To find out how to turn off your ad blocker, click here.
If this is your first time registering, check your inbox to learn more about the benefits of your Forbes account and what you can do next.
When a main electronic apple asked textile manufacturer Amaike to create a new curtain protection for their plasma TVs, none of them imagined that the result would be a fashion break. However, Amaike’s commitment to satisfying her guests led them to a solution that far exceeded expectations. Japan has long been known for its guest service, but this commitment goes beyond retailers and hospitality staff to reaffirm consumer satisfaction. The big apple of inventions that delight in making Japan a foreign leader in the industrial sector are small and medium-sized enterprises that strive to meet the original demands of their corporate consumers. Based on these inventions to better satisfy the changing desires of their consumers, these small and medium-sized enterprises have made Japan the first or only supplier of giant apple fabrics that make global fashion possible.
Create from needs
“The wishes of our consumers are the main reason for our studies and expansion,” says Amaike Mototsugu, CEO of artificial textile manufacturer Amaike. “They come to us for fabrics with houses that just don’t exist anywhere else.” This schooling can lead to the discovery of new fabrics. In some cases, however, even the guest does not anticipate how the product can be used. This was the case of Amaike Suconsistent with Organza, whose first friend evolved through Amaike at the request of a manufacturer, a draconsistain electromagnetic shielding for plasma televisions. Once plasma became an ancient technology, Amaike began to introduce fabric into the fashion world. At just five g/m2, the Amaike Suconsistent with Organza is the light cloth you have today (by comparison, your yarn is five times thinner than your hair), and has aroused the attention of designers in France and Italy. Today, he appears in costumes for films and occasional productions, adding consistent performances at the Opéra National de Paris. Amaike continues to expand new fabrics for consumers around the world, whether for fashion and advertising uses.
Changing global works
“Our consumers are acquiring higher specifications, faster production times and, of course, minimize costs. This suggests that any of the products we create can be repositioned in more than a year as we fulfill consumers’ wishes. Kondo Naotaka, CEO of graphite specialist Toyo Tanso, describes his products, which have become indispensable for high-function applications. “We manufacture graphite points for family appliances, medical equipment, automobiles, high-speed trains, airplanes. Our quantities were even used in the Hayabusa 2 deceptive probe. Toyo Tanso was one of the first corporations to produce isotropic graphite en masse, and left up to 30% of the percentage of the global market position of this material. The lightness, low friction and heat resistance of graphite have made it indispensable for next generation power solutions, allowing Toyo Tanso consumers to drive around the world to become leaders in wind, solar, thermal and transparent technologies.
At a microscopic end of the scale, the materials that go into our electronic devices, have shaped the future like few others have. Conventional electronics have been approaching a limit, however, as developers race to achieve greater computing ability in smaller sizes with limited power usage. One thing they have hoped for is some new material or technique that will let them bypass these limitations to create devices that are far smaller, more powerful, and much more efficient. For one group, their work on a completely different problem led to a solution: “these students at Kyoto University had developed a method for creating ceramic filters with gallium oxide, but when I saw their work, I realized that their method could be applied to making power devices with gallium oxide as a semiconductor,” explains Hitora Toshimi. “This would make electronic components not just more energy efficient as power sources, but also much smaller in volume than before.” Hitora, together with this 15-person academic research team, created the company Flosfia. Their resulting MISTDRY technology has enabled them to make diodes and transistors that only require one tenth of power source volume compared to previous ones. The company is planning to scale up to mass production this year.
Committed to innovation
When Amaike’s consumers request a new material, the team of 40 painters has to come to the paintings through a great friend who invents it in entire fabric. “Every year, we produce between 50 and one hundred new fabrics as samples for our consumers,” Amaike says of the paints her team makes to create fabrics with exclusive houses that no other manufacturer can offer.
Research and progression are still important, but at the forefront of technology, it is an absolute necessity. Companies that are creating new fabrics in Japan are making a big investment in studies and progress, which is also because they focus on listening to the needs of their customers. Most have sales from B to B, and their customers, who strive for their own capabilities, technify them with very explicit demands. This creates a virtuous cycle in which curtain brands are innovated to meet the purposes of their customers.
For Toyo Tanso, pioneering his box, his best friend suggests that the device had to expand new inventions that do not yet exist. “Being so far ahead suggests that there are necessarily false steps, but since we never give up, we realize what no one else can,” Kondo says. “We invest a broad component of the benefits gained through our successful products in next-generation design.”
These companies, while handling other materials, express a similar vision: seeing their artistic inventions serve not only the goals of their consumers, but also of society at large. “Our goal over the next 10 to 20 years is to help solve social problems,” Hitora says. They are also in a position with next-generation responses that reduce waste, pollutants and stress consumption, while reducing costs relative to everyone’s reach. To achieve this, they are reviewing and locating global partnerships: “With our offices circulating around the world, we seek to be much closer to all our consumers to meet their precise requirements,” Kondo says.
To learn more about Toyo Tanso, click here.
To learn more about Amaike’s textile industry, click here.
To learn more about Flosfia, click here.
Note: All Infomercial Japanese calls are given in the old format, with the call prior to the first call.
In order to announce advertising collaboration, the Japan Voice series introduces corporations to the best Japanese technologies that succeed in “one of the types”
In order to announce advertising collaboration, the Japan Voice series introduces corporations to state-of-the-art Japanese technologies that achieve “one-of-a-kind” prestige or become giants in global niche markets, through interperspecies with innovators who strengthen our economy through making it so resilient.