"In the struggle between money, power and desire, what is the meaning of the so-called family?" Adapted from the classic Japanese novel "Gorgeous Family", it depicts a series of financial restructurings and entanglements of interests faced by the chaebol family in the 1960s during the post-war economic take-off period, which evolved into a torn situation of family infighting and father-son contention. Similar story patterns have always been a common theme in Japanese economic novels, and in reality, similar events have indeed become new hot topics.
The protagonist of the story is the famous Japanese brand Otsuka Furniture, which provided many high-end furniture for use in the 2007 Japanese drama "Gorgeous Family" starring Takuya Kimura and Hiraji Shin Tokuji.
After a family infighting a few years ago, Otsuka Furniture, a craftsman company that has been established for half a century since the 1960s, was officially absorbed and merged by Yamada Electric, Japan's largest electrical appliance manufacturer, in February 2022. After the news was exposed, it triggered a heated discussion in Japanese public opinion and business circles, because in 2015, Otsuka Furniture made headlines in Japan because of the dispute over the management rights of the founder and the daughter of the president, becoming a "gorgeous family war" witnessed by Japanese society. Unexpectedly, the civil war of the family business, which japan called the "Imperial Family Riot", would end in a merger by a third party, which made the Japanese business community sigh.
Otsuka Furniture is a high-end furniture company that was founded in 1969 and is well known in Japan. Founder Katsuhisa Otsuka jumped to the top of the industry in the post-war economic take-off era with a set of ingenious professional sales, and expanded the market after the collapse of the bubble economy, becoming synonymous with the sales of high-end furniture in Japan. Film and television works such as "Gorgeous Family", "Unsinkable Sun", "Top Sky Hotel" starring Takuya Kimura, etc., also have high-end furniture provided by Otsuka Furniture as a scene arrangement.
However, Otsuka Furniture broke out the scandal of internal trading, coupled with the antiquated family business system, failed to cope with the changes in the social and economic structure of the Heisei era after the 2000s, and the crisis of the decline of traditional old shops emerged one by one.
What has attracted the attention of the whole country is the "Imperial Family Riot" that once caused shock in the social and financial circles - Kumiko, the eldest daughter of the Otsuka family, served as president in an effort to reform and save the cause, but the struggle between the father and daughter of Otsuka broke out. The dramatic events unfolded and evolved into scenes of "old president father" vs. "furniture princess", but behind the gossip of business wars and the mentality of watching a good show, the Otsuka furniture incident reflected the economic ecology and deep-rooted family business culture since showa in Japan, which is like a microcosm of Japan's commercial society. How did Otsuka Furniture become the standard-bearer of the era of "breaking through the bubble economy"? How did you fall to the peak of your career? Who is the winner of the result of two generations of flesh and blood fighting?
Otsuka Furniture: A Gorgeous Family Rising from a Bubble?
Otsuka furniture was founded by Katsuhisa Otsuka in 1969, Katsuhisa's father was originally a craftsman who made paulownia cabinets, when he was a child, Otsuka Katsuhisa and other brothers in his father's work, for the unique handmade furniture quite experienced, in 1969 Otsuka Katsuhisa was 26 years old when he decided to start a business, chose to open a furniture shop in his hometown Saitama Prefecture Kasuga Department, on the one hand, to continue the inheritance of their own craftsmanship, on the other hand also wanted to break into the high-end furniture market that was booming after the post-war economy.
Katsuhisa Otsuka started from a small furniture store, the sales of high-end furniture at that time were mostly based on the advantage of department stores, Otsuka entered the market at a relatively low price through the supply of small and medium-sized enterprises and wholesalers of other furniture manufacturers, and thanks to the hot money in the Japanese bubble economy, Otsuka Furniture's route of selling high-end furniture was quite successful, and in 1978 it attacked from Saitama Prefecture to Tokyo to open a store, and in 1980 it became a listed company.
After entering the 1990s in Heisei, Japan, Otsuka Furniture, which was founded in the 1960s, did not collapse due to the collapse of the bubble economy, but instead broke through the bubble and ushered in the opportunity to expand its scale. The reason for this is that at that time, Otsuka Furniture was not a huge enterprise body, and the economic impact was relatively limited, but other large-scale peer and department stores were hit hard, but it gave up a certain market space; at the same time, people born in Japan's second baby boom era (1970~1975) also entered the stage of marriage and family, and the furniture market still had corresponding sales expectations.
