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▼ Ups & Downs / Akira Miyamoto, President of King Jim Co. / Stationery Company Made Mark with Electronic Goods
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The Yomiuri Shimbun
Since 1992, Akira Miyamoto, 61, has been president of King Jim Co., an office supplier known for creative product development. The following are excerpts from an interview with Miyamoto conducted by Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer Tomoko Hatakeyama.
Vision for computer age
My grandfather Eitaro, the founder of my company, was a person full of ideas who styled himself the “town inventor.”
My family lived on the fifth floor of the building that held my company’s headquarters in Tokyo’s Kanda district. On my way home from school, I ran up stairways and through the company’s offices to reach my apartment. When year-end discount sales campaigns were held in front of the building, I helped solicit customers, even though I was a primary school student.
The employees were all familiar faces, and the company was like a family. I naturally learned the pleasure of running a business.
I joined the company after graduating from university. Nearly 10 years later, I began developing electronic stationery products together with five young employees. It was the mid-1980s.
At that time, people speculated that the proliferation of personal computers would eliminate paper from business offices. I faced a sense of crisis over the need to develop new kinds of stationery that could replace binders and files.
Opposition within company
In reality, business offices were full of paper because photocopiers and printers had become popular. So binders and files sold well. All the members of my development team were knowledgeable only about stationery. Even after three years my team was unable to develop any products, and other employees took to calling us “useless people.”
In 1988, we finally developed the Tepra, which is a device capable of printing labels that attach to binders, files and so on. Development costs for the Tepra reached ¥500 million at a time when the company’s total profit amounted to around ¥1 billion.
When I proposed putting the Tepra on the market, our sales department strongly opposed it. They said that they did not have time to sell such electronic office supplies while fiercely competing with other major stationers. Information about new products could not be disseminated no matter how epoch-making they were unless salespersons promoted them to our business partners. We did not have money to air TV commercials.
Members of my development team went to sales offices across the nation and persuaded salespersons, toasting them with nutrition drinks.
I held the first official event to introduce a new product in my company’s history. I viewed it as a message to our employees: “If we continue selling nothing but binders, our company will not survive.”
The Tepra became popular by word of mouth and grew to become an unprecedented hit product. It was the result of an exit from our familiar world, the binder and file market.
In the past decade, sales from binders and files have halved, and sales from electronic stationery goods, mainly the Tepra, have offset the fall.
1 out of 10 equals win
Of course, I have made countless items that ended in failure. For example, I made a product called a voice timer, which delivers voice messages such as “Time to start the meeting.” It did not sell at all.
My employees always present a wide variety of ideas. My company does not conduct market research because what is important is the conviction: “If such a product exists, people will surely buy it.” Holding a majority vote on products is not necessarily the right thing to do.
When I released the Pomera, a digital memo book that allows users to type letters but does not have the ability to send e-mails, every member of the board of directors except myself opposed it. But I had heard that some businesspersons desired a means to easily write manuscripts during business trips. I tried out the product and it became a huge hit.
I don’t intend to compete head-on with major companies, and it’s all right if our products are not high on hit-product rankings. I consider a product that opens up a new market to be a great success if one out of 10 people buys it.
Miyamoto’s profile
Born in 1954 in Tokyo. After graduating from Keio University, he joined King Jim. He served as the leader of the development team for the Tepra and became president in April 1992. The company was founded by his grandfather Eitaro Miyamoto in 1927 and received its current name in 1961. King Jim is known for developing unique products, including the Pomera digital memo and the Shot Note, which can store hand-written text as digital data. As of June 2015, the company’s consolidated sales amounted to ¥33.1 billion.
Since 1992, Akira Miyamoto, 61, has been president of King Jim Co., an office supplier known for creative product development. The following are excerpts from an interview with Miyamoto conducted by Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer Tomoko Hatakeyama.
Vision for computer age
My grandfather Eitaro, the founder of my company, was a person full of ideas who styled himself the “town inventor.”
My family lived on the fifth floor of the building that held my company’s headquarters in Tokyo’s Kanda district. On my way home from school, I ran up stairways and through the company’s offices to reach my apartment. When year-end discount sales campaigns were held in front of the building, I helped solicit customers, even though I was a primary school student.
The employees were all familiar faces, and the company was like a family. I naturally learned the pleasure of running a business.
I joined the company after graduating from university. Nearly 10 years later, I began developing electronic stationery products together with five young employees. It was the mid-1980s.
At that time, people speculated that the proliferation of personal computers would eliminate paper from business offices. I faced a sense of crisis over the need to develop new kinds of stationery that could replace binders and files.
Opposition within company
In reality, business offices were full of paper because photocopiers and printers had become popular. So binders and files sold well. All the members of my development team were knowledgeable only about stationery. Even after three years my team was unable to develop any products, and other employees took to calling us “useless people.”
In 1988, we finally developed the Tepra, which is a device capable of printing labels that attach to binders, files and so on. Development costs for the Tepra reached ¥500 million at a time when the company’s total profit amounted to around ¥1 billion.
When I proposed putting the Tepra on the market, our sales department strongly opposed it. They said that they did not have time to sell such electronic office supplies while fiercely competing with other major stationers. Information about new products could not be disseminated no matter how epoch-making they were unless salespersons promoted them to our business partners. We did not have money to air TV commercials.
Members of my development team went to sales offices across the nation and persuaded salespersons, toasting them with nutrition drinks.
I held the first official event to introduce a new product in my company’s history. I viewed it as a message to our employees: “If we continue selling nothing but binders, our company will not survive.”
The Tepra became popular by word of mouth and grew to become an unprecedented hit product. It was the result of an exit from our familiar world, the binder and file market.
In the past decade, sales from binders and files have halved, and sales from electronic stationery goods, mainly the Tepra, have offset the fall.
1 out of 10 equals win
Of course, I have made countless items that ended in failure. For example, I made a product called a voice timer, which delivers voice messages such as “Time to start the meeting.” It did not sell at all.
My employees always present a wide variety of ideas. My company does not conduct market research because what is important is the conviction: “If such a product exists, people will surely buy it.” Holding a majority vote on products is not necessarily the right thing to do.
When I released the Pomera, a digital memo book that allows users to type letters but does not have the ability to send e-mails, every member of the board of directors except myself opposed it. But I had heard that some businesspersons desired a means to easily write manuscripts during business trips. I tried out the product and it became a huge hit.
I don’t intend to compete head-on with major companies, and it’s all right if our products are not high on hit-product rankings. I consider a product that opens up a new market to be a great success if one out of 10 people buys it.
Miyamoto’s profile
Born in 1954 in Tokyo. After graduating from Keio University, he joined King Jim. He served as the leader of the development team for the Tepra and became president in April 1992. The company was founded by his grandfather Eitaro Miyamoto in 1927 and received its current name in 1961. King Jim is known for developing unique products, including the Pomera digital memo and the Shot Note, which can store hand-written text as digital data. As of June 2015, the company’s consolidated sales amounted to ¥33.1 billion.
- March 22, 2016
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