Business Plan in Japan

Executive Summary

Our idea is to set up a manufacture and architectural company in Japan’s major port. Company office and production factory are included. The company will operate in both Japan and foreign countries. Our ultimate goal is to make the business profitable and sustainable, and we set objectives to develop our business step by step.

In Japan, the company responsible for manufacturing Japanese style wood furniture and components for building wood houses. Meanwhile there will be a house-building team consist of professional architects, they familiar with tradition Japanese architectural techniques. The company will carry out marketing and advertisement plan itself.

In Oversea countries, we will only choose two countries at the beginning. We will organize house-building team in those places and directly responsible for promote the advantages of Japanese wood house and build it. In addition, we export furniture to these places. To sell our furniture, we will corporate with foreign agents. They will represent our company and responsible for promoting our products. The practice can reduce language barriers and lower our operation cost and risks in other countries.

The target customers of our furniture are local adult Japanese and foreigners. For house building service, our target is people live in rural area, since there are more space to build houses. Meanwhile, the competition in Japan is expected to be more intensive; in oversea countries is less intensive since the market is less developed. We have to bare many risks, which are included in the market analysis.

In our financial analysis, we expect to earn back the initial investment capital in 17 months. However, the prediction is based on very limited data. For future planning, we hope to achieve our sub goals in five years and further expand our business. The expansion includes develop new market in Chile, Haiti, and Western United States etc. Those are places with high seismic activity. Also, seek opportunity to produce our furniture in foreign country. For any further details, please look in the paper.

Brief Cultural Profile of Japan

Japan has long history of culture, and they have developed many values that are deep rooted in people’s mind. The following are what we found about Japanese dominant values.

Respect for Nature: Japanese people are respectful to the nature, because in their belief there are gods among nature. They care about their nature environment as we can see from the way they build traditional houses.

Values tradition and conformity: Japanese people love and values their own culture a lot. In addition, they have a strong sense of nationalism. Hence, tradition is important to them and they pay attention to conformity in the society.

Value preparedness: Japanese people is serious about the work they do and they pay attentions into details. Therefore, they value preparedness so much, that they can pursue perfectness.

Value personal space: Because the Japanese live in such a densely populated area, they value their personal space.

Emphasize harmony: Japanese parents start to teach their child with social manner since they are little. There are many rules and details when interacting with people in Japan, as the typical behaviors part will explain more. Japanese people always remain themselves not to cause trouble to others when they live in society. Harmony is of the paramount value in interpersonal relationship. They often avoid argues with people and they say often say sorry to people, even it is not their fault.

Concept of “saving face”: The Japanese will do everything possible to avoid embarrassment, deviate from the norm, while simply trying to stay on track. As mentioned before, harmony is very important in interpersonal relationship.

According to the Geert Hofstede analysis on Japan (Itim international, 2014), Japanese score high on masculinity aspect, it is relevant to mention that the Japanese government is working towards the inclusion of more women to the workforce. On addition, Japanese business culture is known for being very competitive between groups.

By having a high score of 92 in uncertainty avoidance, Japanese are hard to convince and for instance changes are difficult to realize in the country. Because Japan is constantly threated by natural disasters, part of their culture is to be prepared, but not only for earthquakes, but form any aspect in life. At the same time, all the procedures are slow and the final decision depends on a hierarchical ladder of approvals.

Japanese see life as a very short moment in a long history of humankind.

Japanese are highly loyal to their company and they are hardworking.

The Business - Japanese Architectural Corporation

Our business idea is to utilize traditional Japanese architectural techniques to build houses and wood furniture for customers. Our products will present with Japanese style and implies Japanese tradition values. More than that, the Japanese way of building things can better help to overcome earthquake. We believe the same technique will benefit to people live in countries that locate in earthquake zone.

.

Vision

Our business vision is to help customers construct a better home place. Meanwhile, we enhance people’s awareness to Japanese style architecture. On one hand, we serve local Japanese with sincere respect to their culture. On the other hand, we promote our products, implied with Japanese tradition values, to the globe.

Mission

To manage our business and achieve our vision, we will set up company headquarter in major port of Japan in order to serve an array geographical locations and the local Japanese people. A multi-cultural marketing team and skilled workers are essential for our business operation as we aim to produce good quality goods and export it to the globe.

Goal

Our paramount goal is to establish a sustainable and profitable business building homes, furniture, and wood components at low costs while reflecting traditional Japanese values, cultural norms and meeting the needs of the Japanese people, as well as people around the globe.