The rise of Otsuka Furniture became the most frequently mentioned brand story in Otsuka Katsuhisa himself and in the story of Japanese entrepreneurship. Katsuhisa Otsuka focused on a membership system that was rare in the furniture industry at that time, and joined the members of Otsuka Furniture to enjoy intimate and professional services, hoping to consolidate the core consumer group. On the other hand, Katsuhisa Otsuka is quite active in advertising, especially the traditional form of sending advertising leaflets, which opens up popularity, and the unique one-on-one service model of Otsuka Furniture. Katsuhisa Otsuka was proud of the success of membership and publicity campaigns, and repeatedly told the media about his business rules:
"Although the price of the goods is expensive, as long as it is a good thing and has been fully explained, everyone will buy it!"
Otsuka Furniture, which has been upgrading its services, has been expanding since 1996 and its sales have been booming, and in 2001, its annual turnover reached a peak of 71.2 billion yen. The success of the brand has made Otsuka Furniture synonymous with Japanese high-end furniture, but although it seems that the business is in the sky, it did not expect that the storm of changes in the economic environment was coming, and the ills of the Otsuka furniture company system also emerged one by one.
The first incident that surprised the outside world most about Otsuka Furniture was the internal trading case in 2007. An investigation by the Japanese Financial Services Agency found that in February 2006, Otsuka Furniture executives bought a large number of their own stocks for profit through insider trading, and the board members also knew in advance, and after the case was exposed, not only did Otsuka Furniture eat a fine for a bad reputation, but also the stock price was once affected.
The insider trading case became the first career crisis faced by Otsuka Furniture, and the board members involved in the incident, because they were all controlled by the Otsuka family and attracted the attention of public opinion, saw that their performance was affected by the scandal and economic environment and declined, the then 66-year-old Katsuhisa Otsuka resigned as president in 2009, which was also the 40th anniversary of Otsuka Furniture's founding, and chose to let the eldest daughter, Kumiko Otsuka, take over as president and stay on the board of directors.
However, instead of choosing the eldest son Katsuyuki Otsuka to take over as president, the eldest daughter Kumiko returned to the company to fight the fire, which seemed to be a new and innovative move, but it was unexpectedly a prelude to a series of subsequent storms.
Kumiko Otsuka and the "Imperial Family Riot"
By 2009, Otsuka Furniture's deficit of nearly 1.5 billion yen was already tricky. The Lehman Brothers financial crisis in 2008 is certainly one of the factors, but as early as the early 2000s, The Japanese furniture market did quietly change - one of Japan's social problems is "less birthrate" and "single generation increase", and the transformation of the new generation of family structure has also affected the tendency of furniture purchases, suitable for small spaces, multi-functionality, not afraid of wear and tear of replaceability and price considerations, such factors make the family market for high-end furniture inferior to the past.
At the same time, about the moment when Otsuka Furniture opened the high-end furniture, NITORI, which started from Hokkaido, also entered the Tokyo Metropolitan Area in the 2000s, although Otsuka Katsuhisa believed that "NITORI is not the object of competition for Otsuka Furniture", indicating that the market for the main high-price layer is differentiated, but in terms of actual performance, Otsuka Furniture is declining year by year is an indisputable fact, and NITORI's thriving shine inevitably makes Otsuka Furniture different.
It was in this context that Kumiko Otsuka took over the position of president of Otsuka Furniture. Kumiko had two elements when she took over as president, one of which was to ask her father, Katsuhisa Otsuka, to "take over" and let Kumiko hold the corresponding shares and management rights. The second is that in order to save the decline of Otsuka Furniture, the marketing model must be completely reformed - Kumiko believes that the most fundamental problem is to abolish her father Katsuhisa's iron "membership system" and advertising pyramid schemes.
Kumiko was born in 1968, is the eldest daughter of 5 siblings, her father Katsuhisa loves and loves katsuhisa, but also like Katsuhisa's own childhood experience, Kumiko has been around the Otsuka furniture store and warehouse since childhood, compared to her brother Otsuka Katsuyuki, Kumiko believes that although Katsuyuki is the eldest son, she seems to be less enthusiastic about the family business, and is sure that she should be the successor of Otsuka Furniture. After graduating from the Faculty of Economics at Hitotsubashi University in 1991, Kumiko first went to the banking industry and then returned to the family business to help in 1994 in response to the expansion of the Otsuka Furniture Store, and successively served as the director of sales management, the director of management planning, and the director of the commodity department, and later focused on asset management.
