Episode 12 Office Computers

“I sold it!” Tears of joy at winning the first order
Made a proposal to improve operational efficiency for a seed company

“The time should come when small and medium-sized businesses in Shikoku will adopt computers.”

Anticipating this future, I left Nishishiba Electric after six years of service and launched Just Systems with my wife, Hatsuko, in 1979.
 I started marketing office computers (so-called “off-comp”) in Tokushima with great enthusiasm, but I actually could not sell even a
single unit for half a year.
No matter how many visits I made to local companies in my white Civic with catalogs and handwritten proposals, I never got anywhere.
The office computers we dealt with were a rarity in those days and had the advantage of being able to use not only katakana but also
kanji. However, the price was approximately 10 million yen. It was not easy to find a company willing to purchase one.

I was 29 when I quit my previous job. I thought, “I’ll try until I’m 35 and if it doesn’t work out, I’ll think about it again,” but I was
confronted with a harsh reality early on. It happened one day, after about six months of just spending money on gasoline to go around to
local companies to make sales pitches.

I came across a local company called Yoshinari Seed Corporation, which sold seeds and agricultural supplies. It was when the company
had just embarked on a project to design, estimate, and construct plastic greenhouses.
Yoshinari’s salespeople would visit farmers for business meetings when the farmers were returning home after work. By the time they
returned to the office afterwards to prepare the documents, it was already late at night.
Especially with plastic greenhouses, there is a fixed time of the year when they are set up, which makes it a very busy season. I
suggested that they could improve their work efficiency by using office computers. I was convinced that they could also take advantage
of JBCC’s strengths, since kanji characters were often used in connection with their main business of seeds and seedlings.

Fortunately for me, the company’s managing director at the time was a Kyoto University graduate who was interested in the latest
technology, such as office computers. As soon as he heard my explanation, he said, “Well, bring me that quote next time.”
“Oh, really?”
I couldn’t believe my ears. In my previous business meetings with other companies, I had been able to get as far as submitting
quotations. But never before had the companies I visited understood so smoothly the benefits of adopting office computers. This time,
however, everything went very smoothly.

I will never forget the day I officially signed a contract with the company. Returning to the JustSystems office, or to Hatsuko’s family
home, I opened the kitchen door to find her grandmother, Yoshiko.
“I got an order from a company. I sold it!”
Tears welled up in my eyes as I said my first words. Grandma couldn’t help crying either. Hatsuko also started crying when she learned
that I had successfully received my first order.

In fact, the contract I received at this time was for about 8.5 million yen, including software. I gave a significant discount from the
normal price, but even so, I could finally get out of the dark tunnel.
The next order I received was due to the contribution of Hatsuko’s mother, Yoko. One day, she composed this haiku poetry at a local
haiku gathering.
“In a mosquito net, I was unable to sleep, with something on my mind.”
It is a poem about how our business is not doing well and mom is so worried that she can’t sleep. When the husband of Hatsuko’s
mother’s haiku friend, who runs a construction company, learned of the situation, he called me. This led to a successful business meeting
and, thankfully, to the conclusion of the contract.

I would sell office computers, and Hatsuko, a programmer, would build custom-made systems incorporating customer requests.
Gradually, each other’s roles were firmly rooted, and the business began to take off.

I still keep the handwritten proposals
I prepared for Yoshinari Seed Corporation.