From a Million-Dollar PM Salary to the Path of a Dive Creator
In the first half of his life, Chen Hong-Ru — known to most as Brad — carved out a career in Taiwan's highly coveted IC semiconductor industry. He started at the technical deep end as a BIOS software and graphics card driver engineer, then transitioned into FAE (Field Application Engineer) roles, and ultimately served as a PM (Product Manager) overseeing entire product lines, accumulating experience across numerous companies and industry segments. That comprehensive background trained him to evaluate a product's technical possibilities through an engineer's eyes, while also giving him the strategic vantage point to think holistically about product life cycles, marketing plans, pricing strategies, and the upstream-downstream dynamics of an entire industry. After twenty years of hard work, his annual salary — excluding bonuses and stock — was approaching NT$3 million. Yet this man, whom many regarded as a golden bachelor, chose to walk away from his comfort zone and plunge headlong into a challenging maker's dream. Why?
Brad has always been drawn to the outdoors. Even while working in the semiconductor industry, he regularly headed outside — hiking, rock climbing, kayaking, you name it. One day, paddling a kayak on the ocean, he found himself wondering what lay beneath the deep blue water. That small spark of curiosity ignited his connection with the sea.
In 2008 he earned his first diving certification (Open Water Diver), and was immediately captivated by the sport. The first time a wall of fish surrounded him, the sheer vitality of the ocean moved him deeply. That experience drove him to keep going: Advanced Open Water Diver, Rescue Diver, Divemaster, and eventually a fully certified PADI (certification agency) dive instructor. Along the way, however, he encountered moments that would completely reframe his outlook on life.
An "Accident" That Gave Birth to a Taiwanese Brand
During what appeared to be a perfectly routine dive, Brad's dive buddy's inflator valve suddenly jammed, causing the BCD to inflate uncontrollably and shoot them both toward the surface. Although they managed to pull the hose and vent air, their ascent was still too fast, and they broke the surface before completing a safe ascent. Back on the surface, Brad waited and waited but could not find his buddy, so he kicked back to shore alone. As he neared the beach, he spotted an ambulance parked nearby and medical personnel performing emergency resuscitation on a diver. He describes that moment as the most terrifying of his life, convinced that the victim was his buddy. Summoning every last ounce of energy, he kicked to shore as fast as he could — only to discover, with enormous relief, that it was not his buddy. Still, the tragedy of a stranger's accident weighed heavily on him. It deepened his reverence for the sea and drove him to immerse himself in diving safety, studying decompression theory and its underlying science.
After leaving his semiconductor career and pursuing research into dive computers and decompression theory, Brad was fortunate to join the development project for a dive computer, eventually becoming one of the team's early co-founders. Drawing on his extensive background in semiconductors and PCBA (printed circuit board assembly), combined with his study of decompression theory, he channeled his expertise in electronic circuits and software development into a single goal: sharing the wonder of diving through simpler, more intuitive technology.
After a little over a year, Brad parted ways with the dive computer project. Several well-known international brands approached him to develop various pieces of dive equipment, and he took on advisory roles for companies in France, Germany, and the United States. Yet despite the attractive packages laid before him, he turned down the security of a stable career path and chose, once again, to start his own venture. This time the challenge was even greater than a dive computer — he was going after the regulator, the device directly responsible for a diver's every breath underwater.
In the already crowded regulator market, many people are now aware that the vast majority of the world's regulators are assembled in Taiwan. Brad asked himself: if Taiwan already possesses this mature craftsmanship, why does the country not have a homegrown brand to show for it? As with most consumer goods, overseas brands still enjoy a purchasing advantage — they entered the market earlier, earn stronger consumer loyalty, and typically offer more complete warranty and service networks. Confronting this formidable challenge, Brad was determined to design and manufacture a regulator that would speak for itself through exceptional quality, held to standards well above the norm. A great product must prove its own worth.
Everyone asks what makes a great regulator. In Brad's eyes, it is simply one that brings divers home safely, every single time. True to his engineer's nature, he lets the numbers do the talking. He set a higher benchmark for his own product, targeting certification against EN250A rather than the more common EN250. Of course, the costly CE testing process is a necessary investment for entering the international market. He also established an internal factory-output standard of 90 litres per minute — well above the CE benchmark of 62.5 litres per minute.
EN250 is a European Union standard ensuring that, at a given depth, a regulator can simultaneously supply two divers with a steady, adequate airflow. It also verifies that the regulator performs reliably in colder water temperatures.
Crest — A Brand-New Regulator Brand
Taking a cue from the meticulous process Ferrari uses before a new engine leaves the factory, Brad ensures that every single regulator is individually tuned by a technician before shipment, with the technician's signature affixed as a mark of personal responsibility. Every time a new sample unit is produced, Brad personally dives with it through more than several hundred scuba tanks' worth of breathing, letting his own actions validate the uncompromising quality.
In the course of producing the regulator, Brad says the greatest difficulty is maintaining an unwavering, consistent commitment to quality. His obsession with precision — demanding thread tolerances specified to three decimal places, approaching the realm of nanometres — meant that some upstream component suppliers simply could not meet his requirements and had to bow out. Fortunately, one of his team members is the go-to mechanical designer for several of the world's most prestigious regulator brands. Through that partner's professional design and development expertise, relentless iteration, and Brad's deep familiarity with the product and market, they produced something that has drawn admiration even from European and American brands. As a result, they were able to source certain domestic suppliers willing to collaborate, and by nurturing those suppliers' growth, the project has quietly elevated Taiwan's precision manufacturing capabilities and applied them to the world of diving.
Brad's vision for the CREST brand does not stop at regulators. Alongside the entry-level piston regulator already on the market, a high-end diaphragm regulator is simultaneously in research and development. Brad hopes to rapidly consolidate sales across Asia in 2018 — discussions are already underway in Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and China — with plans to expand into the United States and Europe by 2019. A corresponding service and maintenance network will be built out in step with the brand's sales footprint, ensuring that the founding commitment to the highest quality extends all the way through after-sales support. In the not-too-distant future, the never-satisfied Brad may well see CREST — a brand brimming with vitality — grow an entirely new line of dive products. Watch this space.
CREST in collaboration with ocean-inspired creative brand Tié-Chhī Design
Finally, with a gravity that matched his Yilan-accented Taiwanese, Brad described this venture as a "life-or-death gamble" — in other words, he has poured every available resource into CREST. It is his wife's unwavering support that keeps him going. Brad hopes that, through the products he makes, people will feel his love for the ocean — a love captured in the tagline revealed at CREST's very first product launch: "As an Engineer, As a Diver, As an Instructor." The engineer's demand for production quality, the diver's firsthand understanding of what is needed underwater, and the professional dive instructor's insistence on safety — together, these principles guide the making of every single regulator. After all, turning diving into a career takes a very special kind of passion. As Brad often says: "If we can get even one more person as crazy about the ocean as we are, the future of the sea becomes just a little clearer."
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