Sanyo Shokai - Company History

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Financial history 1968–2026 — revenue, cost structure, balance sheet, cash flow and key ratios, year by year →

Founded 1943
Founder Yoshihara Nobuyuki (吉原信之)
Founding location 東京都板橋区
Core business at founding Repair, machining and sale of machine-tool fittings
Listed 1971
President Hirabayashi Yoshiki President since 2026 (age 63, as of 2026)
Current priority Higher value-added · E-commerce growth In-house brands run for gross margin, sold through directly operated stores and e-commerce
Founding
In December 1942 Yoshihara Nobuyuki opened a sole proprietorship called Sanyo Shokai in Itabashi ward, Tokyo, and in May 1943 he made it a joint-stock company with capital of ¥50,000, beginning the repair, machining and sale of machine-tool fittings. In October 1944 it was renamed Sanyo Shokai Seisakusho Co., Ltd., with a Toshima plant and a Ginza sales office. When the head office moved to Kyobashi ward, Tokyo in October 1945, immediately after the surrender, the centre of the business switched from machine-tool fittings to raincoats. In July 1948 the name went back to Sanyo Shokai Co., Ltd., and in September 1949 the company signed a sole-distributor agreement with Nihon Gomu Kogyo, at the time the only producer of rubberised raincoats in Japan. The way of selling that hardened here — holding no factory of its own and wholesaling another company’s product to department stores — is the one it kept.
The Decision
After it lost the name it had borrowed, this company shrank its own revenue to a third. It took the exclusive Japanese licence for Britain’s Burberry in 1965, placed the Japan-only Black Label and Blue Label at the core of the department-store menswear floor, and through the 2000s held consolidated revenue at around ¥140bn. In June 2015 the contract was not renewed, and the floors had to be filled again with brands of the company’s own planning. The successor brands could not stand in for that scale: an operating loss of $77.2M (¥8bn) in the year to December 2016 opened six consecutive years of operating losses. Oe Shinji, brought in from outside as president in May 2020, cleared away loss-making brands and idle assets and put gross margin at the head of the measures that mattered. Four years spent defending scale prolonged the losses; two years spent giving scale up won the operating profit back.
Today
What was left at the end of the shrinking is a gross margin of 60 per cent and an operating margin in the 1 per cent range. Against consolidated revenue of $369.2M (¥58bn) in the year to February 2026, gross profit was $224.5M (¥36bn), a margin of 60.9 per cent, but after selling, general and administrative expenses of $216.2M (¥34bn) the operating profit came to only $7.6M (¥1bn). Net profit of $25.9M (¥4bn) was made by $25.9M (¥4bn) of extraordinary gains rather than by the business itself. Japan accounts for more than nine-tenths of sales, so no geographic breakdown is given. Since Iwata Isao turned the company away from department stores in February 2017, the rearrangement of channels — fewer department-store floors, more directly operated stores and e-commerce — has held the gross margin above what it was in the Burberry years.
Competition
The competitor was not a fellow apparel company but the owner of the name it had been lent. From the late 2000s the British Burberry head office pressed harder to switch the running of the Japanese market to direct operation, and in June 2015 the contract ended without renewal. The structure in which the business making up the bulk of revenue could disappear at the other party’s discretion had been carried since 1965, when running a licence was chosen as the main trade. Facing the same position, Goldwin acquired the trademark rights to The North Face for Japan and South Korea alone in 1995. In May 2020 RMB Capital, holding about 6 per cent, demanded a complete replacement of the board, and Sanyo Shokai saw off the proxy fight with a change of president of its own devising. Having handed the power of decision both to the owner of the name and to a shareholder, the company chose the present shape in which brands of its own planning fill the floors.

