
Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business - pwim
http://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Hagoromo-president-explains-why-he-closed-down-his-beloved-chalk-business
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kvcc01
I read the whole letter and loved the tone of it! It jumps at you right away
that: (1) Here's a guy who really cares about his business, its future, his
employees. (2) He talks candidly about the reasons for closing up: his
declining health, sales volumes, even including awkward sentences like " _So
chalk is more environmentally friendly, I think._ " I am now a fan of
Hagoromo.

It was rather refreshing at a time when I can't stand reading more than a
paragraph of a typical press release of a BigCo written by lawyers or PR
specialists. Unlike this essay, those are intended to obfuscate, not to
inform.

~~~
etep
Not awkward, the sentence you call out. Beautiful, rather, and whether it is
an artifact of translation or not, no matter. You didn't mean awkward in a
pejorative sense; this is just an affirmation.

~~~
kvcc01
Of course! What makes this letter effective and relatable are all those little
things that wouldn't have passed the ordinary editorial, legal, or PR filters,
if it were written by a typical corporate CEO. If I was teaching at business
school, I'd have my students read this as a model of effective stakeholder
communications. I think Mr. Watanabe is a shokunin (you know, in the Jiro Ono
sense) of the chalk business.

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kriro
This whole saga pretty much has to inspire someone to build and reverse
engineer the machine/recipe. The overlap of people who like to tinker with
this stuff and people who love the chalk seems big enough.

It's also interesting that they seem to be somewhat oblivious of the US
demand. At least it seemed like that. My guess is that they could have sold
one of the machines to a US based entrepreneur. I can pretty much envision
somone making that chalk in a garage and selling it to
universities/individuals.

I also think that it's somewhat short sighted to assume procurement by the
employer is needed. Especially in "brainy" jobs it's pretty common for people
to be willing to spend their own money for tools they use on the job. If my
school only provides chalk X I'm pretty much willing to spend some of my own
money for the better chalk if I can't change their mind.

Maybe they were just "too big" and targeting a commodity market instead of
going for the smaller premium market.

~~~
creshal
> It's also interesting that they seem to be somewhat oblivious of the US
> demand.

I have no idea why, but with Japanese companies it's a common theme. Most
don't even care about overseas expansion, and if they do, it's poorly executed
(say, Daihatsu, who dicked around on the European market for decades without
ever listening to even trivial customer wishes, and then wrote the whole
business off because it "obviously can't work" – well, duh).

~~~
twblalock
> I have no idea why, but with Japanese companies it's a common theme. Most
> don't even care about overseas expansion, and if they do, it's poorly
> executed (say, Daihatsu, who dicked around on the European market for
> decades without ever listening to even trivial customer wishes, and then
> wrote the whole business off because it "obviously can't work" – well, duh).

The Japanese domestic consumer market is so enormous that many Japanese
companies are simply not interested in selling their goods internationally,
because they don't need to. They can make plenty of money without dealing with
the complications of selling their products in other countries. Many are small
businesses and are content with making enough money to cover payroll.

~~~
kuschku
Same in Germany. And the reason why so many smaller German companies existed
in pretty much the same way for the past millenium.

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fsloth
The main reason, apparently: "These days, local governments focus on bid
prices rather than quality."

High quality commodities are considered nowadays luxury and not bare minimum.
Quite sad, really.

~~~
pmr_
I think the statement following this is much more important and interesting to
HN:

> The tendency has become more and more prevalent under electronic auction
> systems.

While incidents like this are often used as examples of the failures of
technocracy, I think the problem is elsewhere. A decision process has been
out-sourced to a machine that is not smart enough yet to make a good decision.
The decision might be good in a very localized and easy to measure sense
(cheap), but lacks an understanding of other economical signals.

~~~
daurnimator
If you instruct a machine to optimize for the cheapest price; it will do that.
The failure is in the instructions given, not the introduction of machines.

~~~
pmr_
That much should be clear, my (unfortunately) implicit question is: how can we
instruct a machine to optimize for the very intangible things everybody seems
to love so much about this chalk? What about the more subtle economic things
(like signals of economic climate and value of quality).

~~~
polymatter
optimise by a score. score is calculated as a function of price and some
quality metric. unfortunately this can get complex.

~~~
sevensor
Regardless of what metric you choose, Arrow's Paradox will bite you. Single-
objective optimization will always force you to ignore good alternatives.

~~~
dfc
I do not understand the reference to Arrow's Paradox in a discussion of
procurement policy (almost certainly related to my lack of knowledge). Can you
elaborate?

~~~
sevensor
Sure --- there's a neat paper by Franssen (2006) that demonstrates the formal
equivalence between optimization problems and the social policy problems Arrow
was concerned with. Basically, Arrow says that some constituents will always
lose out under any social policy. Franssen showed that you can swap out
"composite cost metric" for social policy and "components of the cost metric"
for constituents, and the same arguments apply.

~~~
dfc
It must be too early for me. I can not find the franssen citation. Title?

