THE JAPAN NEWS

 

Lately there has been a trend toward forming women’s groups within companies and designing original products. Even firms that have expanded their businesses by targeting corporations as customers are now making use of female employees’ ideas and turning consumer-aimed products into hits. Female intuition, which can be closer to consumers than the male mentality, is coming in handy for these projects.
A boost for sluggish sales

Osaka-based Nippon Paint Holdings Co. primarily manufactures and sells paint to businesses such as construction companies and car manufacturers. In October 2013, however, Roombloom — the company’s first full-fledged line of consumer-targeted paint — was released for sale and became a hit. Two female employees of the company came up with the idea for the paint.

Nippon Paint Holdings had made canned paint available to the general public previously, but sales of the product had become sluggish.
In the summer of 2012, Toshiko Nakazawa, 42, who was then in the company’s research division, and executive secretary Noriko Yanagitani, 41, met at a gathering following a company meeting. The topic of conversation turned to canned paint, and the two women, who had both joined the firm in 1998, agreed on the point that, “If the paint cans were cuter, women would also probably buy them.”
‘Well-designed paint for women’

After a great deal of review, they proposed the idea of “well-designed paint for women” in the autumn of that year. Their proposal was accepted, and the women were transferred to the projects department to handle the paint’s commercialization.

The design of the cans was commissioned to a young designer to make them colorful. The paint colors, 144 in all, were given unique names such as “Aloha!” for a light blue one, as it resembles the color of the morning sky in Hawaii, and “Daichi no Mezame” (The earth waking) for a green that conjures images of the African wilderness greeting the morning. The quality of the paint was also improved to make it easier to apply.

Roombloom, created in such a fashion, suggests a lifestyle of “repainting your home’s ceilings and walls according to your tastes.” It has proven popular with women in their 30s through early 40s, and sales results for fiscal 2015 were 2.3 times higher than those of fiscal 2014. “The appearance and name are also important for getting [a product] picked up by consumers,” said Nakazawa. “This probably would never have happened with a masculine way of thinking,” she added, with a smile.
Car leasing with a feminine touch

For Tokyo-based ORIX Auto Corp., the car leasing industry’s leading company, the majority of clients are businesses, and 80 percent of their individual clients are male. In the spring of 2014, several female employees formed a team called “Okuruma Joshi Oen Project” (Support project for car-loving girls), with the idea of putting out new products aimed at the untapped market of women.

 

The “Imanori Seven” (Drive now seven) plan was born, wherein clients can use a new mini-vehicle with a monthly lease in the ¥10,000 range, and then have the opportunity to own it after seven years. Behind the plan were ideas such as “Women don’t really like previously used items” and “The price should be set at an affordable amount that housewives would feel is easier to discuss with their husbands.”

The plan gained popularity after being launched in June 2014. It then became the driving force behind ORIX’s overall number of applications for individual car leases in fiscal 2015, which exceeded those of fiscal 2013 by about 50 percent. The proportion of female applicants also increased from 20 percent to 30 percent.

“When it comes to buying a product, female intuition, which envisions the product as a whole, has come to have more importance than the views of men, who emphasize the performance [of a product],” said Yoshio Tanaka, a professor at Tokyo University of Science, who specializes in management innovation. “To understand such needs, [companies] should diversify their staff, through such means as including women in product development teams. Moreover, methods such as putting those teams under the company president’s control are also effective as their ideas will reach the president directly that way,” Tanaka pointed out.
Support from management also vital

What are the secrets to getting female employees to come up with and contribute ideas? Rie Kida, director of the Woman’s Feelings Marketing Laboratory, which hosts lectures for learning how to foster ideas, advises: “Women, through having conversations and everyday life, have a sensibility for noticing, ‘There should be a product like that.’ I want them to make the most of that sensibility.”

To successfully make use of ideas from female members of staff, support from the management is also essential. “Superiors who receive the proposals should not pass judgment based on their own intuition or experiences of success,” added Kida. “Rather, they should walk through town and read some women’s magazines, making their assessment after having surveyed the trends for themselves.”
 

By Naohiro Yoshida / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer