Director’s Message at the Establishment of Direct Selling Research Center

November 20,1999

Since the establishment in September 1998, Direct Selling Research Center has been ideating constantly on promotion of direct selling research and advocating appropriate direct selling management concepts to increase public’s acceptance. Meanwhile, it impels NSYSU to become strategically important in direct selling research.

DSRC is a self-sufficient unit with no solid financial resource, all the operational costs and budgets are merely raised by the director of DSRC. Not only the effort is painstaking, but also the fund generated is out of the expense needed to run the projects intrepidly. Fortunately our major sponsor, DSA, donated NT$0.6million, so that DSRC was able to put on “Third Academic Symposium on Direct Selling” last year. This year, we experienced difficulties in seeking financial support because people were not as enthusiastic as we expected, inasmuch as most people are not familiar with our works in detail. However we promise to all of you that we will work harder to win your recognition with our achievement.

           Over the year, we have completed following tasks:

At the first year of our operation, under the shortage of funds, we were still able to hold four national events and won organizational, industrial and academia’s respect, representing our first step out to the success. We hope that we can obtain more resources to help us working on more projects and to become a world-renowned place of strategic importance in direct selling research.

“The Fourth Academic Symposium on Direct Selling” commenced effectually under the vigorously support from DSA and donations from various enterprises. This year, adopted suggestions made by DSA, we set up an “Annual Best Direct Selling Thesis Award” to select best thesis from papers submitted and matriculated by the reviewing committee that consists of three people from direct selling firms and three professors/scholars. Given anonymous on writer’s name, the ranking, first, second and third best direct selling thesis is determined based on the sum of all six graders. With the establishment of “Annual Best Direct Selling Thesis Award”, we were able to encourage academic to work on direct selling research and to enhance direct selling management standard and the social reputation.

To corporate better with the industry, DSRC has been engaging in the hiring of every president from each significant company to play roles as our advisors, hoping that they could help us in acquiring more information on the industry. In addition, we expect to obtain valuable comments from our advisory councils for our yearly and mid-long term plans, ensuring our center to develop in accordance with the industry. We are also looking forward to solicit our grants more freely to contribute more for our development in direct selling.

Since the establishment of DSRC, we have constantly collecting relevant materials on direct selling. To better serve interest parties, we have specifically organized all collected information in catalogues and placed them in our web http://www.DSRC.nsysu.edu.tw. We believe that confronted with the increasing importance of Internet, searching information online or posting information on web will be the routine tasks for general public. It is therefore important for us to  enhance our Web for all users to feel comfortable and smoothly in searching information from our Web or obtain information via our Web.

I sincerely hope that all members of direct selling industry can gather together to support our work. By supplying us extensive information and resources, we will run more effectively, letting our nation’s direct selling academic standard be recognized and management standard be uplifted the world.

Let us work hard together.

                                                               Sincerely,

                                                                             Der-Fa Robert Chen

     Dean’s Message

 Established since September 1998, Direct Selling Academic Research and Development Center has been conceiving new ideas to advance the direct selling academic research, advocating the appropriate direct selling managerial principles and raising public’s acceptance in direct selling; impels our university to be vital in direct selling academic research.

During the past year, we have organized a series of direct selling advance courses as a channel for direct-sellers to upgrade their professional knowledge. The courses are aimed to assist direct selling firms in establishing the proper direct selling concept, enhancing their knowledge and erect their professionalism. Courses offering is spread out through newspaper advertisement and by posted outside the direct selling firms’ bulletin board, however the respondents were not as enthusiastic as we expected and courses have to be canceled. The failure is partially caused by insufficient infomercial and support from online users and direct selling firms, but the insight is in fact more complicated.

 1999 year-end, to improve our understanding and interaction with direct selling industry, we have invited experienced direct sellers to be our advisors. December 1999, we convene an advisory meeting and generated many precious suggestions, but our advisors are all too courteous to supply vast ideas for us to feel completely satisfied. After a considerable review, we have reorganized our plan and in June 2000, we initiated our first direct selling conference and invited only chief officers from leading direct-selling firms, government officers and scholars to attend, to discuss various topics and increases communications among enterprises, government and academic. The conference was a tremendous success and participants are all very supportive of the event and recommend the conference being held on every January and June annually and further extent participants to all chief officers of leading direct selling firms, top direct sellers and ministers. During the conference, we have chosen five staffs for further arrangements including Direct Selling Association chairman Chou You-Shane、EYI director Tseng Hung-Ming、Direct Selling Century Magazine director Yeh Kuo-Tah、US manufacture Sanny-Dare Cheng Shen-Shan and Amway representative to be our first five formal staffs, and director of direct selling research center Der-Fa Chen is the command-in-chief. The conference is going to hold after New Year 2001. After this conference, we will be aggressive in planning the arrangement of our next Direct Selling conference holding in January 2001.

Over the past year, major events were taken as follows:

With the support of direct selling institute and donations from public, “The Fifth Direct Selling Academic Symposium” is finally taking place. In addition, through the direct selling committee this year, we have granted financial support from Direct Selling Education Foundation (DSEF) of WFDSA, to assist our advance research study in direct selling.

The content of our web http://www.DSRC.nsysu.edu.tw includes various materials from world wide, and allows public to access into our published dissertations and copyright essays online. Except it is friendly to use, it assists public in improving public’s awareness on direct selling. Over the past few months, we have received inquiries about our emails over the world, representing the effectiveness of our web. In the future, we will add in a new category, industry’s update, for this, we will appreciate every direct selling firms and direct sellers to supply us any news and management information to put it online with no cost borned on your side.

I sincerely hope all members of direct selling industry can gather together to support our work. By supplying us extensive information and resources, our direct selling academic research center will contribute a lot, letting our nation’s direct selling academic standard be recognized and management standard be uplifted the world.

Let us work together, for our dreams in direct selling.

                                                              Best wishes,

                                                                                                      Der-Fa Chen

                                                                                                      Dean, Direct Selling Research Center

                                                                                                      National Sun Yat-Sen University