Entering rayon through a separate company, Kurashiki Kenshoku (1926)

The distance at which a cotton company touched chemistry

What deserves attention in this decision is less the novelty of the field entered than the choice of where to put it. Kurabo did not add rayon to its own mills; it put it out into a separate company. The consideration at work appears to have been not to mix a chemical fibre whose start-up could not be read into the parent’s profits, which already swung each period with the cotton-yarn market. Turned around, the chance to grow chemical technology inside the company receded by exactly that much. The parent went on being a company that spun cotton.

The way it kept its distance produced, in the end, two companies. Kurashiki Kenshoku grew into a chemical maker that would give the world vinylon and Clarino; Kurabo, thirty-six years later in 1962, entered the non-textile field itself with a different chemical product, urethane foam. In 1936 Kurabo had moved into wool and staple fibre. The company that had sent rayon outside was, ten years on, running a kind of chemical fibre through its own frames.