Twenty years of Ikeuchi and organic.

I am Keiji Ikeuchi of IKEUCHI ORGANIC, based in Imabari City, Ehime Prefecture.

Imabari City faces the beautiful islands of the Seto Inland Sea and the Kurushima Strait, which is famous as one of the three most rapid tidal currents in Japan, and is located right where the Shimanami Kaido, which continues from Onomichi in Hiroshima Prefecture, enters Shikoku.

It is a regional city with a population of about 150,000, but it is known as the largest towel-producing area in Japan.

I was born here in Imabari. My family has been involved in the towel industry in Imabari since my grandfather’s generation, and my father, Tadao Ikeuchi, founded Ikeuchi Towel Co. I am the second generation manager who succeeded him.

In 2014, the company name was changed from Ikeuchi Towel to IKEUCHI ORGANIC. Now that I am 70 years old and have finished taking over as president, I am now able to devote myself to the craftsmanship I love in my position as representative of the company.

For me, the towels I have worked on are like my own children. When someone says, “I like Ikeuchi’s towels,” I feel happy as if it is a compliment for my own child.

Among them, the “Organic 120 ” towel has a special place in my life.

As the company name IKEUCHI ORGANIC indicates, we now handle a variety of organic products such as towels and bedding made of organic cotton, and this “Organic 120” was our first organic product.

The date of its birth was March 20, 1999. As of March 20 this year (2019), I will celebrate my 20th birthday and finally become an adult.

Organic 120 towels were born from our desire to make the safest towels in the world. We did not set any sales targets, but only pursued our ideals as a manufacturer.

Therefore, to be honest, we never dreamed that we would have such a long relationship with the company when it was born. I am surprised even by myself that it has lasted for 20 years.

Looking back, however, I realize that IKEUCHI ORGANIC is what it is today thanks to Organic 120. Without her, I might have folded the company long ago.

When we went into bankruptcy in 2003 due to a chain reaction bankruptcy, it was the existence of the Organic 120 that gave me the determination to keep the company alive at all costs. Without these towels, we would not have met so many people who supported us.

Above all, I myself have been greatly changed by Organic 120. In raising the Organic 120, I realized how ignorant I was about the environment and safety, and I learned from many people.

It is often said that parents grow up through raising their children, and I feel that this is absolutely true.

So, on the occasion of Organic 120’s coming of age, I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the past 20 years of my and Organic 120’s history.

Deny what exists and create something new

First of all, I would like to start my story from my previous position at Matsushita Electric ( now Panasonic). This is because my experience there greatly influenced the birth of the Organic 120.

I left my birthplace of Imabari and went to college in Tokyo, where I worked in Matsushita’s stereo division for about 12 years after graduation.

Originally, I had no idea that I would take over Ikeuchi Towel.

When I was in the third grade of junior high school, I met the Beatles, and since then, my life cannot be described without them. In order to listen to the Beatles, who are gods, with the best sound quality, I became an audiophile student. Later, I joined Matsushita Electric, with whom I had a good connection in my job search, and was allowed to work in the audio field that I loved.

However, the public’s opinion of Matsushita’s stereos at the time was mixed. Matsushita’s stereos are made on the side of a pot. There was no way they could produce good sound.

So, “Technics” was created as a separate brand that did not evoke the image of National or Panasonic. Because of these origins, Technics began with the rejection of National and Panasonic. Technics is quite unique among Matsushita’s products.

We rejected what already existed and created something new.

This is the basic stance of IKEUCHI ORGANIC’s manufacturing today, and it stems from our experience at Matsushita. The experience I gained working on branding during my time at Matsushita has also been utilized in the branding of Ikeuchi Towel later on.

I am proud of the fact that I turned my hobby into a job during my time at Matsushita. My motto is that work should be fun. There were many hard times in the organization, but nothing was too much trouble for me, an audiophile, because I spent every day in my favorite audio activities.

However, human beings are selfish, and their selfishness grows day by day.

I was in the position of a planner who made proposals to the company, saying, “This is the kind of product I want you to make,” but when I was over 30 years old, I began to have more and more differences of opinion with the directors at the time. I felt that my opinions were not being heard and that the brand I loved was going in a different direction, so I decided to resign from Matsushita, a company that had given me so much.

However, when I decided to quit, I did not intend to take over Ikeuchi Towel. When I heard that I was quitting, I was sure that Yamaha, Sony, or Pioneer would call on me. I thought it would be fine if I went to one of those companies. Looking back on it now, it sounds arrogant, but that is how I thought of it.

However, no matter how long I waited, there was no response. The world doesn’t always work out the way you think it should. Finally, I thought to myself, “Let’s go back to Imabari.

Let’s go back to Imabari. And I will take over Ikeuchi Towel from my father.

A layman who knows nothing about anything takes over as president.

I have two brothers and an older brother. My elder brother followed his own will, worked in the mass media, and even became an executive. There was no way my brother would take over our family’s towel company. So, for some time before I left Matsushita, my father had been asking me from time to time to take over the company.

