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Episode5. "Encouraging Creativity" Never Ends
Episode5.
"Encouraging Creativity" Never Ends
Juicer Club
"Quickly producing something just because another company did and it sold well is not something we've traditionally done. We're too proud to follow in the footsteps of others." These words come from a symposium featured in the house magazine of Fuji Electric in 1962. You can sense our principled stance toward manufacturing, and our deep-seated corporate culture. The theme of the symposium was juicers—a product booming in Japan at that time. The person who made the remark was the Manager of the Appliance Department.
Fuji Electric developed and sold the first domestic juicer in 1955. When cooking mixers began to sell well, we embarked on development of mixers, looking to a German-made mixer as a reference point, and following the strategy of our Senior Managing Director at the time: "We are going to produce mixers, and we don't want to imitate others, so let's do something a little different." Juicers didn't sell at first, and we incurred a loss with each unit sold. That situation continued for five or six years.
Even so, the engineer's spirit never gives up. We steadily improved the product, little by little, for the benefit of a limited number of enthusiasts, and eventually the tide turned. A popular weekly magazine featured a Diet member who used a juicer for his health, and that led to a rush of inquiries. We also operated a "juicer club" of enthusiasts from various spheres, and held promotions like lending out a juicer for a week. The result was a nationwide juicer boom. The product helped to improve the public’s diet in Japan, which was still poor at that time.
Enriching people's life with new ideas... We see that same approach in other popular appliances of the past. For example, dual-jet washing machines, which achieved uniform washing without laundry twisting, were marketed in 1954. Another example was the Delta Fan of 1955. This product incorporated cumulative improvements such as a silent fan and fully-sealed motor, and successfully housed its start mechanism in the main unit. Today too, there's no change in our commitment to originality, or in our inquisitive spirit. Fuji Electric continues to improve affluence in the environmental and energy fields.