The Taiwan International Interior Design Expo 2026 opened alongside the first-ever AI Lifestyle Trend Show at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center. Among the halls of building materials, furniture, and design proposals stood a rather different group of exhibitors — "ALT02 Next-Gen Business Thinking," a joint initiative by second-generation leaders of Taiwan's traditional manufacturing companies. Guokai Steel is one of them. Instead of a catalog-style product display, our booth laid out the transformation that has actually been happening inside our company: how AI schedules our production, how quoting became instant, and how fast a design drawing can travel from first contact to delivery.

"ALT02 Next-Gen Business Thinking" is built around three keywords: generational handover, intelligent transformation, and future relationships. For Guokai, these are not slogans on an exhibition wall — they are work in progress. The first generation built a 40-year foundation of steel supply and processing: four core product lines (steel plate, structural steel, steel pipe, and stainless steel) backed by cutting, welding, bending, and laser processing. The second generation's job has been to give that foundation a nervous system: AI-driven inventory and scheduling, digitalized quoting, and online tools that let customers see exactly which stage their order has reached.

And this time, we came to speak directly to designers. The steel industry has long had a reputation among design professionals: high minimum orders, painful communication, opaque lead times — you send over a drawing, get back a flat "can't be done," and the conversation ends there. That is exactly the experience Guokai wants to rewrite. Whether it's metal shelving structures for interiors, staircase and railing frameworks, sculptural steel elements for commercial spaces, or custom-cut pieces for exhibition installations, designers can bring their drawings straight to us. Through our digitalized drawing-review and quoting process, we come back with clear answers — feasible or not, at what cost, delivered in how many days — instead of letting your proposal die at the material supplier's desk. Steel can be industrial, and it can also be part of everyday life. That is why we stood on the floor of a design expo.

For Guokai, this cross-industry appearance is not a branding exercise — it is a starting point. We want the design and architecture community to know that in Tucheng, New Taipei City, there is a steel company that speaks the language of design and runs on digital workflows. When the expo ends, the real collaboration begins.