It is also true that as I watched Imabari’s remarkable decline, I wondered if there was anything I could do to help.

If I took over my family’s towel company, I might be able to create what I wanted to create here. I decided to change from being an audio planner to a towel planner.

I could have just decided to take over Ikeuchi Towel and quickly returned to Imabari, but there was something in me at that time that did not want to do so. I think it may have been vanity or hesitation. I dressed up a little and said to my father, “On the anniversary of the founding of Ikeuchi Towel, we are going to celebrate the anniversary of our company’s founding.

On the anniversary of Ikeuchi Towel’s founding, I will present my resignation letter to my father.

The anniversary of the founding of Ikeuchi Towel was February 11. It was also my father’s birthday. I had already informed him of my intention to take over the company, so I was planning to spend the day before the anniversary in Osaka, where Matsushita is located.

However, at the end of January, my father suddenly collapsed from a stroke.

This was at a time when medical technology was not as advanced as it is today. In the end, my father never regained consciousness. One week after he collapsed, he passed away quietly.

February 4, 1983. It was just seven days before the anniversary of the founding of the company and my father’s 70th birthday.

Upon my father’s death, I was suddenly appointed president. I gave my inaugural address as president at the funeral, a symbolic start to the roller coaster ride of my subsequent life.

However, I was an amateur who knew nothing about towels. Since we were a small company, all the so-called know-how was in my father’s head. Nothing remained in written form.

This is where my days at Ikeuchi Towel began.

What is the way to survive from overseas competition?

When I became president, the towel industry as a whole was in a state of overproduction. At that time, 100% of the products sold in the domestic market were made in Japan. For towel manufacturers, it was a good time when they could make a certain amount of sales as long as they had good brands and wholesalers with whom they did business, and as long as they fulfilled the orders they received from these wholesalers.

However, the situation was a little different for our company. From the time my father founded the company, we were actively involved in exporting products to Europe and the United States, and for the first 20 years of our existence, we were an export-oriented company, with 100% of our sales going to overseas markets. After the oil crisis, we shifted our focus to products for the domestic market.

When I took over the company, about 20% of sales were still from exports. In the 1990s, exports, which had been gradually declining, dropped to almost zero.

Meanwhile, in Japan, the Ikeuchi Towel name had not penetrated the industry as much as it had in the past, since the company was originally founded to specialize in exporting.

The situation in Japan was changing severely. This was due to the rise of factories in China and Vietnam, where production costs are much lower. In other words, it was proof that we were only producing towels that could be manufactured in overseas factories.

I was astonished by this and became convinced that the only way to survive was to produce high quality towels that could only be made in-house.

Our company had always possessed advanced Jacquard weaving technology. Jacquard is a weaving technique that can produce large, three-dimensional, complex patterns by combining unevenness, coarseness, and density. I am proud to say that Ikeuchi Towel was the first in the industry to begin using computer-aided design (CAD).

I chose towel handkerchiefs as a new development utilizing this Jacquard weaving technique. To those outside the industry, towels and handkerchiefs may seem similar, but to those inside the industry, they are not the same.

Towel handkerchiefs are mostly OEM (OEM contracted production) for brand-name products. Brands focus on how faithfully they can realize the ordered design. This is where we thought that our advanced Jacquard weaving technology could be utilized.

As a result, the weaving machines and lines at the factory were reconfigured to produce towel handkerchiefs. From the 1990s to the beginning of 2000, the company was actually called “Ikeuchi Towel Handkerchief Co.

However, besides “weaving technology,” I had another new innovation in mind. That was “environment.

The birth of a dyeing factory that is clearer than ocean water

I am a lover of new things and feel that it is important to do things faster than anywhere else.

We were the first to obtain the “Eco Mark,” which was created in 1989. We developed environmentally friendly products under the name “Green.

However, my knowledge of the environment at the time was quite limited, and in retrospect, I am embarrassed to say that it was a bit of a stretch. I had no firm idea of what I thought about environmental considerations, and I just went ahead and did it. This was the reason why I was spinning my wheels.

At that time, eco-friendly products were only a mere title. There were so many lies and errors, and I was so disgusted with the lies I was telling myself, that I decided to withdraw from eco-friendly products.

What made me decide to get serious about the environment once again was my encounter with Leif Norgaard, president of Novotex, a Danish company that came to Japan in 1996.

Novotex had a brand of organic products called “Green Cotton,” and he was in Japan at the time to give a lecture promoting it.

At the lecture, one of the audience members asked him if their Green Cotton could be made in Japan. Norgaard replied, “In order to realize our concept, we need a dyeing factory with a wastewater treatment facility capable of advanced treatment, but only we can build such a facility. Unfortunately, it will not be possible in Japan.

Another person then told him, “There are dyeing factories in Japan that can produce better data than your factory.

