It looks like the perfect business opportunity. Every house has one. Everyone uses them. And one Japanese company is making the most technologically advanced products of their kind. \nBut while the world may beat a path to your door for building a better mousetrap, Toto Ltd has found that selling a better toilet requires more patience. \nToto, the world's dominant maker of high-tech loos, made toilet history in 1980 when, improving on a US model that combined the bidet and the toilet, it produced the "washlet" -- bringing warm water to the user's nether regions. \n"We did what others were reluctant to try -- we brought electronics into the water closet," said Hiroshi Kobayashi, Toto's general manager of restroom product research. \nSometimes dubbed "super-thrones," top-of-the-line washlets now come with wall-mounted control panels as sleek and complex as those of stereo systems. \nTheir manifold buttons allow adjustment of the nozzle position, water pressure and type of spray, plus blow-drying, air purification and seat warming for those cold winter mornings. Water and seat temperatures are adjustable. \nThe controls can also be set so the lid rises as the toilet is approached. \nJapan has embraced the high-tech toilet. Government statistics show that combined toilet/bidets are now installed in 52 percent of Japanese homes compared to just 14 percent in 1992. \nToto -- which employs around 1,500 engineers -- dominates that market with a 65 percent share. Its closest rival, Japan's Inax Corp, trails at 25 percent. Numbers for Japan's overall toilet market share are similar. \nBut where Sony's Playstation, Toyota Corollas and Pokemon have all blazed paths into western popular culture, Toto's high-tech thrones have not traveled well. \nToto officials blame matters both cultural and practical. \nA relatively long history of flush toilets in the US and Europe -- around 100 years -- has resulted in many competitors and cheap toilets. \nWesterners just aren't used to shelling out hundreds or even thousands of dollars for high-tech versions. \nMost Western bathrooms also lack an electric socket near the toilet, something that people in Japan, where central heating is rare, were keen to install when the seat-warmer was introduced. \nBut after making some inroads in the US with more standard models, especially with the advent of low-flow toilets in the 1990s, Toto's washlets are starting to make an impression. \nIts US washlet sales, which began some eight years ago, have risen to over 1,000 units a month this year from 600 two years ago. \n"It's not the same amount of numbers but the trend is very similar to what we saw in Japan 20 years ago -- low figures for about five years and then a sharp J-curve. We have great expectations for US sales next year," Kobayashi said. \nBut marketing toilets is not easy. Building showrooms is expensive and some analysts estimate it will take another five years before overseas revenues, now only 5 percent of Toto's total sales, climb to 10 percent. \nAnd some cultural barriers seem to be just too hard to break -- witness the European market, where Toto has only one distributor and sells a mere 5,000 washlets annually. \n"You'd think that because Europeans are used to the bidet, they'd be more interested. We just don't know why they aren't," said Kobayashi. \nSome analysts even argue that tackling cultural norms isn't worth the effort and that Toto would be better off pulling its washlets out of the US and Europe altogether and concentrating on more receptive Asian markets like China.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s government should take steps to cut UK reliance on semiconductors from Taiwan because of the threat posed by China, a draft strategy said. Chinese interference or an invasion of Taiwan would threaten Britain’s economy, according to the unpublished strategy seen by Bloomberg. That is because it would compromise supplies to and from Taiwan, which is home to more than 90 percent of the manufacturing capacity for all leading-edge chips, including the world’s pre-eminent silicon foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電). The strategy is important because semiconductors are used in everything from cellphones to cars, and shortages have
BIG SPENDERS: China’s reopening is a key ‘mega-theme’ for the sector, RBC Bank said, but it remains to be seen how much Chinese tourists will buy The European luxury sector is welcoming the end of pandemic lockdowns in China, as the return of big-spending Chinese tourists could sustain further growth. Prior to the pandemic, Chinese tourists visiting Europe were a major source of sales for luxury houses. The Chinese accounted for “a third of luxury purchases in the world and two-thirds of those purchases were made outside China”, said Joelle de Montgolfier, head of the luxury division at management consulting firm Bain & Co. Their return has led RBC Bank to revise up its growth forecast for the sector this year to 11 percent, from 7 percent previously. “China
‘IT HURTS TOO MUCH’: After talks between Blizzard and NetEase over their contract broke down, servers hosting Blizzard’s games in China were shut down Millions of Chinese gamers have lost access to World of Warcraft after a furious dispute between US title owner Activision Blizzard Inc and NetEase Inc (網易), its longtime local partner in the world’s biggest gaming market. Devotees of the popular game took to social media networks to bemoan the loss, with one posting an image of a failed connection message accompanied by crying emojis. “It really hurts my heart,” one wrote. “It hurts, it hurts too much,” another said. Massively popular worldwide, particularly in the 2000s, World of Warcraft — often abbreviated as WoW — is an online multiplayer role-playing game set in
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday accused Alphabet Inc’s Google of abusing its dominance in digital advertising, threatening to dismantle a key business at the heart of one of Silicon Valley’s most successful Internet firms. The US government said Google should be forced to sell its ad manager suite, tackling a business that generated about 12 percent of Google’s revenues in 2021, but also plays a vital role in the search engine and cloud company’s overall sales. “Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies,” the
RSS