INTERNATIONAL TRADE : American Speedy Off to Quick Start With Japan Centers
A month after Speedy International Inc. and its Japanese partners opened their first two American Speedy quick-printing centers in Tokyo, the companies say the centers are exceeding expectations so far.
The two centers each had first month sales of about $47,000, 10% more than originally projected, an American Speedy spokesman said.
“We expect sales from each of the two centers to reach about $130,000 a month by the end of the first year,” said Pete Maddox, spokesman for Speedy International, an Anaheim company that bought franchise rights to Japan and eight other Pacific Rim countries from Michigan-based American Speedy Centers Inc.
Speedy International and its Tokyo-based partners, Canon Inc.’s marketing subsidiary and Maruzen Co., a large retailer, said they plan to accelerate the opening of other print centers in Japan.
“The pace of opening other quick-print centers will slowly accelerate in the next few months,” Maddox said.
A third outlet will open next month in Tsukuba, a city 40 miles northeast of Tokyo.
Current plans call for the companies to open hundreds of American Speedy centers throughout Japan during the next 10 years.
Speedy International President William Culp, said his company is negotiating with American Speedy to purchase master franchise rights for Western and Eastern Europe.
Philosophy needed: Speedy International’s Culp once said that to succeed in Japan, a company must act like an eager suitor. “Be persistent,” he advised.
But companies need more than persistence to succeed in Japan, according to Masami Atarashi, president of International Business Brain, a Tokyo consulting firm. There are several things that U.S. companies must do to succeed in Japan, he noted.
“They need a clear-cut corporate philosophy at the American head office and, if such a philosophy exists, they must communicate it properly to the Japanese subsidiary,” he said recently before members of the World Trade Center Assn. of Orange County.
The former head of Johnson & Johnson’s operations in Tokyo said he had to devise the subsidiary’s goals and felt like a “stray sheep” because there was no corporate philosophy to guide employees.
More importantly, the managers that U.S. corporations send to Japan often are “second-class businessmen in their home country” or those who lost out to better executives in corporate battles at their headquarters, he said.
“The severity and complexity of business in Japan should demand executives of top-notch quality, winners who can exercise influence in their headquarters,” he said. “Amongst a number of qualities and qualifications required of a Gaijin (foreign) manager in Japan, the two most important abilities would be adaptability to a different environment and sensitivity to people.”
He recommended that key managers sent to Japan by U.S. firms be kept there for at least three years to evaluate their talents. And to succeed in luring the best among Japan’s college graduates, U.S. companies will have to recognize the importance that young Japanese workers place on job security. Many Japanese, familiar with the mergers and mass layoffs that swept U.S. industry in the 1980s, worry about the security of working for American companies.
