Story of OWNDAYS: The Revival — Ep 30: A Desperate Christmas (Part One)

Shuji Tanaka
Aug 31, 2018 · 24 min read

August 16th

According to the lunar calendar, July is a time when the souls of the departed, demons and ghosts, return to this realm to wander about for a month, also known as “Ghost Month”. It slightly resembles the O-bon season of Japan, but differs in that it is not only the souls of loved ones and ancestors who return to visit. During Ghost Month in Taiwan, the very gates of hell open, releasing all kinds of spirits, including evil ones.

During this time, certain things are considered “taboo” and many measures are taken so as not to upset these so-called demons. For instance, locals burn incense and joss paper, or “ghost money,” and place offerings of meat, rice and sake at the entrances of homes, shops and offices. This ceremony goes on for a whole month in order to please the spirits and demons and keep them from harming the people living in this realm. It is also when the people of Taiwan pray for prosperity of business and safety in households.

It was during this period that we opened our first store in Taiwan in Taipei Station, trying desperately not to open the door to our very own hell, i.e., a shortage of funds.

On the morning of our grand opening, I left my hotel room earlier than planned.

As I left the lobby, the door man greeted me in fluent Japanese. The morning sun beamed down on me so sudden and bright it felt like a bomb had gone off. Weaving my way through a gust of heat as if walking into a massive blow dryer, I hopped in a taxi and tried using one of my newly learned phrases in Chinese.

“Dài wǒ qù táiběi chēzhàn.” (Take me to Taipei Station.)

9:00 a.m.

Taipei Station stands in the center of Taipei with a commanding presence as the main hub linking all regions of Taiwan, supporting the country’s many forms of transportation. With terminals offering both local services and long distance buses, it is full of people in a hurry from dusk to dawn. The hoarding separating our newly renovated store and the shopping center walkway was completely removed the night before, quietly yet proudly revealing our very first fortress in Taiwan to its passersby.

One hour before opening, after confirming that all the staff were present, we began our final preparations to welcome in customers.

“Everyone good? Alright then, let’s begin our morning meeting!” said Hamachi, gathering everyone around the cashier counter. Everyone nervously waited in silence for Hamachi to begin speaking.

“It is finally time to open the doors to our first store in Taiwan. We are all in the same boat, as this has been a first time experience for me, and for all of you. And to be honest, I’m downright scared and nervous. But I’m even happier that I’m able to stand here with all of you.”

Hamachi went around, thanking every member, one by one, for their hard work in getting ready for the opening, looking them in the eye as she spoke. After two or three people in, you could see her eyes begin to swell and large tears began to run down her face. She was choking on her words. The bitter tears of frustration she had wept exactly one year ago in Singapore watching, as an outsider, the other staff members hard at work opening our first overseas store, had now turned to tears of accomplishment for helping lead a team in our second foreign country.

“You’ve all done a spectacular job. However, this is not the end. Today we have finally reached the starting line. Now let’s go and make OWNDAYS the number one eyeglass store in Taiwan!”

“Yes!”

“We have a cheer here at OWNDAYS that I’d like to do with all of you! It goes, ‘Yeah, yeah, OWNDAYS!’”

With eyes full of tears, she brought the pep rally to a perfect ending and everyone raised their fists to the sky repeating after her. It was now time to open the doors.

“Alright then! Let’s open the doors!”

As soon as the doors opened a few customers came running in. In preparation for the opening we had posted on Facebook that we would be having a campaign. We would choose one hundred people and give them a free pair of glasses if they posted about OWNDAYS and our new shop opening on social media. It was these “ambassadors”, as we called them, who came flooding through the doors first.

The staff, a bit taken back initially, went to work. After a short while, the commotion inside the store caught the attention of people walking by. These completely new customers also started to make their way into the store, little by little.

“Huānyíng lái dào OWNDAYS!!”

The staff greeted the new customers with vigor in their voice. During training, we had gone through many different versions of greetings to choose the one that represented OWNDAYS the best. There was “Come on in,” “Good day,” “Welcome,” and more. The staff eventually chose the above phrase that means “Welcome to OWNDAYS!”

“We can make any type of glasses, for any degree, at the price you see right here,” they said — or at least that was what it sounded like to me. “Try on anything you’d like!”

Though I couldn’t understand what the staff was saying, I could get a feel for what they were saying for some reason. They were very lively and tentative with the customers. The customers’ reactions were positive. Without a doubt. Just like in Singapore, they were all surprised to realize that they could have their very own eyeglasses made in just twenty minutes. It was a great mood.

Two hours later, right around noon, the store had become jam packed with customers.

“There are so many…!” said Hamachi, bewildered by the unexpected turnout. Umiyama and I were just as surprised.

“I didn’t think there would be this many. It’s great, but…”

The three of us were all looking at the same spot — the cause for our worry. In preparation for the opening of the store, we had only been able to get our hands on one eye check machine.

Desmond was working the machine as best as he could, but the waiting sofa couldn’t hold all of the customers now waiting to get their eyesight checked. The line in front of the counter was full of “ambassadors” and normal customers and it grew longer and longer.

