Into suburban condominiums, and from five market brands to one — Brillia (2003)

What was left after the names were cut

A company that had laid out five market-segmented brands in 1993 folded the names into one within a decade. The reading behind it was that showing a single standard under a single name wins more buyers than raising a separate banner for each tier of purchaser. There seems to be a reason the judgment came up from the field: the dozen-odd subordinates of Hatanaka Makoto — who, tasked with clearing finished inventory after the bubble burst, had argued to the development division that a property priced without regard to the market does not sell — were by then at the centre of housing development.

Still, it strains credibility to attribute Brillia’s success to brand consolidation alone. The Meguro project, at roughly ¥6 million per tsubo on average, sold without trouble because demand remained in the high-priced central Tokyo band; as Okubo Masayuki has said, the company drifted away from supplying the ¥40–50 million range. Nor did it take sites at auction any more, moving instead to create them through rebuilds and urban redevelopment. Cutting names made the company lighter, but the buyers it sold to and the ways it could find land narrowed in exchange.