Previously selling silk for lanterns and bolting cloth, Ichiro Hirata (the first generation) decided to focus only on bolting cloth for flour milling water mills. He traveled throughout northern Kyushu on foot for about a month at a time and kept a diary for future generations, detailing the locations of his customers situated along rivers. The second day of the New Year would already find him leaving for another peddling trip and crossing the first mountain pass. Ichiro Hirata was a hard-working and diligent merchant.

His wife, Jun (Ichiro Hirata’s daughter), came from a family who was in silk bolting cloth business, and Sanjiro had no choice but to change his business from a household goods store to a bolting cloth seller. He would ride a bicycle to make a delivery to a flour mill about 40 kilometers away, and stay until late in the afternoon playing Japanese chess. He had a carefree and easygoing disposition.

Naoki sent frequent direct mail throughout Japan and used a motorcycle to visit customers. Riding a bicycle or a train was too inefficient for him. The motorcycle was almost as expensive as a house, but often broke down in country roads probably partly because the roads were not paved in those days. He loved frugality and disliked any waste.

After Naoki died suddenly of peritonitis in the year when World War II ended, his wife left her job as a grade school teacher and peddled extensively throughout Japan. Hideko was a high-spirited and energetic woman. “Look forward. Don’t look back!” was her philosophy.

At the requests of our customers, we developed various new products, including popular polycarbonate tanks.

At that time, there were only one domestic manufacturer of bolting cloth and only one foreign-made product available. At the advice of a customer, the president of a flour milling company, we decided to import and sell “Nytal” made by Swiss Silk Thal (SST) of Switzerland which was becoming part of the mainstream in the world. Having listened to the advice of the vice president of SST, the company rapidly began to expand its business overseas.