~~~
sevensor
Here's the full citation. Turns out I misremembered the year (2005).

Franssen M (2005) Arrow’s theorem, multi-criteria decision problems and multi-
attribute preferences in engineering design. Research in Engineering Design
16(1):42–56

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a5seo
About 20 years ago they should have created a grading standard for chalk so
they could have avoided their commoditization, or at least only compete with
others at similar quality (and presumably margins). Similar to organic
standards.

~~~
throw7
Yes, this is what I wanted to say. Quantify what makes them great. After
reading the article and the comments, I still have no understanding of why or
what makes them so great.

~~~
bsder
Thicker sticks. Coating on the outside of the chalk. Different formulation to
make it smoother and less dusty.

Basically, the chalk seems to be optimized for writing Kanji strokes which
need to vary in thickness and weight.

And, yes, he did miss the boat in the US. I have never heard of this stuff
before they went under (not completely true: my Japanese teacher complained
about the quality of American chalk all the time--I should have twigged in). I
would have bought _crates_ of this stuff when I was teaching.

Hopefully the Korean company he sold the machines to won't be quite so
insular.

------
qnaal
OPEN SOURCE THE MAGIC CHALK RECIPE AND MACHINE PLANS

~~~
fsloth
I don't think there is any concise secret formula that one could just copy to
paper and readapt.

The article gives the impression there was a specific highly custom production
system where the materials were selected for the machines and the machines
were fit for the materials. And the machines were apparently jury rigged
adaptations which probably lack detailed blueprints. Sounds a bit hard to
formalize, after the fact, without quite a laborious effort.

~~~
gknoy
I'd bet that, if he made some Youtube videos explaining the recipe, and the
way it changes based on the local situation (and manufacturing equipment), as
well as some videos giving a tour of the manufacturing equipment, some
enterprising Makers would find a way to whip up a "Make your own Chalk"
machine.

While it wouldn't be perfect, such a machine could be standardized or
improved, and quality could be iterated on by people who care about it until
they could make their own chalk that was better than what they can easily buy.

Heck, just the recipe might be sufficient for people to do that.

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mathattack
Two passages stood out.

 _At first, we considered selling the whole company, enabling the Hagoromo
brand to survive and helping overall chalk sales. But we could not find the
right deal for the company._

 _I 'm sad that I have been forced to close down my company. But I am pleased
I have been able to contribute to education by providing high-quality chalk
over the last 50 years._

Commendable passion to a bigger cause, but sometimes that isn't enough. Very
touching note.

~~~
GuiA
> Commendable passion to a bigger cause, but sometimes that isn't enough.

How is it "not enough"? He ran a successful business that brought joy and
utility to millions for 50 years. Sure, it ends on a sad note - but such is
life. That is success if I ever saw it.

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astaroth360
Chalk makes me feel weird when I use it. Tactically it just rubs me the wrong
way and gives me the same chills I get from fingernails on a chalkboard. Just
thinking about it bothers me :\

However, it is nice to read about people who have a passion for what they do,
and this man seems to have passion in spades.

~~~
paxtonab
This chalk actually has a special coating that prevents that from happening.

This post from a while ago explains why "Mathematicians Are Hoarding a Type of
Japanese Chalk"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9723202](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9723202)

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surge
This man expresses such a passion for chalk...chalk of all things, and it's
inspiring. I could see someone reading this and becoming an artisan chalk
maker as a result(I kid, but its probably true). Even I kind of want to run a
chalk business after reading it.

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shepardrtc
From the article it looks like the buyer in South Korea will learn how to
continue on with the chalk. I suspect we will see it on the market again.

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memming
It's amazing that they had just one set of machines to make all their chalk. I
hope the South Korean version would be successful.

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x0x0
reading that made me think of the Byrd's song

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven

~~~
deciplex
That's not the original source though, FYI.

~~~
hudibras
To go one level deeper: It's actually an old Pete Seeger folk song.

So the Byrds were covering a Pete Seeger song, who used lyrics by
Ecclesiastes.

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pvaldes
I'm sorry for this man having so many health problems. But I can understand
otherwise how to make chalk in the pacific japanese coast burning tons and
tons of japanese oyster shells could be less profitable and much more
dangerous since 2011. I wish him well.

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fnordfnordfnord
I hope he shares his recipe.

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putchdes
When he said that people sent a flood of faxes, it made me totally cool with
no more chalk.

When your customers are still sending faxes, that pretty much sums up your
dire situation.

~~~
rthomas6
It's Japan though. Faxes in Japan aren't antiquated like in the USA.

~~~
oldmanjay
The entire technology is antiquated. It doesn't matter how much shiny you wrap
around it.

~~~
rthomas6
What I meant was that fax machines are still in widespread use by all
demographics in Japan, so getting a lot of faxes doesn't indicate much about
the age or aversion to progress of the senders.

