Mamoru Kiguchi
Profile
Performance in office
Tenure
Tenure
Background
He was born in 1923 to a farming family in Soja, Okayama Prefecture. After finishing Kushiro Higher Elementary School in 1938, he went to Shanghai in his teens and handled sales of daily goods and food. After the war, invited by a senior colleague who had returned home earlier, he moved to Kobe and joined Hikari Shokai, which dealt in daily goods such as hats and clothing, rising to Senior Managing Director. Without going on to higher schooling, he learned business only at shop counters in Shanghai and Kobe, and in January 1959 founded World with ¥2 million in capital.
Selection
He was the first president, with no predecessor. In April 1955 Hirotoshi Hatazaki joined Hikari Shokai, where Kiguchi was Senior Managing Director, as one of four new employees, and that is where the two met. Hikari Shokai had about ten employees at the time. In January 1959, Kiguchi, then 36, founded the sweater wholesaler World with Hatazaki, 13 years his junior, and became President. Kiguchi has said that there were no shops large enough to entrust one's whole life to, so going independent was the norm for shop employees then.
Initiatives
The company started as a wholesaler of women's sweaters in Ikuta-ku, Kobe. Holding that simply taking over the customers from his Hikari Shokai days would violate the industry's code, he built up customers by finding new ones, and the first sales vehicle was a single second-hand bicycle bought on the black market for ¥5,500. The company opened a Tokyo store in February 1965 and completed its Kobe head office building in October 1968. Annual sales reached ¥1.4 billion with 54 employees in 1967, its eighth year, and grew to about ¥8.4 billion by 1972, when he stepped down as President. In 1972 Kiguchi handed the presidency to the 36-year-old Hatazaki and became Chairman.
Career
Career
Hikari Shokai
| Date | Position |
|---|---|
| Senior Managing Officer, Hikari Shokai |
World
| Date | Position |
|---|---|
| Jan 1959 | Representative Director, President (at founding) |
| 1972 | Representative Director, Chairman |
| 1972 | Stepped down as President |
References 2
References (Japanese primary sources)
- 創業者精神 : 独力で優良企業を築いた経営者列伝（日経ベンチャー別冊、1993年）「現社長との出会いがすべてを決めた」木口衞
- ワールド 有価証券報告書【沿革】