Pruning the diversified businesses and switching from wholesale to self-managed selling floors (2000)

What the losses were made of, and what was kept

The $84.3M (¥10bn) of losses across two years was less the shrinking of the ski market itself than the cost booked to fold up the businesses and brands the company had spread into. The order of events — a three-year plan completed, a return to profit in 2000, then the change of president, and only then the rebuilding of selling floors and production — is of a different character from an emergency evacuation in the middle of a crisis. It was precisely because the clearing-up had been finished first that money could be put behind opening directly operated stores, a choice with little precedent among sporting-goods makers of the time.

While production moved overseas, the company did not let go of Toyama. The manufacturing subsidiary separated out in 1979 was renamed a technical centre in 2003 and absorbed back into the parent in April 2020. The Tech Lab research facility opened in Oyabe in November 2017 holds a movement laboratory, an artificial climate room and a quality inspection room alongside cutting and sewing equipment, gathering everything from pattern design to wear testing in one place. The sewing crossed to China and Vietnam, but the tools that decide what is sewn and how were set back down on the ground where the company began.