Checking out the latest in Japan
ravel
is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.” I
wish that I knew who said that first. It’s true, you
know. During the latter part of October, I accepted an
invitation to attend the trade show for laundry and drycleaning
in Osaka, Japan. There it is known as Clean Life Vision 21.
This month, I’d like to share with
my readers the story of my visit to Asia. I’d like to
tell you about not only the products that I saw in Japan, but
also my impression of the country and its people.
I have long been curious about and
interested in their culture and their business and work ethic.
I wanted to find out what made them tick. I was born during an
era when “Made in Japan” was synonymous with cheap
plastic worthless junk, but somewhere along the line it became
the mark of quality and reliability. Why is this so?
How did it happen? Or is it even true?
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I went to the show for one and a half
days, but I was in Japan for a week, so I did have some
time to do some sightseeing. I don’t apologize for that.
It has been an incredible experience. I spent time in Tokyo,
Kyoto and Osaka and will have stories about all three cities
for many years. I consider myself very fortunate to have
experienced this.
During one day, we (a long-time friend
accompanied me) visited Disneyland Tokyo. It is a wildly
popular attraction there. It is great to see that we, as
Americans, have something that impresses the Japanese as much
as Disney does.
It may be fun to sing “It’s a
Small World” with your children at Disney World, or you
may say that “it’s a small world” the next
time that you meet somebody that knows somebody that you know
in an obscure locale, but let me tell you that the world isn’t
very small at all. It’s big. Really big! If you doubt
this, you will change your mind when you spend 13 straight
hours in an airplane on a non-stop flight to Tokyo. I assure
you that the world is a lot of things, but small it is not!
Based on not a week of travel, but on
years of observation, I have opined that the Japanese are
technologically advanced. They make the best automobiles, they
make so many of the electronics that we consider part of
America and they have a work ethic that should make us insanely
jealous.
You may disagree with that, but perhaps
you haven’t studied their culture, either. I wanted to
know why this is evident to me and to so many others.
Contemplating this column, I think that I
came up with a reason after only a couple of days of being
among the Japanese. I think that you’ll find my “reason”
interesting.
I witnessed some remarkable things in
Japan. To name a few:
Taxis have brilliant white cotton lace
seat covers and drivers that wear white gloves. Both of which
are cleaned and replaced daily. The driver opens and closes the
door for you by remote control. And there is never a wait for a
cab… ever. There are literally thousands and thousands of
cabs in all of the cities that I visited. The meter does not
run when the taxi isn’t moving, so red lights and traffic
don’t cost you a cent. Given all of these things, you’d
want to tip the cabbie like none other, but ironically there is
no tipping allowed.
Japanese politeness is most impressive. In
fact, within a day of being around them, you find yourself
learning from them and being instinctively on your best
behavior. There are hundreds of jobs that simply exist to make
you feel welcome. The doormen do not accept tips, but are the
best at their jobs. They exist merely to make you happy to be
where ever they are. Their smiles are infectious.
Yet jobs that don’t need a human are
not done by a human. The flagman in a road construction area
was actually a simplistic animatron, dressed in work clothes.
It looks like a real person from a distance, but wasn’t.
The hotel rooms have doorbells and heated
mirrors in the bathroom so that they don’t fog.
The bullet trains that you may have heard
about are simply amazing. If someone has told you that these
trains are so punctual that you can set your watch by them, you
probably thought that it was a figure of speech to emphasize a
relative lack of tardiness. No. They are precisely on time,
every time. When you obtain a ticket from, say, Narita Airport
to Tokyo Station, it has departure time and the arrival time on
it. They are precisely accurate. I set my watch to Tokyo time
by the trains with good reason.
The public walks are in Braille! They are
embedded with eight-inch wide tiles that have oversize bumps on
them to assist the blind. You can easily feel the bumps through
your shoes. You quickly understand the different patterns that
mean “stairs”, “stop”, “turn
right”, “turn left”. I even observed Braille
on some handrails. Simply amazing.
