Entering CRT glass late, with a dedicated plant at Takatsuki (1964)

Not whether the forecast was right, but how the scale was placed

Even Owens-Illinois, the technical partner, had pulled out of its new plant in New Jersey just before firing the furnace. In 1964 the future of television was not a shared view. Nippon Electric Glass nonetheless gathered about ¥2 billion into a single factory at Takatsuki in Shiga, on capital of ¥300 million and sales of ¥3.8 billion. What shows in the shape of this investment is less that the forecast proved right than the stance behind it: if a business has a prospect of growth, do not ask whether you are early or late — do it at a scale that fits it.

That stance, however, came back at the company as losses for the first two years. Black-and-white glass could not be sold because the channels were closed, and the year to March 1966 sank to lower sales and a net loss of ¥180 million; the losses continued the following year. Had the television boom not come, Nagasaki Junichi’s own assessment — that it was a rather reckless investment — might have stood as the ending. It was not the correctness of the forecast that saved the company, one can argue, but the fact that it could keep the plant running until the forecast came true.