Novotex is proud of its own wastewater treatment technology. As for Mr. Norgaard, he could not just go back to Japan in silence after being told such a story. In order to verify the truth of the rumor, he decides to make a hasty visit to the factory to which he was referred.

And so he bravely came to our dyeing factory (Interworks).

This dyeing factory was established by seven towel-related companies in Imabari City, including Ikeuchi Towel, in an effort to produce towels made in Japan with a thorough focus on quality in the face of increasingly heated competition from overseas.

At the center of this cooperative is the legendary Hisashi Yoshii, the founder of Yoshii Towel, who is no stranger to the local community. Mr. Yoshii invited me to join, saying, “I will provide the funds, you provide the body.

The Seto Inland Sea is subject to the Seto Inland Law (Seto Inland Sea Environmental Protection Special Measures Law), which is considered the most stringent wastewater regulations in the world, and the wastewater treatment facility must meet these standards. I had to make a concerted effort to build the plant.

The plant’s purification facility, which was completed in 1992, was a huge building the size of an official Olympic swimming pool, with three stories above ground and two below. It has a daily wastewater treatment capacity of 2,000 tons. The wastewater is treated by bacteria over a long period of time.

The wastewater from the facility is said to be “clearer than ocean water,” and has even been featured on TV news programs.

This plant marked a turning point for Ikeuchi Towel. The company had invested a huge amount of money in the facility, and it was determined that it had no choice but to do it in Imabari.

Then, we received a sudden visit from the top leader of Denmark, an environmentally advanced country.

A baptism from experts deep in the environment

When Norgaard arrived, he was astonished at the excellence of the facility. He would never have dreamed that such a high standard facility could be found in a rural area like Imabari City, Ehime Prefecture, Japan.

But he was also shocked by something else. He looked me in the eye and said, “What a wonderful facility!

He looked me in the eye and said, “What a wonderful facility! Your wastewater treatment facility is certainly of a very high standard, but there is something more amazing. But there is something even more amazing. It is that you, Mr. Ikeuchi, are so clueless about the environment!

Mr. Norgaard then began to talk to me in detail about the importance of the environment and the significance of environmental measures.

I was deeply touched by the breadth and depth of his words, and I was terribly sorry. I was struck by the breadth and depth of what he was saying, and it made me reflect on my own situation. We must start from the very beginning. I realized that keenly.

And, for me, who had not been able to formulate a clear idea about environmental considerations, Mr. Norgaard’s description of Novotex’s rational thinking fell right into my heart.

If we can learn from their way of thinking, which is to calmly self-evaluate products by accumulating scientific and objective facts, and to aim for further improvement, we can do business with a new style of environmentally friendly products. I thought I saw a ray of light.

Mr. Norgaard recommended that I take the first step toward full-fledged environmental initiatives by obtaining the soon-to-be-released ISO certification.

I followed his advice and in 1999, I obtained ISO 14001 certification, the international standard for corporate environmental practices.

Although ISO is now ubiquitous, not many companies were acquiring it at the time. Our acquisition of ISO14001 is the first case in the towel industry. Therefore, we managed to create a system with no precedent.

The following year, in 2000, we also acquired ISO 9001, the international standard for product quality assurance. Perhaps in recognition of these achievements, I was invited to attend various environmental conferences as a representative of small- and medium-sized business owners.

When I went to the conferences, I found that there were many deep environmental activists gathered there. At that time, we had already started manufacturing and selling Organic 120, but I had not yet learned enough, so I was pushed up anyway.

I was still not well versed in the field, so I was pushed around a lot.
Is it right that you use electricity generated by nuclear power?”
“What is the meaning of using chemical dyes when you say your products are organic?”

If I explain on the spot that “chemical dyes are the safest dyes ever created by mankind, if they are used under proper control,” they will not understand. I decided to respond to them one by one.

In 2001, I requested an inspection by Oeko-Tex, the world’s most stringent inspection organization for textile products. We decided to demonstrate the safety of our products by disclosing specific quality standards and numerical values.

In other words, we pushed further and further into the pure world of cleanliness. It can be said that Ikeuchi Towel and myself had to change after being baptized by deep ecology activists.

Birth of “Organic 120

Perhaps my acquisition of the ISO 14001 certification in 1999 conveyed my enthusiasm, and Norgard provided us with their green cotton technology.

Using this know-how, we produced our first organic towels.

This was the “Organic 120” series, which we launched on March 20, 1999.

At that time, we called it the “Organic Color Solid 1” series.

Let me reiterate our company’s environmental consciousness as represented by the Organic 120 series.

Our organic towels are made from organically grown cotton, free of pesticides and defoliants, certified by world-class certification organizations such as KRAV (Sweden), SKAL (the Netherlands), and bio-inspecta (Switzerland).

The spinning mills that spin the yarn from the cotton also have strict standards. We use organic yarn made from organic cotton harvested by hand and spun in certified spinning mills in India.

