From selling GE membranes to selling ultrapure-water systems (1974)

Changing the unit of sale from the part to the whole

The development goals GE and Hokko Chemical set out in October 1970 were four: a pure-water production plant, a waste-liquid treatment plant, a filtration and sterilisation unit for alcohols, and an air purifier. What is listed there is not membranes — every item is a device with a membrane inside it. That a company holding exclusive distribution rights across ten Far Eastern countries moved its unit of sale from the part to the whole appears to be because it was the side assembling the equipment that could convert membrane performance into a price. The 1972 investment in Nuclepore Corporation and the 1973 absorption of Hokko’s division can both be read as steps in the same sequence — putting the company in a position to assemble that whole itself.

The ultrapure-water technology of 1974 was not, however, developed in-house: it was borrowed a second time, after GE. When the president of Kurita Water Industries lectured in 1981 on the market for ultrapure-water plant, Nomura’s name did not come up; nearly a decade after becoming an equipment maker it was still a small presence in its own industry. The shift did not bear fruit quickly. Even so, it was precisely because the unit of sale had already moved to the system that, when nine Korean companies had turned the firm down and Samsung Electronics finally began trading with it, Nomura could build the kind of relationship in which maintenance and consumables accumulate behind the equipment.