Eight years ago Hiroko Kinoshita, 30, president of K2M Plan Net Co., Ltd., resigned from her executive secretary position at a large oil company and became a model. That career move, however, proved unsatisfactory for Kinoshita. She felt ”dispensable.”
Talking with co-workers, other models and dancers, all beautiful women in their 20s, she found they all wanted to do ”something else.” So they did.
Three years ago, they formed their own company, K2M, with $70,000 invested by Kinoshita, her twin sister, Shizuko, now K2M`s managing director, and eight others, including a cousin and friends.
The company provides ”companions,” attractive young women who do sales promotions at trade fairs for luxurious durable goods such as cars and computers, or who attend business banquets in kimonos as hostesses. Companion agencies operated by women are doing well because the start-up costs are low and demand is great.
At the beginning Kinoshita made phone calls in the morning and met an average of 20 potential clients a day. She still works 12 to 13 hours a day, and sometimes weekends. She often goes on business trips, including trips to the U.S. Her annual income is $70,000. K2M has a staff of eight and 350 registered companions.
Kinoshita had little knowledge of the industry when she started K2M. She thinks her ”ignorance” contributed to her company`s remarkable growth.
”For instance, all the companies I visited were big corporations. As I didn`t know which company to visit, I made a list from TV commercials and later realized companies sponsoring TV programs are naturally big ones,” said Kinoshita, interviewed in her chic office in Toyko`s downtown district.
”They gave me business even though they didn`t know my company. The deals were great and challenging.”
Kinoshita concedes that a woman with the title of president can find open doors that are usually closed to outsiders, as such women are still rare.
Most businesses owned by women are narrowly targeted ”in-between businesses” such as catering, employee training, house-cleaning, translation and temporary services that fill needs neglected by male-dominated corporations.
Nobuko Sawanobori, president of the Life Culture Center, says women entrepreneurs have no choice but to start from areas they know well, taking advantage of their viewpoint as consumers.
Sawanobori formed a company with two women friends 20 years ago. The first products they handled were maternity goods and sanitary napkins. She is now president of four companies, all operated by women, dealing in women`s networking, sales planning and urban development. With annual sales of nearly $3.6 million, LCC has a full-time staff of 10.
Of 850,000 major Japanese companies, some 27,000 are headed by women, according to the recent report by the Teikoku Data Bank, a private research institute in Tokyo. Most of these women inherited their job titles from their husbands.
However, increasing numbers of young women office workers are starting their own companies rather than take office jobs that entail serving tea, making copies and filing.
Economists say today`s cash-rich and service-oriented market has great potential for women entrepreneurs as even a small idea can be a good seller.
Kinoshita stresses it is worth trying. ”As I`m ordinary, I know the needs of ordinary people. After all, society is maintained by ordinary people.”
The legal minimum capital requirement to establish a corporation is $2,800, within the reach of female office workers. And the benefits are great- from tax deductions to gaining a presidential title in this title-conscious society.
Furthermore, some companies like Japan Incubation Capital are willing to help those who want to start new businesses. Of the 240 applications JIC received since they began operations four years ago, 10 have been successful, three of them headed by women.
While it is true the business environment is becoming more favorable for women, Masayo Tamura, who chairs the year-old Ladies Business Owners`
Association, says that women business owners face many stumbling blocks.
The biggest problem, Tamura says, is getting a bank loan. ”It was like magic when my husband was sitting next to me to apply for a loan,” recalls Tamura. ”The bank okayed it immediately. But while I had visited the same bank myself many times before, they never treated me seriously.” Today, with a 10-year track record, Tamura says things are better for her, but the general climate has remained the same.
Tamura started her lunch-catering service with other housewives. She now is the owner of two restaurants offering organic foods. Her company, Sumire-Ya, has 14 employees, mostly women, and annual sales of $500,000. She is planning to move into the U.S. market in 1992.
Tamura faced formidable obstacles both at home and outside in launching her own business, but she never gave up. Her husband of 25 years, who works for a large jewelry company, was opposed to her working. So Tamura waited until her last child reached the age of 20.
She used a different name for her business to protect her husband, because corporations maintain an unwritten rule of not promoting an employee to an executive position if his wife works, says Tamura.
When Tamura opened her second restaurant last year in Yokohama, local businesses protested that a woman was allowed to open a restaurant in their
”territory.” She said local businessmen would come into the restaurant and say negative things about her within hearing of other customers.
”There were many times I wanted to quit,” said Tamura, ”but I didn`t, as I love food and cooking.” She said the key to success is ”optimism and ambition.” While she was selling boxed lunches at $2.50, she was taking a $70 course in more complicated and expensive menus.
Tamura says some problems lie with women themselves: They lack management and decision-making training. So 11 members of the LBOA (Ladies Business Owner`s Association) get together once a month to study military tactics in an effort to enrich their business strategies.
They do not compete with men. Their motto is ”co-existence for co-prosperity.”
Sawanobori goes further. ”Women`s advancement into business has potential impact to change our efficiency-first society created by men into a more relaxed, human-oriented one,” said Sawanobori.
She is trying to achieve this by mobilizing her network of 200,000 women- all specialists in fields such as health care, publishing and designing. They will offer their know-how and expertise wherever needed ”to bridge the two different cultures, male and female.”
After working with women for more than two decades, Sawanobori feels the time has come for women to work with men on an equal basis to create a better society.
