Begin with goal of helping Japan achieve economic independence

In the early Meiji Era, Japan was Westernizing rapidly to catch up with developed countries. When the government built the Rokumeikan, hats became popular among the public as a symbol of the cultural enlightenment. In those days, however, the hats that were available in Japan were mostly expensive items imported from Britain or France. Believing that the domestic production of hats would stop excessive imports and enable industrialization and economic independence of Japan, Eiichi Shibusawa and the other founders of our company funded and established Nippon Hat Manufacturing Company in 1889.

A factory was built in Koishikawa, Tokyo, and manufacturing of hats was started by inviting an engineer from overseas. However, despite the painstaking efforts of the company, the business struggled, due in part to a fire that ravaged a factory. Shibusawa, who led the reconstruction of the company, dissolved Nippon Hat Manufacturing Company and established the new company Tokyo Hat K.K. on December 12, 1892. He served as the principal director of the company. Though the company endured hardships such as the Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War, Shibusawa took the bold step to expand the factory by acquiring a hat wholesaler. Just two years of that expansion sales of the company reached a record high.

Next, Japan entered the Showa Depression. The Japanese economy was in critical condition, and the cities were filled with the unemployed. We closed our factory in Koishikawa and consolidated production at the Honjo factory. We had endured many hardships since the founding of our company, but our management was in a really difficult state because of a depression that is said to be the most serious economic crisis before World War II. A ray of hope emerged when we presented the Showa Emperor with a fedora hat. The Showa Emperor used the hat for many years, and the sight of him waving the hat to the public was greatly encouraging and one in which we took great pride.

Rising up out of the ashes of the factories destroyed by air raids

War broke out between Japan and the United States, and our employees were mobilized to manufacture military supplies and produced the khaki national hats. The war went badly for Japan, and the majority of our factories were damaged and lost. We lost our Honjo factory, which was destroyed completely in the Great Tokyo Air Raids on March 10, 1945. We then lost our Tabata factory to an air raid on April 13, and our factory in Osaka to an air raid on June 15. The war ended while we were constructing a factory in Niigata to avoid war damage. The minutes of the board of directors meeting had not been taken for a while, so it is impossible to know what actions were taken during that time. However, preparations to resume operations started a mere three days after the end of the war.

We made effective use of materials we had on hand, such as producing hats from the cloth disposed of by the military. To make up for time lost during the war, we worked hard to form a technological tie-up with an influential manufacturer overseas. While tying up with an overseas company was not common at that time, we concluded an agreement with Stetson in the United States and improved our business performance by 40% year-on-year. We were listed in the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1949, but the demand for hats started to decline because formal hats fell out of fashion in Western countries. We responded to this change by entering the markets for ties, shirts, and scarves, which were similar to the market for formal hats. This was our first step towards diversifying our businesses.

Sharp drop in sales and prompts shift from hats to pen tips.

We produced hats worn by Japanese athletes in three Olympic Games: Rome in 1960, Tokyo in 1964, and Mexico in 1968. However, these kinds of hats began to go out of fashion around this time, resulting in a sharp drop of sales. This change prompted us to look for ways to apply our hat-manufacturing technologies. We manufactured felt packing for fueling, for example, in our search of our next core product. In those days, oil-based felt pens attracted a lot of attention as an alternative to fountain pens because they could be used to write on cloth and glass as well as paper. We started to develop pen nibs, believing that our technologies could be applied in this area. This resulted in the unexpected shift from hats to pen nibs.

We had produced felt up until that time, but hats and pen nibs differ in both size and shape. The thin and long felt objects we attempted to make often broke, forcing us to start all over again. We labored late into the night nearly every day, working to create a prototype until we finally succeeded in creating a proper pen nib. When we placed an order for equipment to manufacture pen nibs, it was suggested that the equipment be used to manufacture fishing rods or some product if the pen nib business turned out to be unsuccessful. We started manufacturing pen nibs, and surprisingly received a flood of orders for pen nibs that surpassed our production capacity. To meet this demand, we installed additional pieces of manufacturing equipment.

Ensuring each pen nib is reliable

Oil-based felt pens in those days had their shortcomings. The ink would run easily on paper, and the pen nibs would collapse, making it impossible to write thin letters. To address these problems, we developed a flexible, resilient pen nib and a hard pen nib that could withstand wear. These ground-breaking products were immediately accepted by the market. They were highly acclaimed not only by writing utensil manufacturers in Japan, but also in overseas countries. They spread so rapidly that sales tripled within a single year. We continued to manufacture hats, but the shift to pen nibs was apparently the right move. The growth was so dramatic that some competitors asked us to refrain from exporting our pen nibs.

While the sales remained brisk, we received complaints that lines blurred when they were drawn in a certain direction, and that the hardness and thickness of our pen nibs were uneven. These problems occurred because the fibers dried out after being soaked in a contacting liquid, which made it difficult to reproduce the same shape. In response, our engineers racked their brains to develop new processes that made it possible to manufacture pen nibs with the desired hardness levels in a stable manner. These products were highly acclaimed because they provided completely different level of quality unmatched by the previous pen nibs. One major Japanese manufacturer became a client, and we received an increasing number of orders from other countries, including Germany and France.

After repeated improvements, thin, flexible eyeliner nibs are now used for a variety of eye makeup products in Japan and other countries. They are also used for many popular products. In 2007, lipsticks which use pen nibs appeared, and they have been popular largely in countries overseas because they can be used easily without running over the edge. Cosmetics go in and out of fashion, so we must closely monitor changes in the market. In an effort to create new markets, we are developing new products by always seeking to anticipate what will happen in three to five years. This approach allows us to act as the main player behind the scenes contributing to the creation of hit products.