Our commitment to product safety and protecting the global environment is not limited to raw materials. Our commitment to environmental stewardship is not limited to raw materials; it extends to the dyeing and weaving processes that follow until the finished product is ready to be used.

To ensure that our products are safe, we test our final products under the aforementioned “Oeko-Tex”.

Oeko-Tex is an internationally authoritative and reliable organization for textile safety, so much so that most European textile companies have obtained certification.

Oeko-Tex® is an internationally recognized and trusted authority on textile safety, with most European textile companies certified by Oeko-Tex®. Not only the raw materials used in the production process, but also all chemicals are tested for safety. The degree of residues of these chemicals in the final product and the degree of harm they may cause to the human body are then examined and certified.

There are four levels of certification, the highest being Class 1, which means that the towels are safe for infants to put in their mouths.

We have received some criticism for using chemicals even though our towels are organic, but we believe that there should be a minimum use of chemicals when considering the longevity of the product.

Towels are daily necessities that require durability as well as texture. In order for customers to use our products for as long as possible, we must reduce the burden on the environment by maintaining the longevity of our products.

As a towel manufacturer, we want to ensure that the towels we produce maintain the initial quality of the product for as long as possible. We do not want to make products that easily encourage customers to buy new towels.

A new product that did not sell at all and was not even looked at

Thus began the meeting with Norgard in 1996, and Organic 120 was born in 1999. Around this time, I began to think that Ikeuchi Towel’s next strategy was to have its own brand.

After all, as a manufacturer, we were feeling a certain stress from making handkerchiefs on an OEM basis. In the sense that I could not make what I wanted to make, my feelings were similar to those I had when I quit Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.

Towel handkerchiefs were selling very well, and from the standpoint of the company’s profits, they were a very important main commercial product. However, in this field, we can never make what we want to make. No matter how good the idea or how wonderful the technology, the licensor who holds the license makes all the decisions on whether it is good or bad, which is the theory and rule in this world.

This agonizing thought was the driving force behind our decision to create our own brand.

In 1999, with the opening of the Shimanami Sea Route, the Shikoku Towel Manufacturers Association, as well as the prefectural and city governments, came to me with the idea of building a product center in Imabari, with the expectation that a large number of customers would come to Imabari.

I saw this as an opportunity. I saw this as an opportunity to bring my own brand of Organic 120, which is the embodiment of my ideals as a towel manufacturer, to consumers. Organic 120 was created to be unveiled at a fair celebrating the opening of the Shimanami Sea Route.

The price of Organic 120 at that time was 3,200 yen per bath towel.

Since the average price of bath towels circulating in department stores at that time was about 2,000-2,500 yen, this was an extremely high price. Moreover, there was no effective design or catch copy to appeal to customers.

It would have no effect to say that the product was made by an ISO-certified company. However, since it was our own product, we were selling it with a catchphrase like this.

“Cotton, a blessing from heaven, should not be treated with defoliant.

Looking back on it now, I think it was a very awkward and prickly copy.

In the end, most people’s expectations were unfounded, and the Shimanami Kaido highway did not bring tourists to Imabari in droves. The product was not even a product at all, selling only about 50,000 yen a month at the product center.

However, the amount of money we spent on the Organic 120 was in the tens of millions of yen.

In order to increase our sales channels, we opened a store on Rakuten Ichiba, which had just been established, and began selling our products on the Internet. I think our company’s registration number was in three digits at the time.

When I went to Tokyo from Imabari to attend a training session on Rakuten, the only people there were Internet staff from listed companies. I was the only one in my 50s among the younger members. I had been selling on Rakuten for two years, but only once had sales exceeded the 50,000 yen monthly opening fee. So we stopped opening a store on Rakuten and switched to selling on our own website.

Although Ikeuchi Towel is a towel company, it did not have many dealings with the towel wholesale industry, so there was almost no opposition from the wholesale industry when we dealt directly with retailers as well as selling directly on the Web.

They probably just thought, “Oh, Ikeuchi’s president is doing something outlandish again. It was as if no one would take a notice of us. The towels filled with my dreams did not attract any particular attention in the industry, nor did they sell in large quantities.

Overseas expansion that struck out spectacularly

I had been selling Organic 120 products in Japan for a while, but my idea to make my own brand successful was to gain a high reputation overseas.

After all, the Japanese market is a world where faith in existing brands is strong. I was well aware that it would not be easy to launch a new brand in Japan and gain support from scratch. I thought it would be more feasible to create a brand by first achieving success overseas and then making a triumphant return to Japan as a kind of reimportation.

Therefore, in 1999, I began exhibiting at the Eco-Products Exhibition in Tokyo, and in 2000, I also began exhibiting in the United States. The expense of holding three exhibitions a year, one in Japan and one in the U.S., was enormous.

At that time, we had a solid foundation of OEM production of towel handkerchiefs, so we were able to take on various challenges without being constrained by cost.

