The Marmon Group: Publications - Interchange / October... -
[Cached Version]
Published on: 12/20/2001
Last Visited: 3/25/2003
"When we started selling biomedical products in Japan over twenty years ago, no one in Japan was making these products," says Getz Japan president Ray Simkins."The Japanese had the money to pay for good health care but didn't have the products they needed.We simply plugged a hole."
It was a big hole.Japan has a population of 125 million (almost half the size of the U.S.) and has a health care system that rivals the U.S. and Western Europe.While heart disease isn't common in Japan (last year about 200,000 people had heart attacks and 20,000 people had pacemakers implanted), the country has an aging population, necessitating a health care system that can accommodate the problems associated with aging.
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Again, Villafana chose Getz to market his product in Japan, and Nakajima and Ray Simkins -- then and now president of Getz Japan -- began rebuilding the Getz operation.
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Simkins, who had come to Japan from Getz's San Francisco office, began pursuing another biomedical equipment manufacturer called Pacesetter, Inc., to replace the lost CPI pacemaker business.
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"Since we don't believe in cost centers," says Simkins, "we thought we might make a business out of it."
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"For Pepsi, we designed OA Arena, a software package that enables their employees to switch between Japanese and English with the flip of a switch," says Simkins.For Levi's, Getz set up a network between the company's sales offices and warehouses so orders can be transmitted instantaneously and sales people can check stock on an item.
Today, Getz Japan is a $250 million business that continues to grow by finding profitable new products not available in Japan.
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Still, Ray Simkins is unconvinced that past success is a guarantor of future prosperity.
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Because Getz represents medical product manufacturers (and thus does not make its own product) it does not control its destiny as much as Simkins would like.
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It's that possibility that drives Simkins and Nakajima and their employees to do the best job possible, and to continue to scout for new products to serve the Japanese market.
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