Still, I think the most impressive thing
is to watch the thousands upon thousands of people in the train
stations. You surely have never seen so many people. I am sure
that there are 50,000 to 100,000 people in Tokyo station at the
very moment that you read this, no matter the time. But what is
impressive is how they act. They are all well dressed and well
mannered.
You may be familiar with the rules on many
escalators and moving sidewalks at airports: Stand to the left
and walk on the right side. Nobody pays much attention to that
in the United States. Only when someone wants to walk does the
crowd move to the appropriate side. Not so in Japan. I was
completely taken aback as I observed time and again hundreds of
Japanese queuing up to ride the escalator. They used only one
side of it, single file. The right side of the escalators were
empty, ready with a pathway for the occasional walker that
rarely came.
In the streets, the Japanese never set
foot on the street until the “walk” light is
lighted. Never.
I believe that the way that they act is a
byproduct of their culture and that it contributes heavily to
the way in which they create, design and build products.
Simply said — the Japanese do the
right thing. They do what their mothers told them to do. And
they don’t question it either. They seem to instinctively
know the difference between right and wrong, even if the “wrong”
thing isn’t so wrong, but merely less right. That becomes
evident in their products.
At the trade show
At the trade show, the attendees out-dress
the exhibitors. The small percentage that didn’t wear a
suit, simply wore a suit jacket.
At the “Clean Show,” there are
many products that are not familiar to us. Many of them are
related to packaging. It seems that there is a great deal of
concern there about storing the items that you pick up from the
cleaners. The less space they take, the
better.
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Shirt hangers are not 16" or 18",
but rather eight inches. It’s a folded shirt on a hanger.
You can buy a machine that will
vacuum-pack household items. A folded and vacuum-packed
comforter is only about an inch thick.
I don’t think that those types of
packaging products would go over too well in the U.S., but
there are a couple of others that I bought and am considering.
In no small way, the trade show is a bit
like a flea market here. You can buy lots of things right off
the floor. Things like packaging materials, pads and covers and
sundry items. It surely helps the attendance, and the U.S.
trade shows may want to consider this.
The issue is that the distributors are cut
out of
the sale, but my gut tells me that this
may not be such a bad thing. In the United States, if you see a
new product that you want to try, you need to convince your
distributor to carry it, just so that you can try it.
In Japan, you can buy a new product (you
can only buy one) and use it at your shop. Your experience with
it may well convince your distributor to not only carry it, but
also to sell it to others. I did want to see shirt units
though, and I traveled 10,000 miles to do it. I didn’t
come back disappointed.
Constant improvement
There is a Japanese philosophy called
Kaizen which preaches constant improvement upon improvement
involving everyone. It is interesting to see that they lack
complacency in their products.
When we think that we have a great
product, we run with it until it becomes obsolete. When they
have a great product, they agonize over it, determined to make
it better.
There appear to be three major shirt unit
manufacturers in Japan and two of them are available in the
United States. There is a great deal of emphasis at this time
to minimize a particular quality issue that has long been a
problem: wrinkles in the collars and the cuffs.
This is being addressed in three different
ways. One way is with vacuum. This seems to be the best all
around as well as the most simplistic
In fact, the simplicity is part of what
makes it the best. One manufacturer has an incredibly elaborate
array of “grabbers” that allow the operator to
place the cuffs and collars into the press without any tension
whatsoever, in fact very sloppily.
The press then moves into the pressing
position, steams and stretches the fabric, then releases it and
presses. You can see a movie of this and lots of other things
like a virtual tour of the Japanese Clean Show on my website:
www.tailwindshirts.com/japan.html.
Sankosha addresses the issue in an
interesting manner. They now have a split buck that expands
using a wedge. This pulls the collar taunt during pressing.
They have a very cool demo machine on display (you can see that
on the web as well), but in practical use on a real press, it
doesn’t seem to do much. It may stretch the buck a
fraction of a millimeter, but I could not detect any movement
on a working press. Perhaps more gimmick than substance?
FujiCar, which hasn’t been imported
in this country in many years, has not changed too much. It has
always dominated the Japanese market, but they have had
financial woes of late that have stalled R&D.
