Survival Lessons Led to Success for Immigrants : Technology: Rose Hwang and husband Mitchell Phan drew on experiences in escaping Vietnam to build a $40-million computer-component design firm in 4 years.
Rose Hwang learned survival skills when she became a leader among refugees fleeing Vietnam.
“Just by the escape, I learned tremendous lessons that will stay with me for life,” said Hwang, now in her mid-30s and chief executive officer of Alpha Systems Lab, an Irvine company that designs components for multimedia computers. “It took determination, faith, planning and guts.”
By applying that knowledge to business, Hwang and her husband, Mitchell Phan, have in just four years built Alpha Systems Lab into a company with nearly $40 million in annual revenue.
Hwang and Phan, an engineer whose family escaped Vietnam two days before Saigon fell in April, 1975, recognize that the odds were against their succeeding.
According to a UCLA study released in May, immigrants from Southeast Asia--Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos--are comparatively more likely to live in poverty and be on welfare. The study also found that although many Asian Americans have started their own businesses, they have generally focused on low-margin, low-profit businesses.
The couple give credit to their mix of talents--Hwang’s knack for managing business operations, Phan’s technical savvy--and determination and a bit of luck.
Hwang and her family of seven slipped out of Saigon in 1976 on a river boat. But, out of fuel and water, they were captured on the high seas by a Communist patrol ship.
The patrol vessel’s crew brought the refugees aboard and tied their boat behind the ship, Hwang said. They told everyone to sit still on the journey back to Saigon, where the refugees believed they would be condemned to death. But the captors left Hwang unguarded.
“They didn’t think a 17-year-old girl could do them any harm,” she said. “That was their mistake. I was not a boy, but I was the oldest daughter and had a boy’s heart.”
She crept through the ship whispering a plan to her companions. The refugees then banded together to take control of the ship and sailed to Thailand.
From there, Hwang and her family came to the United States, settling in Orange County.
Hwang enrolled at Cal State Fullerton, eventually earning a degree in music. Her first job was playing the piano. She also worked as a court reporter and in marketing for a small high-tech company. She met Phan in 1979, and the two were married in 1984.
The couple, who are now U.S. citizens, formed their own company in 1990 with $50,000 in savings. It generated $1.2 million in sales in 1991.
“In Asian cultures, men usually do all the business, and women stay behind at home,” said Phan, who is vice president of Alpha Systems Lab.
“We think that women can do a lot more,” he said. “To men, I say put your ego down a little bit and you’ll find the best kind of partnership.”
A stroke of good fortune came in 1992. Electronic Data Systems, the multibillion-dollar computer consulting company, gave the fledgling Alpha Systems part of a $700-million contract to supply computer equipment to the Army, the Navy and Pentagon.
EDS also made prepayments for its first orders from the small company, allowing Alpha Systems Lab to expand without venture capital. Alpha Systems sales that year mushroomed to $38 million.
“They’ve done good work for us, and we’ve enjoyed working with them,” said EDS spokesman Randy Dove. “Most of the contract work has been done now.”
Alpha Systems Lab now has 60 employees at its headquarters in Irvine and subcontracts work to local assembly houses.
“Everybody else is shipping work offshore,” Phan said. “We are creating jobs here.”
“This country helped us,” he said, expressing his gratitude for a gift of $300 when he first arrived in the United States. “It’s always been in my heart to do some kind of pay-back.”
Alpha Systems Lab expects its government contracts to fall to 20% of revenue in 1994. But Phan says the company can sustain its sales with its latest product, the $1,095 MegaMotion circuit board, which can convert a personal computer into a teleconferencing machine that transmits documents and images over ordinary phone lines. It can also be used as a security monitor to perform surveillance of as many as 16 remote sites at once.
The MegaMotion board has brought Alpha Systems Lab into competition with an array of bigger companies, among them Intel Corp., IBM, Matrox and True Vision. Hwang said she thinks Alpha Systems Lab has an edge because its product was five years in the making and is better than any of the others’ technology.
