Adapting to Japan’s Market Can Be the Key to Success

Despite increased effort from Japan to boost American imports, whether a U.S. company gets a contract often depends on its willingness to adapt its product to the Japanese market.

Sometimes the changes are cosmetic. Fairhope, Ala.-based Harrington House, which is selling grandfather clocks in Japan through Kawai Musical Instrument Co., altered the styling of two models at the suggestion of a Japan External Trade Organization representative.

Micho Yamaoka, JETRO’s senior trade adviser in Alabama, believed that the changes would appeal more to Japanese tastes, according to Harrington House President Robert Taupeka.

At other times, changes can involve substantial alterations in the size or design of a product or a commitment to higher quality.

Some of the most successful exporters to Japan “have made special efforts to modify their products in order to meet Japanese standards or consumer tastes,” said Tetsuo Matsufuji, executive director of JETRO’s New York office.

Andermac, a Yuba City, Calif.-based manufacturer of powered devices that lift and turn bedridden patients, had to make them smaller to negotiate narrower hallways and doors in Japanese hospitals.

The fact that the Japanese often demand product modifications underscores the lesson that doing business there is “not a slam-dunk deal,” Andermac President Hillard Whitt said.

But when American companies “take the time to fit their needs,” lucrative contracts can result, he said. Andermac’s willingness to modify resulted in an initial one-year deal of $500,000 with the distributor Aoitec International.

Vince Yannuzzi, vice president of finance at Allied Steel & Tractor Products Inc. of Solon, Ohio, said the construction company Hanix Corp. asked for major changes in Allied’s aluminum safety shoring for construction trenches. The shoring prevents trench cave-ins.

Hanix wanted additional strength in the pressurized cylinders that keep the shoring in place--an alteration that required re-engineering, Yannuzzi said.

It also wanted the shoring lighter because the Japanese construction workers who must put it in place “tend to be older people who are semi-retired,” he said.

Although the modification process can be painful, there are pluses, according to Paul Colby, president of Youngstown, Ohio-based Spirex, which makes metal screws for plastic molding machines.

Japanese firms often demand closer tolerances and other measures of quality than American firms, he said.

Once Spirex met the specifications, it not only was able to sell to such Japanese giants as Toshiba, but its higher quality gave it a leg up in the domestic market, Colby said. Its American rivals “hadn’t gone through those hoops,” he said.