Firm Shipping U.S.-Made TVs to Japan

The business of manufacturing television sets in the United States showed another sign of life Monday, as Matsushita Electric announced that it had begun exporting U.S.-made large-screen sets to Japan.

Matsushita, a Tokyo-based industrial giant that is one of the world’s largest consumer electronics manufacturers, said it was shipping 3,000 of the 27-inch screen, wooden-clad sets, made at the company’s plant in Franklin Park, Ill. Another 2,000 have been ordered, and further shipments may follow if demand for them is strong in the Japanese market, the company said. The sets come in two styles and are sold under the Panasonic brand name.

The exports are not a promotional gimmick but rather Matsushita’s first attempt to sell television sets in wood cabinets to the Japanese, a spokeswoman said. The company’s factory in Franklin Park, Ill., already makes such sets for sale in the United States.

70% U.S. Made

Japanese factories have mostly produced sets encased in man-made materials, she said. “Traditionally, the Japanese did not have the wooden sets. . . . They never really marketed that in Japan.”

Seventy per cent of the parts and materials in the sets being exported are U.S. made, including the wooden cabinets and picture tubes.

Other big Japanese consumer electronics firms are also studying how to export from the United States back to Japan, said Tom Lauterback, a spokesman for the Electronic Industries Assn., a Washington-based trade group.

Matsushita’s move makes sense, given U.S. expertise in building large-screen television sets, which are still uncommon in Japan, he said. “There are probably good marketing reasons why they would produce here and send it there,” Lauterback said.

During the 1970s, Japanese, South Korean and Taiwanese imports captured a large share of the U.S. television market. But the trend during the last several years has been for both foreign and U.S. producers to move assembly back to the United States. Last year, General Electric moved production of 500,000 color television sets a year from Japan to Bloomington, Ind.