SWANY

TOP>Company Profile>Message from the president: With dreams, ideas and actions, anything is possible

Swany's history and my career as a businessman are the history of taking up challenges that were called impossible by the people around me.

It was in 1964, the year of the unforgettable Tokyo Olympics, that I went abroad for the first time. With a huge trunk full of glove specimens, I set out on a grand sales tour, starting in New York. At first, wherever I went, I was refused at the gate. It took six and a half years and 18 visits until the first order from Sears, but as a result of my persistence at that time, 38% of Swany's overseas sales now come from them.

The same goes for setting up our production center in China. At the time it was very adventurous to establish a factory in a socialist country like China. To be honest, it took quite a while until we made the kind of profit that I had hoped for, and being completely new to quarrelling, I talked my voice hoarse several times. But now everyone agrees that having a production base in China has become a matter of course for most Japanese manufacturers.

Written like this, it might come across as a lot of hardship, but to me it never felt like that, because it was what I’d always dreamed of. Even when people laughed at me saying "that's impossible", I never gave up my dream and just kept on thinking and working.

At present Swany has its hands full with the new business venture: bags. Regarding product development and sales there are numerous thorny tasks, and things don't progress the way we had envisioned. Nevertheless, we've got a new dream. With the universally useful Walkin'Bag, we have started to change common sense about bags. Because of this dream, ideas and energy will well up. And the dream will certainly come true. That I believe.

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