Catering to a Culture : United Hi-Tech Tailors U.S. Products to Japanese Buyers
Most American companies have difficulty selling products in Japan.
A small Van Nuys firm has proved an exception. It has been profitably exporting everything from oil tank cleaning systems to customized Chevrolet vans, souped-up motorcycles and studio lighting systems to Japan for more than a decade.
“American products are so salable in Japan, if they just had a touch,” said Tadabumi Takasu, 47, a Japanese-born electrical engineer who founded United Hi-Tech Inc. in 1983.
“What we provide is the Japanese touch,” Takasu said as he sat in an office cluttered with electronic parts, a model of a Porsche 911 and a gleaming motorcycle engine.
He said his company’s sales have ranged between $2 million and $8 million a year since its inception.
Takasu’s five-man team exports a variety of products, but he said, “generally we get involved with high-tech items, electronics or mechanics--items Japanese people will buy, if they just had a a slight modification.”
Customized Chevrolet vans, for example, have been a staple of Takasu’s business since 1988. A friend at a Nissan dealership in Tokyo told him Chevrolet Astro vans had become a hot seller. But, he told Takasu, more vans could be sold if the interiors were upgraded with luxury appointments.
“We bought vans for conversion, just the metal frames with bare interiors--no seats, no dashboard, nothing inside, and we totally redid them. We cut out the windows ourselves, put in leather seats, deluxe burled wood dash, put in a new, higher roof, improved the suspension. Then, you have a product the Japanese will buy,” Takasu said.
United Hi-Tech contracts out the conversion work and exports between 30 to 40 vans per month to Japan, charging about $10,000 per van.
Takasu emigrated to the United States in 1970, and for a while pursued graduate studies in electrical engineering at Caltech. In 1973, in need of money to support himself, he contacted a friend in the Japanese used car business, asking him if he could use any American-made cars. “He arranged for me to get a letter of credit with his company and asked me to send him some Camaros,” Takasu said. “That’s how I got started. I sent him about 50 cars in the first year: Camaros, Mustangs and Firebirds.”
The next year, Takasu, who never finished at Caltech, sent his friend about 200 American-made cars. “The price difference, the cost of these American cars in Japan was incredible,” Takasu said. “I didn’t even have any capital. Just a letter of credit, some good contacts. . . . The personal part is very important.”
Other early ventures included importing computer boards for video games and negotiating the rights to distribute some early Japanese videotape machines, with only playback, that were rented through local video stores. “The video players were the biggest hit we had in the beginning. We didn’t know, we guessed it would work. That’s why we try a little bit of everything.”
After exporting to Japan for more than 20 years, Takasu has learned that the Japanese like American-made goods. They like American houses, art, vehicles, clothes--even some technology. But they prefer them to be tailored to meet Japanese tastes or specifications.
For example, Takasu became interested in the concert and stage lighting export business about five years ago, after an Italian lighting company asked him if he’d be interested in marketing their computerized stage lighting systems to Japan.
“We were interested, but their lighting systems were much too large and heavy for stages and studios in Japan,” Takasu said. “The technicians in Japan handling the lighting systems are usually women. . . . They need something light, easy to handle. We helped the company design a more compact computerized lighting system and found some friends to help us market it in Japan.” The product, Takasu said, cost up to $1,000 per system in Japan.
Besides customizing vans and lighting systems, Takasu, who once raced motorcycles as a hobby, does motorcycle customizing as well. “Whatever the customer wants--twin spark plugs, more speed, more power, more endurance--we will design it that way,” Takasu said, showing a glossy Japanese motorcycle magazine with photos of a replica 1982 Kawasaki racing cycle custom-designed by his company.
The motorcycle replicas sell for about $30,000. Takasu makes only two or three replicas each year, and sells to a single distributor in Japan.
Another new venture is exporting custom-made, American prefabricated housing parts to Japan. “We take the American-made house parts because they are superior and cheaper than the prefab house parts available on the market in Japan. We export the floors, the cabinets, the windows, the doors. . . . The parts are American, the finishing is Japanese.”
The biggest moneymaker for United Hi-Tech Inc. over the past five years has been overseas distribution of low-volume petroleum tank steam-cleaning systems designed by an American environmental engineering firm. Called the Super Max Cleaning System, Takasu said the units sell for approximately $2 million. His company moves three or four units per year to Japanese and Argentine petroleum and oil-tank cleaning companies, he said.
But Takasu has also made some mistakes. In 1983, after exporting American-made cars for about 10 years, he got involved in a joint venture importing a new, Japanese, three-wheel vehicle, the Zoe Zipper Personal Transportation Vehicle. The cars sold for less than $3,000 and got 112 miles per gallon.
He imported about 300 of the cars. But the product liability insurance was so great because the car was so tiny, Takasu said, that he couldn’t afford to import them. The cars eventually were sold as novelty vehicles to collectors.
Charles Swanberg is one of Takasu’s employees. “He likes to know the people he does business with. I knew him for three years before he hired me.” Takasu hired Swanberg, a half-Japanese, half-American native Californian, a year ago to pilot the development of the company’s first product for the United States.
Patrol Guard is a bullet-resistant, removable car window that Swanberg said is the first such product available to the consumer. Takasu came up with the idea after the 1992 riots. Initial plans were to market the protective windows--which clamp to car door frames with brackets and industrial strength Velcro--to the Los Angeles Police Department. But with a price tag of $495 per window, department officials said they couldn’t afford them.
Swanberg said Toyota inquired about installing the custom-made windows in its vans they use to shuttle executives around Los Angeles, and a Czech exporter wants to market them to clients in East Asia. But so far, not one unit has sold. Car dealers, like Auto Stiegler Inc. in Encino, a Mercedes-Benz dealership that briefly had a Patrol Guard window on display, said they’re loath to push an accessory that stirs customers’ fears about owning an expensive car in a high-crime city.
“There’s no corporate hierarchy. If something works, we keep it going. If not, we try something different,” Swanberg said.
One key in doing business with Japan today, Takasu said, is to recognize the Japanese have been money savers for decades--and now are beginning to spend.
The average Japanese citizen, he said, has “$60,000 in the bank. They have been saving for years. Now, they can afford nice things. It is a good time for a business like mine.”
