Bamboo keyboards made in China

NANCHANG -- Eight hours of computer work everyday always makes white collars feel boring, but Zhang Keli has found a welcome respite from office chores -- a bamboo keyboard.

"It's a novelty to me," said 28-year-old Zhang, a fashion-loving employee of the Jianshou Advertisement Co. Ltd. in the eastern Chinese city of Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, the hometown of bamboo.

She just bought such a bamboo keyboard to replace a plastic one for her home computer a few days ago.

"We've delivered 20,000 bamboo keyboards to the wholesalers, and another 20,000 orders are awaiting delivery," said Zhang Lina, a sales manager of the Jiangqiao Bamboo and Wood Industry Co. Ltd., the sole producer of bamboo keyboard in China. The company is in Jiangxi's Tonggu County which enjoys abundant bamboo resources.

    "We started mass producing the new product in October last year, which was mainly exported overseas," Zhang said.

    "It sells well in the European and American markets, but not the domestic market for now," she said.

    But she added the company has set up franchised stores in Shanghai and Ningbo to sell the products since the beginning of this year.

The idea of manufacturing bamboo keyboards came from a business talk the company had with an electronic company from Shenzhen in 2005, when the Shenzhen company's general manager suggested the Jiangqiao company manufacture computer boards made of bamboo, said Feng Chun, a technician of the Jiangqiao company.

"We have been developing such a product ever since," Feng said.

"Of course, we broke through a series of technical difficulties in almost three years, such as how to prevent the bamboo keyboard frame from cracking, how to prevent the bamboo bottom plate from distorting and how to make bamboo buttons firmly linked with the main board," he said.

He said sophisticated technologies, such as numeric control, carving and handicraft, had been employed to solve the problems.

    A bamboo keyboard sells at 80-300 yuan (12-44 U.S. dollars), or slightly higher than a normal plastic one in China, according to sales manager Zhang. Students and home computer users are major consumers of the product in the country.

 

 "We have also developed a bamboo mouse and USB that will go to market before June," she said.

    "By then, we will add one more assembly line," she added.