Secrets of the Marketplace: Family Matters

In this second part of my “Secrets of the Marketplace” series, I want to focus on a key driver of success that is often forgotten in today’s economy: devotion to family.
This may strike some as old-fashioned. Certainly, in previous generations, family businesses were the mainstays of any successful economy. In modern times, family businesses are often overshadowed by big public companies. In many ways, the family business may seem like a quaint notion.
But in the Rakuten marketplace, it is clear that family remains a key engine that drives business success. Many of our most successful merchants have at their core a devotion and a concern for the survival and success of their family business.
Here is an example: Taketora is a firm in a remote part Japan that manufactures products made from the local “toratake” bamboo that grows in the hills around the headquarters. The great-grandfather of Taketora’s current CEO started the family’s bamboo-ware business in 1894.
Today, like the three generations before him, CEO Yoshihiro Yamagishi has devoted his life to bamboo. And in 2002, he launched Taketora’s online shop on Rakuten Ichiba. His entry into e-commerce was initially met with skepticism. Bamboo is a special material in Japanese culture. Many things are made from it -- from hairclips to furniture. Would customers really buy bamboo products online?
The answer was yes. Today, online sales make up the bulk of Taketora’s business. And a business steeped in Japanese family tradition survives into the next generation. An observer might say that the Internet transformed this business. But the transformation into an e-commerce success story did not begin with technology; it was first motivated by family.
My book: Marketplace 3.0

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