Renaming to Itochu Enex: from fuel trader to energy trader (2001)

The order of changing the name first

A change of corporate name is usually made to ratify a substance that has already changed. In the case of Itochu Enex in 2001, the order was reversed. It called itself an energy company at a point when it handled neither electricity nor heat, and widened the goods it dealt in afterwards. A company that had been built for forty years on the wholesaling of oil and LPG rewrote its own definition first. A sign with no substance behind it risks spinning free — but at this company the business took about ten years to catch up with the name.

Widening the name has its price, however. The frame of “energy” blurs the clear outline of a business in oil and LPG, and keeps forcing the question of how far the company’s territory extends. Selling the car-accessory retail business was the first answer; the later choice to take dealerships under its wing and grow car life into its largest pillar looks like an answer pointing the other way. What to count within a widened definition and what to leave out — the question that began in the year the name changed is still moving the shape of this company’s businesses.