First Part of Product Development Story
No product can be developed to go on the market without making lots of acquaintances and receiving assistance from them.
Here is a story of how we managed to finally succeed in developing products, overcoming a great number of difficulties.
Change in Values
I was born as the oldest son of parents running a Konnyaku shop in the town. In those days, unlike this world of abundance with seemingly nothing lacking, there was a shortage of any kinds of material things including foods. Since everything was in shortage, making Konnyaku itself matched social demands and highly beneficial to our society. At that time, large companies producing in large volume were considered good and strongly wanted. It used to be required to produce in large volume, but with the changes of needs over time, it has been required to “strive for a delicious taste” and “pursue for security and safety”.
Now, “producing in large volume”, “striving for a delicious taste” and “pursuing security and safety” are regarded as perfectly normal and we are required go further than that. But we are not sure what is required next.
Beginning with a Phone Call
After graduating from school, I joined a company in a different field and after working for it for a long, I joined Konnyaku-ya which my father run “to practice filial devotion to my parents”, in my hope that we wanted to provide this Konnyaku to people throughout the world. After that, we have been making efforts to “produce in large volume”, “ strive for a delicious taste” and “pursue security and safety”, in accordance with the changing needs in our society.
Several years ago, my father, the founder, suddenly became diabetic. He was recommended to have calorie-restricted diet by his doctor. When I saw him becoming dispirited day by day because he was not allowed to eat his favorite fish, I bought a book about diabetes and gave it to him, in my hope that I wanted to take care of this. That was the book titled “Shushoku o nukeba tonyobyo wa yokunaru” written by Koji Ebe, the director of Takao Hospital in Kyoto, which led me to start this business. It said that carbohydrate was a problem to diabetes and therefore, diabetics would get better if they restricted only the amount of carbohydrate intake. To the contrary, he used to complain, “There are almost no foods that I am allowed to eat”. Then I read a great number of books written by Koji Ebe. In fact, I couldn’t tell the difference between people suffering from high blood sugar levels and people who consuming extreme amounts of foods. I learned from his books that diabetes was a dreaded disease and a great number of people not only in Japan but also in the world were suffering from diabetes and that medical costs for treatment of diabetes were immense.
Within ten days after I bought the book titled “Shushoku o nukeba tonyobyo wa yokunaru”, I got, by accident, a phone call from Takao Hospital, and he said, “We have visited your website” (in those days, it was difficult to be found because we didn’t implement SEO). He asked me some questions regarding Konnyaku Bread which we had been providing. I felt the phone call was a fateful one and rushed to Takao Hospital in Kyoto. I have known that Konnyaku has effects on diabetes, but at that time, I became aware of the growing needs for Konnyaku.
