Komori President & COO Kosh Miyao on their history and the affect of digital

Cary Sherburne interviews Komori President & COO Kosh Miyao at their Headquarters in Chicago, who talks about the founding of Komori in Japan in 1923 and their strengths as a company both financial and strategic.

Interviewer: Hi, I’m Cary Sherburne, Senior Editor at WhatTheyThink.com. And I’m here at Komori America headquarters in Chicagoland with Kosh Miyao who is President and CEO of Komori America. Welcome.

Kosh Miyao: Thank you.

Interviewer: Or, you should be welcoming me.

Kosh Miyao: Welcome to Komori America.

Interviewer: Thank you. So this is your 30th anniversary of doing business in the U.S. Maybe you could talk to me a little bit, let’s back up a little bit. When was Komori founded in Japan?

Kosh Miyao: Well, Komori was found in 1923 in Japan. It started out with the small machine shop, then they start developing this **** offset press from the beginning. And actually if I remember correctly, one of the earliest offset press—

Interviewer: ****

Kosh Miyao: **** manufacturers in the world. We have been doing nothing but that for almost nine years now.

Interviewer: So we have, behind us, a piece of Komori history.

Kosh Miyao: Well this is the equipment. It was built during and a little bit prior to the WWII. And this is a little bit larger-sized equipment, but this actual equipment was carried around during war time on the field to do some printing as well.

Interviewer: Oh wow.

Kosh Miyao: So it’s got history behind it. And we came to this country about 30 years ago. Actually, the press was dealt by **** dealership prior to that. So we’ve been in this country for about 40 years. And as Komori America was found in 1980s, and this is our 30th anniversary.

Interviewer: Wow that’s great. And so maybe you could talk a little bit about the financial situation of Kimori. It seems like you might have a little more financial strength than some of the other offset press manufacturers out there.

Kosh Miyao: Well we sure do. Komori’s been always a very, very conservative company. And we have been sitting on lots of cash. We never had long-term debt for many, many years. Our strength is, again, play conservatively in the industries.

Interviewer: So, in addition to your financial strength, what are some of the other advantages hat Komori offers?

Kosh Miyao: Well, we do have a very, very strong financial background. At the same time, what we believe in is not just to provide equipment, but we believe in the support and service. We have maintained our service organizations as best as we can possibly do in this country. And Mr. Komori has his core philosophy of the condo, which means to provide the service beyond expectations. So that’s what we based on, and we build our organization to support our customer so the customer can tell us our service was beyond expectation.

Interviewer: And, of course, the world’s moving to digital in a lot of ways, and I know that you’re using a lot of digital technologies in your presses to improve their efficiencies, but then there’s also the digital printing technologies. You’ve got a partnership with Konica Minolta and doing some other things. So as you’re looking out in the future, what do you see? What’s your predications for sheet-fed offset?

Kosh Miyao: I’m sure you know all the trend of the offset press, all the printing industry has been changing, and the demand on the printing is declining. However, the methodology of doing the printing, all the way to communicate to other people is also changing. We continued to maintain the offset printing press business as our core business. However, we changing our business. We are shifting business, some of our business into digital technology, as you said. We partner with Konica Minolta on the print on-demand type of equipment, as well as some new inkjet technology that we’re going to be introducing at the DRUPA show.

Interviewer: Great.

Kosh Miyao: So that would be our future. Our business model’s going to be not only selling our offset presses, but also we call it PSP, which is the printing engineering service provider. That is to not only to sell presses, but we sell a value solution to the customer as a package. And that comes from **** directions, offset as well as digital, and also the supporting function after the press is installed.

Interviewer: Congratulations.

Kosh Miyao: Thank you.