Sad news from Taiwan: Giant Group’s legendary founder King Liu has died at the age of 91. Liu kept shaping and growing the company until his retirement from the board of directors in 2017.
King Liu’s life and work coincided with a time of fundamental changes in Taiwan. He was born in 1934 in Taichung, a city now considered as the center of Taiwan’s bicycle industry. Since the island was part of the Japanese Empire back then, Liu was educated in Japanese until the age of 11, when the Republic of China took over control of Taiwan, replacing Japanese by Mandarin as the official language of both the government and education. King Liu’s early knowledge of Japanese proved to be a significant advantage in the early 1970s. When the production of bicycle frames and stationary exercise bikes became too expensive in Japan following the oil shock, Taiwan emerged as a viable alternative.
Until 1972, King Liu had earned his living raising eels, but after a typhoon had flooded his ponds with mud, he decided to start anew in the bicycle industry that could rely on the support of the government that was looking to promote export goods that created more value. Initially, Liu operated as a contract manufacturer for various large American companies before founding the Giant brand, thus pioneering bicycle manufacturing in Taiwan. Under his leadership, Giant became a global brand, and the Giant Group became the world’s largest bicycle manufacturer by revenue, with factories and branches in China, Vietnam, and the Netherlands.
It wasn’t until 2017 that King Liu finally retired from the Giant Group’s board of directors, handing over the chairmanship to his niece, Bonnie Tu. King Liu’s only son, Young Liu, then became CEO. At the start of 2025, Young Liu took over the chairmanship, while Phoebe Liu, another member of the founding family, took over as CEO. With King Liu’s death, the Liu clan loses its center of gravity – just before the Lunar New Year as a traditional celebration of family unity and togetherness. Show Daily would like to extend its heartfelt condolences to the extended Liu family and the Giant Group.