The Tokai Story

 

It has been extremely kind of Mr. Kurokawa and Mr. Tanaka to speak almost freely about their individual observations in Germany.

15 years ago Yoshiaki Kurokawa was facing something like a mission impossible, when he was sent out to conquer the European market for disposable lighters.

Not only that the market was well covered by the well known bic lighters, he also had to introduce the much more expensive Piezo technology to a sales force, that couldn`t even see the difference between the two types of lighters.

Most of these problems he did solve by adding sophisticated Italian Design to his product by involving Tristano Onofri, who has been an expert with developing and predicting forthcoming fashion trends.

Tokai celebration
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This decision had helped a lot to turn the table and to turn Tokai into the market leader within only a few years.

Since two years now Mr. Hiroyoshi Tanaka is in charge of the new state of the art plant, from where Tokai is on it`s way to further expansion.

In the interview he points out his big concern to shorten the time of Germans and Japanese finding their way to a better understand of each other.

Most obviously this is not easy and more intense cultural exchanges require also a lot of language training apart from learning to respect and appreciate the given mentality differences.

Just like Yoshiaki Kurokawa had managed to combine Italian taste with Japanese expertise, Hiroyoshi Tanaka seems to be aiming for a more global understanding between his German and Japanese team members.