Timeline

1943–1970From raincoats alone to the exclusive Burberry licence

  1. 1942Yoshihara Nobuyuki opens Sanyo Shokai as a sole proprietorship in Itabashi, Tokyo
  2. 1943Sanyo Shokai Co., Ltd. incorporated with ¥50,000 capital
  3. 1944Renamed Sanyo Shokai Seisakusho; Toshima plant and Ginza sales office opened
  4. 1945Head office moved to Kyobashi; the business turns from machine tools to raincoats
  5. 1948Renamed Sanyo Shokai Co., Ltd.
  6. 1949Sole-distributor agreement signed for Nihon Gomu Kogyo raincoats
  7. 1952Tokyo sales office opened in Chiyoda; selling operations moved there
  8. 1962Head office relocated to Chiyoda and a new head-office building erected
  9. 1965Exclusive Japanese licence agreement concluded with Burberry
  10. 1969Shinjuku head-office building completed; the push to become a full-line apparel maker begins

1971–2014The Burberry years, and the climb to a ¥140bn company

  1. 1971Shares listed on the Second Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange
  2. 1977Reassigned to the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange
  3. 1981New York subsidiary established; Shiomi merchandise centre built
  4. 1986Local sewing plant established in New York
  5. 1989New Aoyama building completed; in-house health insurance society formed
  6. 1990New Shiomi building completed in Koto ward, Tokyo
  7. 1996Sanyo Shokai Milano established; Hong Kong subsidiary established
  8. 1998Taiwanese subsidiary Kokusai Sanyo established
  9. 1999Sanyo Shokai New York established
  10. 2000Burberry Ginza store opens — later SANYO GINZA TOWER
  11. 2006Shanghai Sanyo Fashion Trading established for the Chinese market
  12. 2008Head office relocated
  13. 2012Head office relocated

2015–2025Losing Burberry, and a rebuild out of six straight losing years

  1. 2015The exclusive Burberry licence ends; floors turn to in-house brands
  2. 2015Black Label Crestbridge launched as successor to Burberry Black Label
  3. 2017Iwata Isao becomes sixth president; a medium-term plan is announced
  4. 2018Shares in Ruby Group acquired; head-office annex extended as the Blue Cross building
  5. 2020The rebuilding plan is announced under the pandemic
  6. 2020RMB Capital’s slate to replace the board is voted down at the AGM
  7. 2020Oe Shinji becomes president and begins a rebuild built on gross margin
  8. 2020SANYO GINZA TOWER sold
  9. 2021Domestic trademark rights to Paul Stuart acquired
  10. 2021Consolidated subsidiary Sanyo Apparel absorbed by merger
  11. 2022Moves to the Prime Market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange
  12. 2023Eightieth anniversary of the founding
  13. 2025New three-year medium-term management plan announced

Founding Story

1943–1970From raincoats alone to the exclusive Burberry licence

Sanyo Shokai was set up in wartime Tokyo to repair and sell machine-tool fittings, and it was the defeat of 1945 that turned it into a clothing company: raincoats bought from the one rubber maker producing them in Japan and sold through department stores as luxury goods. That arrangement — no factory of its own, someone else’s product, the top-tier retail channel — hardened within a few years of the founding, and in 1965 it was applied to a British name that would carry the company for the next half-century.

A wartime founding that switched from machine-tool fittings to raincoats

Sanyo Shokai traces its origin to December 1942, when the founder Yoshihara Nobuyuki (吉原信之) opened a sole proprietorship called Sanyo Shokai in Itabashi ward, Tokyo[1], for the stated purpose of “manufacturing and selling industrial goods of all kinds and textile products.”[2] In May 1943 he incorporated Sanyo Shokai Co., Ltd. with capital of ¥50,000[3] and began repairing, machining and selling machine-tool fittings[4]. Under the wartime controlled economy this was a founding in the mould of a general trading house, seeking trade in both textiles and industrial goods. In October 1944 the company renamed itself Sanyo Shokai Seisakusho Co., Ltd.[5], opened a Toshima plant and a Ginza sales office, and built out a supply system for machine tools serving wartime military demand.

