Yonex - Company History

From fishing floats to a late entry into badminton racquets

Yonex begins in a family trade: in 1946 Yoneyama Minoru (米山稔)[1] started manufacturing and selling wooden goods, floats for fishing tackle among them[2], as Yoneyama Mokkosho in Koshiji, Mishima-gun, Niigata Prefecture (today part of Nagaoka, Niigata)[3]. The post-war revolution in materials replaced wooden products such as fishing floats with synthetic resin, and with the earnings base of the family business shrinking, in 1957 Yoneyama chose to enter — late — the OEM manufacture of badminton racquets. In June 1958 he incorporated Yoneyama Seisakusho Co.[4], placed its head office in Koshiji, and put the manufacture and sale of wooden racquets on a proper footing.

The mainstay of the founding years was contract manufacture for British and American distributors: a subcontracting model that exported not under a brand of its own but under the marks of foreign retailers. Before long, however, a principal customer went bankrupt, and the risk of being pulled down with it prompted the decision to change course and build the company’s own brand[5].

The switch to an own brand, and a two-pole structure across Tokyo and Niigata

In November 1961 the company opened a Tokyo sales office in Taito-ku, Tokyo[6], organised its domestic and export sales departments there, and began selling under its own brand. It was the first step in shifting control of distribution from an OEM subcontracting model to a brand of its own, and it came in only the third year of the company’s life. That December the first plant at the head office (today the Niigata plant) was built in Koshiji[7], giving Yonex its main production base. In April 1963 the trading arm was separated out as Yoneyama Sports Co. (today Yonex’s overseas sales department)[8], strengthening the export business.

In June 1965 the company established Minoru Sports Ltd. (today the Yonex Tokyo plant) and began manufacturing and selling shuttlecocks[9], bringing both racquets and shuttles in house. In February 1967 Yoneyama Seisakusho Co. was renamed Yoneyama Racquet Co.[10], and in September 1968 the Yoneyama Racquet Tokyo plant was built at Yashio, Minami-Saitama-gun, Saitama Prefecture[11], expanding shuttlecock capacity. By the late 1960s the two-plant structure — racquets in Niigata, shuttles in Saitama — was set.

Tennis, and internationalisation under the YONEX mark

In January 1969 the first plant at the head office was extended and tennis-racquet manufacture began[12]. The move from badminton alone into tennis was a counter to the Taiwanese-made racquets then spreading through the market: staying a badminton specialist risked losing ground to cheap Taiwanese goods. In July 1971 the Tokyo sales office moved to Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo (the site of the present head office) and was elevated to the Tokyo head store[13]. In January 1974 Yoneyama Racquet Co. was renamed Yonex Sports Co., and at the same time the company filed the trademark YONEX[14]. With overseas expansion in view, it was a decision to trade a local name that foreigners found hard to pronounce[15] for one the international market could read.

In July 1978 an Osaka branch office (today the Osaka branch) was opened in Tennoji-ku, Osaka[16], and in July 1981 the sales subsidiary YONEX SPORTS GmbH was established in West Germany, setting the bridgehead for direct expansion into the European market[17]. In July 1982 Yonex Sports Co. was renamed Yonex Co., Ltd., and at the same moment the company entered the golf business, launching clubs in new materials[18]. Unifying brand and corporate name as Yonex was a decision taken in preparation for overseas expansion, and golf joined badminton and tennis as a third business. In February 1983 the Yonex Tokyo plant began manufacturing strings[19], and in August 1983 the subsidiary YONEX AMERICA INC. was established, taking the company directly into the United States market[20]. YONEX U.K. LIMITED followed in Britain in March 1987, and in July of the same year the manufacturing company YONEX TAIWAN CO., LTD. was established[21] — a directly owned sales and production network across Europe, America and Asia assembled in six years.

In April 1990 the head office moved to 3-23-13 Yushima, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, and the two companies Yonex Tokyo Plant and Yonex Trading were absorbed by merger[22]; thirty-two years after its founding, the two-pole structure of a Tokyo head office and Niigata production was fixed. In February 1994 the company listed on the Second Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange[23], making its capital-market debut thirty-six years after it began. The family trade that started in 1957 with fishing floats in Koshiji, Niigata had passed through diversification from badminton alone into tennis and golf and the building of a directly owned sales and production network across Europe, America and Asia, and now reached the point of connecting to the capital markets as a listed company.