Ietsugu Hisashi’s direct-sales globalization, and a world-leading share in blood testing (1996)

Why a mid-sized Kobe firm could reach the top of the world

What is interesting about this management is the order in which it won. Most companies build a good product first and think about how to sell it afterwards. What Ietsugu Hisashi did was to rebuild the selling side to world specification first, and then load his strong products and reagents onto it. Leaving it to distributors makes overseas expansion fast, but it gives up both closeness to the customer and recurring revenue. Deliberately taking the time to build direct sales networks in each region can be seen as what laid the foundation for running, at world scale, the recurring model in which the more instruments are installed the more reagents sell.

Even so, neither the direct network nor the recurring model guarantees the top position on its own. Carrying one’s own sales subsidiaries abroad is a heavy burden, and if the instruments are not installed, no continuing reagent revenue is created either. A mid-sized Kobe company reached the top of the world because the technical credibility accumulated in the single field of blood cell counting meshed with a system for selling at the same quality anywhere in the world. A company that hit its ceiling at home went looking outside its market for the answer, and took a quarter of a century over it — that accumulation is what shaped what it is today, with some 90% of sales overseas.