In 1999, with the birth of the Organic 120, our brand name was ” Ikeuchi Towel” as it was in the company name, but we changed it to “IKT” in 2000 when we entered the US market.

The reason for this was that the Romanization of “Ikeuchi” as “IKEUCHI” was not pronounced as “IKEUCHI” in other countries. It is pronounced as “Ikeuchi. So we hastily changed the name to “IKT” by taking the three English letters from Ikeuchi Towel.

Thus, with a new brand name, we were able to move to the United States.

At that time, IKT’s strength was its weaving technique, which had been developed through the production of towel handkerchiefs. We also have the “environmental consciousness” that was fostered through our encounter with Mr. Norgaard.

We thought, “With this outstanding weaving technique, plus the concept of environmental friendliness, we can sell our products even if we don’t say anything. We could win the battle.

I honestly believed that we would be able to win the competition. However, this was not accepted at all. It was a spectacular failure.

Americans were not the least bit interested in our elaborately designed towels, which were considered to be a superb weave. They would look at our towels and say, “Noble,” but they would never buy them. We only sell towels with very simple designs.

Noble” means “excellent” or “classy,” so I took the meaning of the word as it appears in the dictionary and thought I was being praised. However, I was wrong.

I was completely mistaken. I did not understand at all how Westerners think about towels.

In Japan, towels are generally given as gifts. Seventy to eighty percent of the demand for towels is for use as gifts. What is important for gifts is how beautiful they look when packed in a box. Therefore, there is a tendency to choose towels embroidered with famous brand names or with gorgeous patterns.

In the U.S. and Europe, however, towels are absolutely something you buy yourself. If they have 20 towels at home, they buy them while imagining how they will look when they are arranged on the shelf. It would be very inconvenient for each towel to make its own statement. They want towels that are as simple as possible, and that will fit in well with the interior design of the bathroom.

Americans prefer towels with simple designs.

This realization was very useful. However, there was another problem. The reason is that towels with a simple design cannot be differentiated by the weaving technique.

At first, we only displayed towels with designs that showed off our weaving techniques, but gradually we began to focus on competing with the texture of our towels.

Unlike in Japan, trade shows in the U.S. are not just a place for exhibiting towels, but also a place for business negotiations. They even conclude contracts on the spot. I improved the manufacturing process of the towels, enhanced the line that sold well at the exhibition, and repeatedly dropped products that did not respond well from the lineup, thereby shaping up the Organic 120.

Gradually, the IKT name and the Organic 120 began to spread in the United States.

Becoming the first company in Japan to supply 100% of its electricity from wind power

In 2001, while I was working hard with the newly born Organic 120 in Japan and abroad, we started an initiative that would later become our catchphrase, “Towels woven by wind”.

That was the “greening of electric power.

Ikeuchi Towel uses wind power to generate 100% of the electricity used in our company. The towels produced by Ikeuchi Towel are called “Towels Woven by the Wind.

Many people assume that we own wind turbines to generate electricity, but we do not generate our own wind power.

A company called Japan Natural Energy has established a system called the “Green Power Certification System,” which connects wind power plants nationwide with companies and organizations that want to use electricity generated by wind power. Our company is using this system as a customer.

Among the companies that have introduced this system and greened a portion of their electricity consumption are some of the most prestigious large corporations. Ikeuchi Towel was the first small- to medium-sized company to join this list.

In 2001, I was thinking about setting the next environmental goal related to ISO14001. Since we acquired ISO 14001 certification in 1999, we will need to set new environmental targets for the next three years in 2002.

In making this plan, I had the idea of “going green” with our electric power, and I was trying to figure out if there was any way we could reduce exhaust emissions as much as possible.

I happened to come across a newspaper article about a Sony showroom in Osaka that was going to start operating on 100% green power, and I learned about Japan Natural Energy as the distributor of that power.

Intrigued, I immediately looked up the company on the Internet and sent an inquiry by e-mail. I immediately received a reply, “I will be in Imabari. Can you spare some time? I was honestly hesitant about this response.

To be honest, this response made me hesitate. Even if they went all the way to Imabari, we are a small company and do not need a lot of electricity. However, he still insisted on going to Imabari.

Up until then, they had only been selling electricity in units of 1 million kilowatts per year, mainly to large corporations, but they wanted to expand their sales channels to small- and medium-sized companies in the future. However, he was having a hard time grasping the image of doing business with small companies.

This was when they received my e-mail, and the timing was perfect for both parties.

The contract with Japan Natural Energy is for 400,000 kilowatts of electricity per year. This is a small amount compared to the electricity consumed by many large corporations, but it is the total amount of electricity Ikeuchi Towel consumes within the company.

This contract has resulted in an increase in our electricity bill by approximately 20% over the previous contract. Moreover, since we initially sign a contract for a specified amount, we cannot use a pay-as-you-go system, where we pay only for what we use. To be honest, there is no doubt that it will be a very fixed burden.

