Founder to grandson: the “second founding” (2020)

Moving the centre of gravity from one man and one cat to a system

The core of this succession was not whom the presidency passed to but that it prised the company’s way of earning loose from one man and one cat. The gravitational pull founder Shintaro Tsuji had built over sixty years, and the popularity of a single Hello Kitty, were Sanrio’s strengths and, at the same time, a weakness — if either wobbled, the whole would tilt. The “second founding” Tomokuni Tsuji raised was the work of thinning both dependencies at once. By raising several characters to even out the swings and steering earnings toward higher-margin overseas licensing, the revenue structure was rebuilt to be less rocked by the waves of any one character.

That said, a V-shaped recovery does not by itself guarantee safety. Diversifying across characters thinned the dependence, but it carries a different problem — if no character delivers a decisive hit, the whole loosens. Licensing income is high-margin yet easily swayed by the fickleness of fashion, and the heavy weight of overseas markets like the United States and China exposes it to currency and regulation. Tomokuni Tsuji is trying to move a charismatic founder’s gravitational pull into the mechanisms of the organization. Whether the company can keep winning without relying on one generation’s flair is what will decide the true worth of this succession.