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| Greeting from the President |
Creating customer satisfaction by identifying the needs of customers and perpetually offering ideas that address the changing times in every era – Uchino believes this is what a marketing company is all about. Ever since founded, our lineup began with towels and extended to items used in the bathroom, our corporate activities conducted with a strong conviction to create customer satisfaction, encompassing the approach to bath time and how this time is spent.
Shortly after the war, at a time when the entire family shared a single towel, Uchino was the first to introduce “family towels,” proposing one towel per family member. In 1960, we brought in Disney character towels for children and in 1970, launched partnerships with haute couture brands such as Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Cardin to incorporate the latest fashions into towels, creating the first brand towels in Japan. We also conceived a succession of original items such as towel handkerchiefs and towel scarves that take advantage of towel material properties, which many customers enjoy using.
For Uchino, the rise of the yen in the latter 1980s due to liberalization of foreign exchange was a turning point. Realizing that relying solely on domestic towel manufacturing would eventually lead to high cost difficulties and make it impossible to create products that satisfy customers, we established Raja Uchino in 1988. The purpose of this production plant was to achieve wide variety, small lot, high added-value, and quick response manufacturing. In the same year, we opened the lifestyle-proposal antenna shop “The Body and Bath Shop” in the high-class Omotesando area of Tokyo. This signaled our transformation from a company that simply sells towels, to a company that offers ideas to match lifestyle situations, such as “bath,” “baby,” and “sports.” A beautiful, healthy, and pleasant lifestyle; designing lifestyles to spend everyday in comfort. This is how we arrived at the Uchino concept of “Lifestyle Designing”.
And now, when pursuing the comfort of the bathroom and the pleasure from bath time, we have realized that there is something we must not forget. That is, the importance of coexistence between humans and nature. As long as the global environment is being destroyed, we cannot truly live here in comfort. We strongly sense the difficulty of reviving what has been lost and the urgency of ecology. Uchino’s approach of restoring the global environment, based on the environmental international standard ISO14000, has been adhered to at Shanghai Uchino, which was established in 1993 as an integrated manufacturing plant that encompasses the spinning of yarn to finishing processing. Further, Uchino has acquired certification by Class 1 of the Oeko-Tex Standard 100, an international standard indicating that it’s safe even for babies to put into their mouths. Using materials nurtured by the earth, such as organic cotton, herb dyes, and mineral dyes, we create products that are pleasing to people. Manufacturing that is gentle to both people and the earth – we strongly wish to maintain this as a crucial pillar of our corporate activities.
With a structure of global bases, Uchino has made it possible to supply products not only speedily, but also with high added value. We will continue to address changes in the environment with management that has a global perspective and strong personnel capabilities; we will also develop products and serve as a resource of information that customers look for. Uchino aspires to consistently remain a strong presence. Leveraging the strengths and know-how of a global corporation, we will aim to grow even stronger.
April 2008
Nobuyuki Uchino, President and Representative Director
Uchino Co., Ltd. |
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