Lawrence company to expand space, jobs

Taikan hopes to add product offerings

A manufacturer of components for cable television systems is tripling the size of its Lawrence headquarters and may add up to 10 employees next year.

Officials with Taikan Inc. have started work on a $400,000 project to add 10,000 square feet of warehouse and research and development space to its 5,000-square-foot offices at 919 E. 29th St.

Ching Wang, vice president of Taikan, said the project was part of a plan to expand the company’s product offerings and to improve its U.S. distribution network.

“We’re looking at developing other products,” Wang said. “We’re hoping the new space will be enough for the next five years. After that, I don’t know.”

The company has products in five major categories. Its best seller is a cable splitter that allows users to hook up multiple television sets or entertainment devices to a single cable line. The company sells about 100,000 of those devices a month, Wang said.

It also sells about 30,000 cable taps per month, which are used by cable companies in the installation of cable service to a home. Other products include cable connectors, cable amplifiers and a variety of hardware such as cable line clamps, hooks and outlet covers.

After construction in Lawrence is completed in early January, Wang said, the company plans to hire up to four engineers and technicians to begin research on other products Taikan may be able to bring to market.

About six more employees would be hired to staff the company’s larger warehouse, he said.

The larger warehouse space is needed, in part, to accommodate a Canadian customer that wants Taikan to begin shipping products to multiple locations in the United States, Wang said.

Taikan has about 350 employees, but only six of them are in the Lawrence office, which mainly has a mix of management and sales positions. The remainder of the company’s employees are in four manufacturing plants in Taiwan and China and a distribution center in California.

Wang, a Lawrence resident, said it was unlikely the company ever would move its manufacturing operations to Lawrence because it is cheaper overseas. But Wang said the new facility could accommodate some light assembly and packaging work.

The expansion marks the second major project in Lawrence by Taikan in the past 18 months. In May 2002, the company began work on its headquarters building on East 29th Street. In late 2002 the company moved from into the new building from its longtime Lawrence location at 1546 E. 23rd St.

The privately-held company was founded in 1976 when Wang began building simple electronic components and then expanded into serving the growing cable television market. The business is located in Lawrence, in large part, because Wang came to the city in the early 1960s to study engineering at Kansas University.