Even so, I had no hesitation at all. The reason is that I was uncomfortable with the notion that a company is environmentally friendly because it handles products that have a low environmental impact.

For example, in the process of producing organic towels, the producers of the raw materials are making great efforts through organic cultivation. Consumers who purchase the product are also making an effort in the sense that they are bearing their fair share of the costs. However, manufacturers and sellers are simply doing business with environmentally friendly products.

The company’s production activities themselves are an environmental burden. Unless they understand this and work to reduce that burden, they will not be able to say with pride that they are making environmentally friendly products in the true sense of the word.

Even though we were not selling any Organic 120 towels, I was ready to do so. I was determined to make the safest towels in the world.

Thus, Ikeuchi Towel became the first company in Japan to use 100% of its electricity from wind power.

Finally, a leap forward after winning an international award

The company’s switch to wind energy for all of its electricity needs has become a hot topic and, little by little, has been picked up by the media.

However, brand recognition is not so easy to achieve. Our own-brand products accounted for less than 1% of our total sales.

Nevertheless, our core fan base was gradually growing. As far as we know, in January 2001, a website called ” Ganbare Ikeuchi Towel! was also opened in January 2001. This website was set up by a person who had nothing to do with our company and who personally supported our company. It was truly gratifying to see fans who sympathized with our stance naturally come together.

Our company’s name recognition was triggered by the “New York Home Textile Show 2002 Spring,” the largest home textile show in the United States, held in New York in April 2002.

All of the exhibitions we had participated in up to that point had been held on the West Coast, and this was the first time we had exhibited on the East Coast. Suddenly, our “Straits Color Solid” series, which we had exhibited along with the Organic 120, won the Best New Product Award.

This is a prestigious award given to only five companies out of the approximately 1,000 companies from 32 countries that exhibited. This was the first time for a Japanese product to win the Grand Prix.

I could not help but be elated by this honor. This award was a catalyst for our company’s name recognition.

In the blink of an eye, contracts were signed with five stores in the SoHo district of New York, the world’s fashion capital, and more than 30 business negotiations were in progress. Our reputation reached Japan, and even within Japan, the situation changed remarkably. Especially after receiving the award, the media began to cover the project more and more.

To our surprise, then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi mentioned our company in his policy speech in January 2003. Although he did not mention the company name specifically, he referred to us as “a towel company in Ehime that is fighting hard in the face of overseas competition.

In May of the same year, TV Asahi’s “News Station” aired a major program titled “Environmental Nation – Weaving with the Wind” about our company’s efforts. The response was tremendous. After the broadcast, the company’s phones were nearly flat. We were swamped with calls from the general public, retailers, wholesalers, and others who wanted to handle our products.

However, the company’s internal system could not keep up with the increased inquiries. It was not until around the fall season that we managed to get our products ready. We decided to quickly establish a system in preparation for nationwide sales starting on September 10, 2003.

The number of stores in Japan that would carry our own brand “IKT,” which was born as a result of the birth of Organic 120, was scheduled to expand to 200 stores at once after September 2003. This is an unbelievable situation, considering the slender sales we had been making up to that point.

Overseas, it has been decided that “ABC Carpet, ” one of America’s leading interior design stores, will carry our products. This is a long-established shop with a history of well over 100 years, and they carry only the highest quality products, so when people hear that our products are sold at ABC Carpet, they take notice, and overseas buyers always stop by to check out the American market trends.

Thus, Ikeuchi Towel was about to take off to a new stage with the Organic 120, which was filled with my dreams.

Just then, our company suffered an unexpected and fatal accident, and my excitement at the prospect of IKT’s future was suddenly plunged into the abyss.

From Heaven to the Abyss

Just as we were getting ready to take off, both domestically and internationally, a Tokyo-based wholesaler that was one of our major customers collapsed.

A wholesaler in Tokyo, one of our major customers, went bankrupt. A bolt out of the blue” is how I would describe the situation. The company was at an impasse and had no choice but to go bankrupt on August 27, 2003.

The company had to go into bankruptcy on August 27, 2003, and our company was left with approximately 240 million yen in accounts receivable. This write-off is too large. The biggest problem, however, was the fact that our largest customer, on whom we had depended for 70% of our recent annual sales, had disappeared.

How would we get through this difficult situation…? The elation I had felt the day before seemed to recede into a lie.

Perhaps the heavens had punished me for having two faces, one front and one back…” I looked up at the sky.

Looking up at the sky, such thoughts came to my mind. At that time, the keyword “environmentally conscious” was already at the core of Ikeuchi Towel’s corporate philosophy. However, what actually supported the company’s management was its other face as “Japan’s No. 1 OEM manufacturer of towel handkerchiefs. The majority of the company’s sales came from OEM production of towel handkerchiefs.

The previous year’s sales of IKT, the company’s own brand, were only about 7 million yen, less than 1% of total sales. However, after winning the award in New York, the number of inquiries from both inside and outside of Japan skyrocketed, and in my mind, it seemed as if IKT already accounted for about 50% of the company’s sales.

