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have made more sense to manufacture in Japan and market in Europe and the United States, but YKK was adamant about pursuing its philosophy of manufacturing and selling close to customers.
YKK’s technology capabilities, realized by making its fastener manufacturing equipment in-house, proved to be instrumental in supporting its overseas expansion using this approach. If you mechanize production using advanced technology, then high labor costs
is not really an issue because a smaller workforce can be used. Actually, more talent for maintaining advanced technologies can easily be found in developed countries.
If the same equipment is used for production,
the exact same, high quality fasteners can be manufactured anywhere in the world. Fastener products are rather simple as they are comprised largely of three components—the tape, the elements (zipper teeth), and the slider (opening and closing part). Nevertheless, YKK has managed to set itself apart from competitors by establishing rigorous quality controls, an integrated production system spanning from raw materials to manufacturing facilities and nished products, and a supply system tailored to various customer needs. Together, these have enabled us to deliver the same high standard of quality at all of our sites globally.
Centered on the basic concept of ourishing together with each region, YKK has constructed its overseas plants in areas where industry is in the process of developing. This is because we believe constructing a plant locally should not only bene t customers, but also the local community as well.
In this way, YKK has striven to generate and provide value for our customers and local communities through one to one marketing. At the same time, YKK has embarked on a global marketing initiative in response to the globalization of its most important customers (YKK refers to these customers as Global Accounts) that involves the collective efforts of
YKK companies around the world. This initiative represents an example of YKK business model innovation tailored to the dynamic needs of the textile industry.
In 1959, YKK began its overseas expansion by setting up shop in New Zealand. Until the end of the 1980s, each of YKK’s companies had formulated unique strategies for each individual market. After the start of the 1990s, however, Global Accounts began to accelerate their globalization, requiring the YKK Group
to collectively accommodate this change. The reason for this can be attributed to worldwide structural changes that took place in the textile industry. After
the start of the 1980s, production sites shifted from developed countries like Japan, the United States, and Europe to emerging countries, such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and other Asian countries, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America. At the start of the 2000s, this trend shifted quite rapidly to China. YKK’s global luxury brand, casual brand, sports apparel brand, and jeans brand customers, too, began relocating their production bases from developed countries to Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa and Latin America. In other words, whereas the business cycle of these customers used to be completed within the consuming countries, mainly the developed countries, in the 1990s it became divided between the production and consuming countries. Moreover, the number of producing nations began to spread geographically. Given the globalization of the 1990s, YKK was faced with a situation where its conventional individualized approach to each market, which it had pursued until the end of the 1980s, was no longer the right choice to service its customers.
So YKK innovated an attempt to service Global Accounts using a concentrated approach across
the YKK Group. Specifically, it set up the Global Marketing Group (GMG) in Tokyo in October 1997 and dedicated a relationship manager for each Global Account in order to actively approach the planning divisions of these customers at the planning stage of new products. Through this initiative,
YKK encouraged Global Accounts to spec in YKK fasteners at each of its production bases around the world. A Global Account refers to buyers (mainly SPA and sports apparel, etc.) in Europe and the United States with some YKK has no direct business dealings (invoice issuance). By approaching these companies, YKK lobbies for their vendors (mainly textile manufacturers in Asia) to order products from YKK locally, in an effort for these customers
to designate the use of YKK fasteners at production bases around the world. The benefit for Global Accounts is that their business intentions and goals can be shared globally simply by talking to their dedicated relationship manager. To further reinforce its efforts, the GMG relocated its main office to Hong Kong in 2006. Currently, the GMG manages around 50 core Global Accounts.
Maintaining high quality and strengthening our development structure are essential to support our activities. We need to ful ll the requests of individual customers based on their market, whether local or
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