DESIGN 2030: declaring itself a space-creation company (2020)

The weight of saying “we will stop being a wholesaler”

The core of this long-term vision appears to lie not in its numerical targets but in the declaration that the company would change what it calls its own business. A strong wholesaler holding half the domestic wallpaper market treated being that wholesaler as a future constraint, and stated flatly that it would become a company that creates space. The more complete a business model is, the harder its success is to let go of. DESIGN 2030 is a rewriting of self-definition in the middle of success, and the sense of urgency accumulated over a decade under Yasuda can be read in it.

Yet distance remains between declaration and reality. The space-creation segment got off the ground, but the main pillar of earnings is still the domestic interior business, and the overseas business has not turned profitable. Conceiving, designing and installing spaces demands organizational capabilities different from wholesaling materials, and acquiring them does not happen overnight. Whether a company born as a wallpaper trader can actually become “a company that creates space” remains a question to be watched as the ten-year outcome of that declaration.