Perhaps I had been carried away by the media and had become complacent.

I was anguished.

Since we already had a good track record in the towel handkerchief business, it seemed possible to survive as an OEM towel handkerchief manufacturer by taking out more loans. The financial institutions that I had done business with were willing to support me to the fullest extent according to my plan.

But then I had a thought.

The total debt at that time was approximately 1 billion yen, including the 240 million yen that had been burned. It might be possible to prolong the company’s life by obtaining additional financing and once again focusing on OEM production. However, the risk of continuing to operate along the same lines as before seemed very great. As long as we continued to subcontract production under the name of OEM, there was no way to eliminate the possibility of falling into the same situation.

At the same time, what deeply troubled me was the existence of our own brand, which was finally about to spread its wings.

If we are to continue to gain new customers and survive as an OEM-centered manufacturer, we will have to kill my ideal of IKT, which is centered on the Organic 120.

Of course, we were not confident that we could make it as our own brand. It would have been the height of recklessness to try to rebuild by shifting our focus to a brand that had generated only 7 million yen in sales in the previous fiscal year.

However, as we prepared for the nationwide launch in September, and as we entered August, just before the product was to be shipped, I felt a definite response of “This will work! I had a solid feeling that we were going to make it.

There was only a short time left to make a decision. After much hesitation and deliberation, I came to this conclusion: “We should focus on the IKT brand.

I would revitalize the company with the IKT brand at its core.

In September 2003, Ikeuchi Towel filed for protection under the Civil Rehabilitation Law. This was on September 9, the day before the scheduled start of nationwide sales.

Encouraged by the support of fans

Restructuring within the company was essential in the restructuring process. Personnel, of course, were not sacrosanct.

On August 31, 2003, more than 10 employees, or about half of the workforce at the time, left Ikeuchi Towel. On August 31, 2003, a little more than 10 employees, about half of the current workforce, left Ikeuchi Towel. Only a little more than 10 employees remained.

Despite their determination to rebuild the company with their own brand, the harsh reality was that the company had no money for the time being and did not know what would happen tomorrow.

There were two hurdles to overcome in order to obtain approval for the rehabilitation plan. One, at least 50% of the amount of claims, and another, at least 50% of the number of creditors must approve the execution of this plan. Both of these must be met.

The number of clients we asked to cut their claims was 29, including the main bank. At any rate, we had no choice but to make desperate efforts to demonstrate the possibility of restructuring and to gain the understanding of all of our creditors.

The source of my power at this time was the messages of support I received from those who supported IKT.

Since the civil rehabilitation was decided, my public e-mail address had been flooded with messages of encouragement. Among them was this one

How many towels do I need to buy to keep Ikeuchi Towel alive?

I cannot tell you how much these words encouraged me. Without this encouragement, I might have given up on the idea of revitalizing the company with our own brand and closed the company, thinking that we had no choice but to close it down. The support of my fans, whom I call ‘IKT maniacs,’ really pushed me forward.

The main bank also said, “We will support you for the enthusiastic fans around you, notwithstanding Ikeuchi. The credit cut was actually 92%. The creditors agreed to this large cut rate, which was out of the ordinary.

Perhaps they were betting their dreams on our business model. I can only express my sincere gratitude to all the creditors who were inconvenienced.

More than “change,” “don’t change

In February 2004, our application for civil rehabilitation was approved. All that remains now is to proceed with the development of our own brand in accordance with the rehabilitation plan.

However, neither the plan nor the reality of the situation is such that we have taken any radical measures to leverage the IKT brand. We will simply continue to do the same things we have been doing since the birth of the Organic 120.

Just because we are in a business crisis and need to rebuild quickly does not mean that we should change the fundamentals. It was more important to “not change” than to “change.

Above all, the IKT enthusiasts who sent us messages of support want Ikeuchi Towel to “stay the same. Both the creditors who agreed to cut their debts and the dealers who insisted on handling our products believe that the key to our restructuring lies in our brand concept.

Therefore, there are actually not many things I did for the restructuring.

I just worked on creating products with conviction and without bending the concept. I also worked tirelessly to spread the concept to as many people as possible.

At that time, I was almost the only sales representative for Ikeuchi Towel. It may have sounded good to be a top salesperson, but at any rate, we didn’t have the manpower.

Our products, including the Organic 120, were not something that people would buy just because they looked pretty or beautiful. Therefore, my sales style is to talk about the policy and concept behind the product.

For this reason, I always ask for 90 minutes of your time when I first meet with you. It naturally takes that much time to convey what is behind the product.

It is ironic, but since the Civil Rehabilitation Law was applied, I have received even more requests for interviews. I have also received more requests to speak about the Ikeuchi Towel story.

If I am asked to give a lecture, I always accept up to 12 times a year without condition. Anyway, I want to tell people about Ikeuchi Towel and about IKT. If I get even the slightest chance, I will go out anywhere and speak to as many people as possible so that they can understand our concept. This is my way of doing things.

