Brother UK at your side at 50

couldn’t remain competitive because the engine manufacturer’s charges were so high. 1989/1990 was a tough period for us because we didn’t have a laser product to sell. That’s why we pushed so hard for Brother Japan to invest in a venture company to acquire inkjet technologies or additional laser printer capabilities. NT: So, you were instrumental in Brother’s decision to move into new product areas, based on what you saw happening in the US. TK: Yes. Fast forward to 1989/1990 when the first Gulf War began. We were very hungry for new products and Brother came up with some new fax machines. We saw these as a good opportunity and started advertising them on the CNN network. As soon as the Gulf War started, people tuned into CNN, saw our advertisements and things took off immediately. A few years later, in 1992, we finally got the fax machine we wanted; it had plain paper, came with lots of features and was almost half the price of competitors’ models. We sold lots in office superstores like Staples. Then, in 1994 we finally came up with a laser printer of our own. The following year, in 1995, we pushed Japan to make it multifunction, so that households didn’t have to have a separate copier, printer, scanner and fax machine. Having been told, I would have to wait two years, I contacted a local software vendor and contracted them to turn our fax machine into a printer, copier and scanner as well. We called this the ‘missing link’ product – the bridge between our laser printer and our first true multifunction product. It was this that enabled us to become the first and the leading provider of multifunction products for the small office/home office (SOHO) market. NT: Brother didn’t invent multifunction print devices, so how was it that you became so well known for them? TK: Interestingly, it was the same for fax. Brother was the last company to enter the facsimile business in 1992, but we became by far the number one share holder. Basically, we developed special relationships with the big superstores. Whatever their buyers asked for, we asked the factory to deliver. In the US, more than 60% of my business was with just three customers and through them we pumped hundreds of thousands of devices into home offices across the US. I was so busy for the whole of the 1990s because every year a new product would come out, including inkjet multifunctional devices, and each one would be additional business not a replacement for an existing product. At the same time, the consumables business became more and more profitable. That’s why we are still very strong in North America and Europe. One third of our business is from the Americas and 25% from Europe. Europe and the United States alone make up almost 60% of our revenue. NT: What do you see as the main challenges and opportunities facing Brother today? TK: After I returned to Japan in 2005, I promoted two business strategies. One was to be more global in manufacturing and sales and marketing. Diversifying manufacturing capacity from China and opening new factories in Vietnam and the Philippines has helped us manage manufacturing costs and risk, and increase production. We have also established new Brother sales and marketing companies in Asia, India, Latin America and Eastern Europe. We are now established in more than 40 countries and in all regions bar Africa where we have a distributor. Part of our growth strategy is to become either the number one or number two player in these smaller countries. Sooner or later the market will become saturated and if we are a smaller player with a smaller share, we will be eliminated. The second strategy is to keep pushing industrial print. More than 50% of our business still comes from the print industry and our aim is to focus more on B2B business, machinery business and industrial printing. Inkjet printing is very interesting in this context, because it lets you print on any kind of media, material or textile. I saw the opportunity to acquire Domino Printing Sciences more than three years ago and plan to utilise their existing technology for more industrial purposes, such as marking metal products or cans, bottles and cardboard packaging in food and drinks Brother and Word Processing WP-1. A portable alphabetical word processor with a handle for carrying. This model, equipped with a typewriter function, featured daisy wheel printing. Kingswood Media – www.binfo.co.uk 6