I had no idea what my father did when I was a child. I had never imagined that I would inherit our family business. I studied at the foreign language faculty of the local university, being interested in English. I changed my mind when I met many corporate managers while job-hunting. One of the presidents told me that it was entrepreneurs who would change the future of Japan. The remark inspired me very much and made me think that I should become an entrepreneur someday to change the world.
I started working for my father’s company as a part-timer to help him when I had a hard time deciding what I should do when I was a college senior. Then, I found out his company was running rather poorly. The company mainly manufactured welded things, like signposts for expressways and other large roads. They had many different problems, such as a big difference in workload between busy periods and slow periods due to dependence on a single client. Having seen this critical situation that might quickly lead to bankruptcy, I wanted to help my father’s company and joined them soon after graduating the university.

Then, I worked hard every day. To draw additional loans from the banks, I read over 30 business books, prepared a business plan together with my friend, an aspiring SME management consultant, and submitted it to propose radical reform ideas. As a result, we managed to obtain loans and escape bankruptcy. In addition, we found new business partners to mitigate the problem of dependence on one company. Now, we receive orders from over 30 clients.

Then, however, almost all the employees revealed an intent to quit because of low wages and long overtime hours. We started to reform the organization and system seriously. As a result of the review of our evaluation criteria based on interviews with employees, we successfully increased wages by 30%. However, the factory refused to reduce working hours at first because the overtime was habitually ingrained, even if I asked the factory manager many times. I talked to the factory manager many times every week to convey my desire to make us a good company. Now, the workers leave the factory at seven o’clock at the latest although they had previously worked until eleven o’clock at night, because the working style was gradually improved.
Strangely, I didn’t feel any pressure during the renovation of the company. We were on the verge of bankruptcy, so I did my best boldly, without fearing failure. I successfully reconstructed the company, and our business entered into an era of smooth sailing. In March 2019, I took over the business from my father, and production efficiency has increased drastically. We are expecting the highest profit ever in this period.
There are no employees who want to quit anymore. Employees have different personalities and I cannot say they are in perfect harmony. However, there are no problems as long as they share the fundamental values that the company has respected for years, that is, the manufacturing of quality products for customers. You should accept different personalities within the scope of diversity. It is interesting because the employees differ from each other. These differences in personality are our strength. I would like to use this diversity effectively for the management of the company.

I think a corporate manager should be responsible for making decisions that bring results. If it fails, he or she should find a better way. Having taken over this business, I got to thinking that company management is my vocation. I enjoyed considering business strategies, such as workstyle improvements, formation of a working style, and branding. To widely convey the knowhow that I acquired from this experience, I wrote the book Kaisha wo Korosanai Tameno Jigyokeisho no Kyokasho (a textbook for business succession and continuation).

I was thinking about the expansion of the corporation to beat competitors as the next step. However, it takes time for a manufacturer to grow because growth heavily depends on craftsmanship. Therefore, I decided to grow by offering M&A/consulting services to small and medium-sized manufacturers that have difficulty in finding successors like us and partnering with them to construct a network. Businesses with annual sales of 3,000,000 yen and companies with annual sales of a billion yen differ in what they can do and in their influence on society. Different companies have different strengths. SMEs will become a big group if they use their strengths effectively, share the same values, and are willing to help each other.

I would like to further the activities to develop the network to include over 500 enterprises in the future. I want to disseminate their technology and products proactively internationally as well as domestically if they are good.

In the near future, I would like to convert the network into a holding company and list it on the stock market. I aim to establish a long-lasting company for all members, not just my own company or business depending on one person’s expertise or specific skills. Hopefully, we will restore manufacturing, the key industry in Japan, and hand down technology to future generations.