With our own brand at the center of the company, we implemented the rehabilitation plan set forth at the time of our application for the Rehabilitation Law, and finally, in March 2007, we were able to successfully complete the legal rehabilitation process.

The following year, 2008, we received investment from a fund that saw the value in our concept, and the financial aspect, which had been our biggest concern, began to shine through.

In 2009, when the Organic 120 turned 10 years old. Finally, Ikeuchi Towel was able to climb out of the depths of bankruptcy and emerge above water.

Looking ahead to the next 60 years

Subsequently, in December 2011, I appeared on TV Tokyo’s “Cambria Palace.

The title of the program was “Declining Industries, Local Regions, Small and Medium Sized Companies, and Civil Rehabilitation. The title of the program was “Management without blurring, which beat the quadruple burden of declining industry, rural areas, small and medium-sized companies, and civil rehabilitation! The program was titled “Management without blurring, which beat the quadruple burden of declining industry, rural areas, small and medium-sized companies, and civil rehabilitation.

The impact of Cambria Palace was as great as that of the News Station in 2003, and the following year, 2012, the supply of our products could not keep up with the demand. Some customers came all the way from the Kanto region to our factory store in Imabari.

Then came 2013. This year was the 60th anniversary of the founding of Ikeuchi Towel by my father. At this milestone, when I thought about the next 60 years of Ikeuchi Towel, I decided to rethink the brand.

The official brand name is “IKT. However, our customers call us “Wind Woven Towel. Furthermore, the company name is “Ikeuchi Towel. There are many different names, and it is complicated. And, there is a limit to the amount of time we can spend explaining our concept to a large number of people in 90 minutes each time.

With this in mind, we decided to ask Mr. Kenmei Nagaoka, the representative of D&DEPARTMENT, who was an old friend of ours, to create a corporate identity for our brand.

Mr. Nagaoka listened sincerely to my story about the path I had taken so far, the thoughts I had put into Organic 120 and my own brand, and my dreams for the future.

As a result, “IKEUCHI ORGANIC” was born.

Ikeuchi Style Organic” was born. And, we will have a strong influence not only on towels, but also on various other organic-related products. Mr. Nagaoka gave us this name, along with the yellow “I” logo, with the aim of becoming such an entity.

And I changed not only the brand name but also the company name to IKEUCHI ORGANIC. I felt it fit better.

The following March 2014, Ikeuchi Towel was officially reborn as IKEUCHI ORGANIC. This was the year when Organic 120 turned 15 years old. At that time, the name was changed from “Organic Color Solid 1” to “Organic 120.

Then, in March of the same year, we open our first directly managed stores outside of Imabari, in Omotesando and in Kyoto in September. The purpose was to expand the place to communicate our concept directly to our customers.

Five years have passed since then, and I feel that IKEUCHI ORGANIC has taken root both for our employees and for our customers.

Finally: “Organic 120” has improved dramatically over the past 20 years.

Today, I feel that IKEUCHI ORGANIC is getting closer every day to the ideal that I had envisioned.

I feel that the company’s very activities are concentrated on establishing a brand as IKEUCHI ORGANIC, and are becoming more pure in their approach.

And the Organic 120 has improved by an order of magnitude over the past 20 years.

We are actually making small improvements to the Organic 120 so that the next time you purchase it, you will be impressed that it is still good. The appearance has not changed, but the water absorbency has improved dramatically.

This is the result of our knowledge of organic cotton and the improvement of the technical skills of our craftsmen through repeated trial and error.

If you were asked, “If you had to choose only one towel in the world, what would it be? I would answer “Organic 120” without hesitation. That is how well made these towels are.

IKEUCHI ORGANIC makes various types of towels, but the Organic 120 is the one we are proud of for its ability to handle every aspect of the towel perfectly.

What I feel sorry about is that we have not been able to make a 20th anniversary model of the Organic 120. I can’t come up with any ideas at all (laughs). There is no way to improve it.

So, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Organic 120, I wanted to talk to you about the history of the Organic 120 from its birth to the present.

As you can probably tell from reading this far, the path that Organic 120 and I have taken up to this point has not been a smooth one.

Dreams and determination. This is what we needed more than anything else in order to continue to take on challenges without profitability.

But now, I do my daily work with an eye on our corporate guideline, “to make towels that babies can eat by 2073 (the 120th anniversary of our founding ).

I myself have turned 70 years old, but I am determined to “go on from here.

It must be a blessing to be able to live such a fulfilling life while many of my generation have already begun to retire.

Although the environment surrounding small and medium-sized enterprises, including our company, is going through a very difficult time, we will continue to pursue manufacturing without wavering and open up the future with our policy of “maximum safety and minimum environmental impact.

Keiji Ikeuchi, President, IKEUCHI ORGANIC Co.

Editorial assistance: Keiji Ide