Declaring “we will not diversify” at the 1987 listing (1987)

Why it could keep choosing narrowness

To rule out diversification at a listing is also to declare that you are sealing off one of your own means of growth. That the choice held can be attributed to the fact that both customer groups were bound to statute. Every time the tax code or the commercial code changed, the work of accounting firms had to be rebuilt; as administrative and fiscal reform advanced, computing demand arose in municipalities. Under a structure in which change imposed from outside brings the work to you, raising the speed and quality of compliance was more rational than going out to look for new markets.

That said, staying inside a narrow field was not automatically the right call. As the fierce internal argument of 1982 shows, there were moments when competitors who switched to outright sales grew faster, and whether the decision of the time was correct only became visible afterwards. The 1986 collapse of Miroku Keiri was at once the failure of a company that had spread into diversification and evidence that the market itself was thin. The choice to keep growing without widening the business territory holds only so long as the number of customers and the volume of compliance work keep rising — a condition inherited by today’s TKC as well.