The rotary body unit, perhaps the
grandfather of Unipress’ CRD, didn’t do such a
great job. That isn’t to say that it did a poor job, it’s
just that when you see a shirt unit being run at a U.S. show,
it is difficult to find a pressing flaw on any of the shirts.
FujiCar’s shirts were sometimes flawed, particularly on
the sides of the shirts.
The cuff clamps on the sleever are the
best I’ve ever seen. Rather than manipulating a small
lever, as in virtually all other presses, on this unit the
operator simply pushes lightly against the buck to activate the
clamps. Very user friendly. Great idea!
The four-shirts-at-once rotary quad collar
and cuff press has always been excellent from FujiCar. I used
one for years and have called upon Unipress to market one. The
newest ones have a strong vacuum to pull out those nasty
wrinkles.
The Sankosha units are just like those in
the States. They are an aggressive marketer and had a strong
presence at the show. They have many products that we don’t
see here. Although they do have an excellent reputation for
reliability, they surely have a huge number of moving parts.
The shirt units are almost like robots.
I struggled for a short while as to
whether I should actually recommend any of the units that I
saw. The hazard, of course, is to appear biased. The risk is to
simply dispense bad advice.
But I decided that there is much greater
risk in withholding truly valuable information. Suppose there
exists a shirt unit that really is outstanding? Wouldn’t
it be more wrong to harbor its virtues than to appear partial?
Best of show
When I saw what I consider to be the best
shirt on the market, I was sure that the right thing to do was
to tell you about it.
Itsumi’s single buck unit is
extraordinary in every way and their double buck unit is the
unit that you must have if you’re doing more than 4,000
shirts per week.
Why?
Honestly, there are too many reasons to
list here, so consider this to be simply a teaser:
The single body press and the collar and
cuff press both have two methods to assure the driest possible
shirt. On the body press the vacuum is very strong. It isn’t
only for holding the shirt, but also for helping to dry it. It
works extremely well.
Furthermore, the operator dresses the
sleeves in the Sankosha-like mini-presses after the body of the
shirt has started its press cycle.
This gives the body of the shirt extra
time to dry. There is vacuum on the back of the shirt, but only
at the tail. This way the box pleat on the back of the shirt is
pressed properly and the vacuum keeps the back taut.
What about production? Unbelievable! I was
pressing 60 shirts per hour with 10 minutes of training.
The U.S. dealer, part owner of Itsumi,
easily pressed 75 shirts per hour and this led me to believe
his claim that there is an operator in New York who does 90
shirts per hour.
The double unit is an advanced version of
FujiCar’s double body presses. It has numerous added
features that greatly improve quality. This unit presses a
shirt in 13 seconds and is so easy to operate that the other
buck can easily be loaded in less time than that.
This means that production of over 200
shirts per hour — 200 excellent shirts — is easily
attainable with three employees. I did it myself with an
absolute minimum amount of training.
So what about reliability and
dependability? What about cost? Last things first.
I asked the price of the double unit and
found it to be very reasonable. Itsumi has a U.S. dealership
network — a huge asset — that can help you.
As for reliability, I am going to go out
on a limb to address this concern. Given the fact that the
design of these machines is tried and true, and given the fact
that they are basically advanced versions of other presses and,
most importantly, given the fact that the Japanese
do the right things for the right reasons, these units seem
excellent because they are excellent.
Just like the doorman and the bellhop and
the cab driver who go well beyond the extra mile because they
want to — not because they wish to guilt you into
surrendering to them an extra couple of bucks — the
Japanese give you a good bit more for your money because it’s
the right thing to do.
Donald Desrosiers has been in the
shirt laundering business since 1978 and is a work-flow systems
engineer who provides services to shirt launderers through
Tailwind Shirt Systems, 867 Spencer St., Fall River, MA. He can
be reached by phone at (508) 965-3163 or by e-mail at tailwind1@mediaone.net and he has a web sites located at: www.tailwindshirts.com and www.dondesrosiers.com