Today's Notables

It has already been two and half years since the wholly-owned PRIMIX subsidiary in China, Shanghai T.K. PRIMIX, began operations. Although the company is still very early in its development, they are getting new business from local Japanese companies and their operations are beginning to take shape.

When Shanghai T.K. PRIMIX was established, we hadn't yet changed the name of the company to PRIMIX, and in fact, didn't have the leeway to give much thought to brand strategy. However, as we moved forward with some innovations in our business at home, changing the name became a more pressing concern and it had already been selected as PRIMIX 4 years ago. At that time, Tokushu Kika Kogyo still had its trademark and the company had become well-known as "T.K." which we wanted to retain. Therefore, the company was called, "T.K. PRIMIX."

About the time that we decided to change the company name and were in the process of selecting a logo, I happened to make the acquaintance of Mr. Yamada, President of GRAMCO and highly influential leader when it comes to brand strategy. Since the mutual friend who made the introduction did not know about our plans to change the company name, I thought the timing was quite uncanny. I talked with Mr. Yamada about brand strategy and started to see the light. It became painfully obvious that brand strategy is not for amateurs-that's what I learned from GRAMCO. As a result, we came to the conclusion that leaving "T.K." in the name would weaken the impact if it was combined with "PRIMIX" so we decided that just "PRIMIX" alone was best.

In Japan, the new name, PRIMIX, has seemed to take a firm hold already after one year. In Shanghai, along with the promotion of Mr. Uemura to Vice Chairperson and Mr. Wang who was hired locally, to President, several of our top engineers from Japan were sent to Shanghai in November, setting the stage to change the name to PRIMIX Shanghai.

At this year's exhibition, we plan on displaying standard mixers manufactured by PRIMIX Shanghai as we move forward, giving PRIMIX Shanghai a unique and strong identity all its own.