mostly garages or buttons and button hole factories.

The rents in that area were not cheap. The rent per square foot was four to six dollars for a small flat on Mok Cheong Street and Sheung Heung Road. The smallest flat in large industrial building on Yuk Yat Street was approximately 10,000 square feet in size. There were few public housings in the district, so the factory workers in Tam Kung Mansion in Tam Kung Mansion came primarily from Lok Man Sun Chuen (near Maidstone Road ) and Chun Seen Mei Chuen. Factories on Yuk Yat Street were far away from the public housing estates, so they got their supply of labour mainly from old private residential buildings. Chan could not afford the expensive rents in To Kwa Wan, so he had no choice but to find another site. The rent per square foot in industrial buildings in Kwun Tong was only two to three dollars and labours were abundant there. Conversely, San Po Kong was remote and labours were scarce.  After Kwun Tong was connected to the MTR network, Chan moved his factory there.

Chan Chung Bun thought that To Kwa Wan was a special area: it was self-contained because it was located on the edge of the city and separated from Central Kowloon by Ho Man Tin Hill. To Kwa Wan was an area where grass-root citizens gathered and lived. The factories provided employment opportunities for them, while the adequate labour supply, in return, fostered industrial development.  The district was self-sufficient with factories and office buildings.  Since the completion of Wyler Gardens, the industrial To Kwa Wan turned into a residential area, although it failed to develop well. The presence of gas drums and slaughter house also made in a less than ideal place to live in. On the other hand, the emergence of residential buildings limited To Kwa Wan’s potential to develop into a large industrial district. There were only sporadic factory buildings seen on Mok Cheong Street, Yuk Yat Street and Sheung Heung Road.