Immediately after the surrender of August 1945, the company shifted its centre of gravity from machine-tool fittings to raincoats. In October that year it moved its head office to Kyobashi ward, Tokyo (today Chuo ward)[6], and in July 1948 it renamed itself Sanyo Shokai Co., Ltd.[7], reorganising itself around raincoat sales as its main business. Two things lay behind Yoshihara Nobuyuki’s eye for the raincoat: under the postwar textile rationing system, clothing was a field expected to grow both as a saver of foreign currency and on domestic demand; and Nihon Gomu Kogyo Co., Ltd. (日本ゴム工業, today Okamoto Industries) was the only producer of rubberised raincoats in the country.[8]

The sole-distributor deal with Nihon Gomu Kogyo, and opening the department-store route

In September 1949 Sanyo Shokai concluded a special agreement with Nihon Gomu Kogyo Co., Ltd. making it the sole distributor of that company’s raincoats[9]. The contract secured exclusive domestic sales rights to rubberised raincoats — highly practical wet-weather garments in the Japan of the day — and, amid the clothing demand of the postwar recovery, it lifted Sanyo Shokai’s earnings base at a stroke. Through the 1950s the company pushed actively into department stores, and in the single category of the raincoat it established a brand position as “luxury clothing sold through the department store rather than direct from the maker.”[10] This coincided with the phase in which department stores were re-emerging as the top channel of clothing distribution in postwar Japan, and from the very beginning Sanyo Shokai created the prototype of the wholesale-model apparel company whose main trade is with department stores.

In July 1952 the company opened a Tokyo sales office in Chiyoda ward, shifting the centre of its selling operations out of Chuo ward[11]; in April 1962 it moved the head office to Chiyoda ward, and in May of the same year built a new head-office building there[12]. In February 1969 it completed a head-office building in Shinjuku ward, Tokyo[13], and moved the head office there, and from around this time it began in earnest to “advance into becoming a full-line apparel manufacturer.” In July 1971 the shares were listed on the Second Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange[14], and in June 1977 they were reassigned to the First Section[15] — establishing, for a wholesale-model apparel company that had begun with raincoats alone, a standing in the capital market.

The exclusive Burberry licence as a management decision

In 1965 Sanyo Shokai concluded an exclusive licence agreement for Japan with the British luxury brand[16] Burberry[17]. Burberry was a raincoat maker holding a royal warrant, and had built a worldwide reputation on the gabardine trench coat. For Sanyo Shokai, taking the licence was the strategic decision most consistent with its business territory since the founding — the combination of a raincoat-only base and a British luxury brand. It was at the same time a decision to go after the licence rights to a foreign brand instead of raising a brand of its own, and with it the company’s course for the next half-century was in effect settled.

From the 1970s onward Sanyo Shokai rolled out Burberry trench coats, suits and accessories through the department-store route, building in Japan the recognition that “Burberry equals Sanyo Shokai.” In Britain, Burberry remained a quiet, traditional label; under Sanyo Shokai’s stewardship of the licence it grew in the Japanese market into a high-status brand sitting at the core of the department-store menswear floor. The build-out of overseas bases — Sanyo Shokai Milano in April 1996[18], the Hong Kong subsidiary Sanyo Shokai Hong Kong Ltd. in May of the same year[19], the Taiwanese subsidiary Kokusai Sanyo (國際三陽股份有限公司) in February 1998[20], and Sanyo Shokai New York in October 1999[21] — doubled as the build-out of sourcing and logistics for the brands it carried, Burberry among them.

Read the full history in Japanese →

Notes

  1. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  2. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  3. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  4. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  5. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  6. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  7. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  8. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  9. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  10. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  11. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  12. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  13. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  14. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  15. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  16. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  17. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  18. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  19. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  20. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩
  21. Sanyo Shokai, annual securities report, corporate history section↩

References & sources

  1. Sanyo Shokai Ltd. (annual securities reports), including the corporate-history section, and the company’s medium-term management plans and results releases.

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