After Being appointed to take over as president, Kumiko abolished the membership system and traditional advertising campaigns of the past, and the VIP reception desk originally set up outside the store was pulled back into the store, changing the overall feeling to a more spacious and people-friendly route, competing with the rising NITORI and other industries.
Above: After Being appointed to take over as president, Kumiko changed many of her past marketing strategies. In recent years, Otsuka Furniture has sought endorsements from Japanese artists.
Kumiko did improve her performance after taking office, but the complete denial of her father Katsuhisa's business line became the fuse that triggered the confrontation between father and daughter, and her father Katsuhisa's previous share transfer was not completed, and he thought that he should still let his eldest son inherit the family business, so at the board meeting in 2014, Katsuhisa actually launched a proposal to force Kumiko to retire on the grounds of "poor performance", and Katsuhisa himself returned to the pot as president.
Katsuhisa Otsuka once again moved out of his own business rules, but his obsession with membership and traditional advertising strategies failed to save Otsuka Furniture from falling losses; at this time, Otsuka Furniture had split into the "president faction" led by his father (Mr. and Mrs. Otsuka, Nagao Katsuyuki) and Kumiko's "president faction" (Kumiko and her three siblings), and at the board meeting on January 28, 2015, Kumiko's faction launched a counterattack and won a board vote to restore the president position.
At this point, the dispute over Otsuka Furniture became more and more intense, and the Japanese media and public opinion at that time called the family infighting of Otsuka Furniture as "Imperial Family Riot". The development of the incident is becoming more and more dramatic, not willing to show weakness, her father Katsuhisa directly and publicly asked Kumiko to resign, otherwise she will be sued in court; Kumiko stepped on a tough position, believing that only herself as president can save Otsuka Furniture - the two sides talked to each other in the media, and the final battle was in march 2015, Kumiko won the vote to keep the position of president, and her father Katsuhisa and the president sent a cadre, etc., to resign from Otsuka Furniture and start a new stove.
The commotion of Otsuka furniture came to an end, and Katsuhisa, who was not immortal, returned to his hometown of Kasugabu and opened a shop "Craftsman Otsuka" to continue to sell high-end furniture. Kumiko tried to revitalize Otsuka furniture after 2015, but perhaps both sides of the civil war obsessed with the right to operate ignored the outside world perception, after experiencing this father-daughter war, the external evaluation and impression of Otsuka furniture deteriorated, ironically Kumiko later launched a series of TV advertisements, focusing on the brand image of "family warmth", but was complained about by public opinion.
After 2015, Otsuka Furniture, despite Kumiko's attempts to turn the tide, the overall performance and deficit size still did not improve. Kumiko turned to cooperation with China to seek Chinese capital and sales channels, but the effect was not as expected, and in 2019, Yamada Electric, Japan's largest household electrical appliance manufacturer, funded the incorporation of Otsuka Furniture into the group's subsidiary to assist in the follow-up operation of Otsuka Furniture. In the same year, the father and daughter, who had turned against each other, also staged a great reconciliation in the media's attention, and their fathers Katsuhisa and Kumiko embraced each other, announcing that the "dispute" of Otsuka furniture had become a cloud of the past.
Katsuhisa Otsuka responded to Yamada Electric's investment by saying, "This is also a helpless thing." The following year, Kumiko resigned as president and switched to the Yamada Electric Group, and in February 2022, she ushered in a wordless ending - Yamada Electric officially absorbed and merged Otsuka Furniture, although it said that it still considered continuing to develop under the brand of Otsuka Furniture, but the Japanese media for the first time believed that Otsuka Furniture had essentially gone "eliminated".
Otsuka furniture from the rise of the sixty years of the era, to the present is absorbed and merged, along the way the corporate story has become a review case of Japan's business wars, Otsuka furniture background reflects the face of Japan's economic development and social dynamics, as well as the family business reflects the Japanese blood structure relationship, ironically after this parent-child war, the family in the end but no one is the winner.
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