Furukawa Hironari’s “so-ko-ka” strategy and M&A+A (2011)

From a decade of expansion to a decade of earning

Furukawa Hironari’s ten years can be read as the period in which the position of an independent trading house — a company with no backing — was converted from a weakness into mobility. It is worth noting that the so-ko-ka strategy was not some special invention but a re-editing of long-standing shop-floor functions: immediate delivery, small lots, processing. Rearranging strengths the company already had, and reducing them to a repeatable form called “M&A+A,” is what appears to have produced the figures — 6,000 customers, 88 subsidiaries.

In April 2022 Furukawa stepped back to an advisory role and handed the business to Nakagawa Yoichi. The new framework Nakagawa set out — “three-storey management” — marks the move to a stage in which the supply chain Furukawa accumulated has to be monetised. The decade of expansion, of widening the roster of customers and subsidiaries, is over; the next decade, the one that asks how all of it is turned into earning power, has begun.