27 | History of Glass: Kimoto Glass's Challenge and Story of Glass Manufacturing 10

Hello everyone 🎵

We learned a great deal from Aeon, our business partner, about how Kimoto Glass has survived (lol) in a difficult environment and is still here today.

First of all, because they prioritize customers and sell products under optimal conditions in terms of price, quality, and timing, product procurement is basically through free competition. Of course, it can be influenced by initiatives, but whether the rivals are industry peers, major trading companies, or overseas manufacturers, if the conditions are the same, they procured products that benefited customers. Even with just a few people at Kimoto Glass, if a product benefited customers, we were able to achieve hundreds of millions of yen in business. As I have mentioned many times, Kimoto Glass is an expert in glass tableware, and through long-standing collaboration with domestic and international manufacturers and artisans, we have earned strong trust from our partners. In the 1990s, we worked with our partners to plan, propose, and sell products with bold product planning, packaging, and pricing strategies.

Products have barcodes on their packaging, don't they? When customers purchase these products, sales information is collected by Aeon. This allows us to determine in real-time how well Kimoto's proposed products sold and how quickly they sold. It was incredibly rewarding when a product we proposed, considering the glass tableware industry, customer purchasing behavior, and competitor movements, became a category leader. Achieving sales results brings trust and leads to future opportunities.

Online ordering, which is commonplace today, and EDI initiatives were started 30 years ago. At the time, it was cutting-edge, with little know-how and high costs, but it was with Aeon's support that we introduced internal systems, organized product information masters, arranged images, and set up JAN codes ahead of the analog era.

After EDI came logistics reform. Logistics is a tactical term for efficiently managing military supply and procurement, not just transportation and warehousing. There can be no stockouts, as we respond within 6 hours from receiving EDI data at 6 am to shipment! This is managed by a delivery rate. Also, there is no inspection upon delivery; instead, there are spot checks to verify data against actual deliveries. Naturally, any discrepancies resulted in a yellow card, or at worst, termination of the business, which created considerable daily tension and stress. To cope with this, we improved and refined procurement, work arrangements, layouts, systems, and human resource management, which built up our strength—not physical strength (lol), but the strength of the company 🎵

Quality control, compliance, environmental impact, and working conditions—these are all things that are taken for granted today, but we were made aware of them 20 or 30 years ago. By responding to them, Kimoto Glass naturally gained strength and wisdom, which is why we are still surviving today.

I am deeply grateful to Aeon and everyone who has helped us. Thank you very much ♪

It has been 15 years since we withdrew from the partnership in 2008, but there are many seniors with whom we still occasionally consult, exchange updates, and send New Year's cards.

Thank you very much ♪