“Koga-san, what’s the wait for eye check now?”

“I’d say just about over two hours…”

“That’s no good… One machine won’t be enough. Go see if you can find another machine we can use today. There’s gonna be a panic.”

“Alright. Or else it’ll be like that time in Singapore all over again. I’ll see what I can do. Time to negotiate!”

Koga-san rang up the manufacturers right then and there and began dealing in English.

“Mr. President, it seems they have one machine that they’d be able to move this instant. It’s old and has been collecting dust in their warehouse. What do you think?”

“It works right? If it works, it’ll have to do. Have them bring it as soon as possible.”

“Yes sir,” said Koga-san. “They’ll have it here this afternoon! Would you like to buy one more machine while we’re at it?”

“Yes! I’ll buy two! Order them now!”

It was clear to see that we weren’t going to be able to handle things with only one staff conducting eye check.

“Koga-san! We’re going to need one more lens processing machine too!” screamed Hamachi from the sidelines. “I want to get their glasses back to them as quickly as possible, since we’re making them wait so long for the eye check.”

The store had become a war zone. The new staff members were working desperately just to deal with the customers at hand. Our only savior was that the staff was so taken back at the unexpected amount of customers that even though it was hard work, they were thoroughly enjoying the whole process. I was not sure if it was their young vigor we had to thank, but they were excited and doing a great job.

3:00 p.m.

“Hamachi!! The machine has arrived! They brought it sooner than expected!! Where should we have them put it??”

“Put it here for now.”

The manufacturers who brought the machine must have never seen such a busy eyeglass store in their lives. They couldn’t believe their eyes. They said that they had never received an additional order of machines so quickly either. Yuna quickly sat down at the machine to test it out, but it was so old she had no idea how to use it. It seemed like it belonged in a museum.

“Um…how exactly do you use this…?” she asked.

As the flustered staff members gathered around the machine, Akashi stepped in to offer his help.

“I remember this type of machine. I’ve used it before, back when I first entered the company. I can work it. Hamachi, can you get someone to interpret for me? I’ll do the eye checks.”

Akashi and Yuna worked together at this dinosaur of a machine relying on body gestures and Yuna’s interpreting to test customers’ eyesight.

I was worried at first whether interpreting would go over well for eye tests but I was quickly proven wrong. I underestimated how fond the Taiwanese were of Japan.

The customers’ reaction to our desperate plan of action was outstanding. They were excited by the fact they could have their eyesight checked by Japanese veteran opticians and even began to request for Hamachi and Akashi instead.

Thanks to this, we were able to up the pace on our eye checks. Hamachi worked without rest, moving in between the lens processing machine and the eye check machine with the help of interpreters and hand gestures all throughout. Since our entire staff spoke different levels of different languages the store echoed with a mix of Japanese, Chinese and broken English.

“Ima nijuppun de kako dekimasu ka?”

“OK! Twenty minutes!”

“Shiryoku sokutei machi ima nan nin?”

“Xiànzài qī gèrén. Seven, seven!!”“OK! Hǎo!”

The staff worked without rest, taking turns scarfing down lunch while sitting on the floor of the back room before jumping back into the war zone.

Around evening time, the walkways of Taipei station became even more crowded as people commuted home from work and school, bringing even more customers into the store.

10:00 p.m.

Just as the station traffic started to dissipate and you could hear the voices of drunk people in the distance every now and then, the first day of our first shop in Taiwan came to an end. After counting our sales for the day we were surprised to find that we had sold even more than our very first day in Singapore. It was a record-breaking day to remember.

“Jiéshùle!!” (We’re done for the day!!)

After walking our last customer to the exit and shutting the store shutter, the staff collapsed to the floor. Even so, the look on everyone’s face was pleasant. The sight reminded me of soccer athletes lying on the ground after a heated game. Hamachi, Aki and Yuna were at the counter closing the register which seemed to spit out the sales receipt for ever, just like in Singapore.

“Let’s have a closing meeting!” said Hamachi. “Everyone gather around!”

The staff slowly gathered around the counter.

“Just amazing! Though we did give away many free glasses, even more customers made purchases! The total sales for our first day in business is over three times our initial estimate!”

“Woohoo!!!”

Everyone jumped around cheering and giving each other high-fives. The whistle had blown, marking the end of our first match, and we had come out victorious.

“Everyone, you’ve done a great job. There are a few things we need to work on, but let’s save that for our morning meeting tomorrow. I’m sure we will have just as many customers tomorrow too. I suggest you all head home, get a good night’s rest and be ready for another busy day. See you all tomorrow!”

“Alright!” replied the staff. “Xīnkǔle!” (That was a good day of hard work!)

We sent home our exhausted staff early, and finished the clean-up with the rest of the Japanese members who had come for back up. By the time we were finished it was passed 1:00 a.m.

“Mr. President, we haven’t had a decent meal since morning. We’re starving. Hey, Akashi, you guys are all hungry too right?”

“Alright, how about we go to McDonalds again!” I said. “Let’s celebrate over hamburgers!”

We sat in the same McDonalds, in the same seat as we did the night before and raised our oversized cups of coke and gave a toast loud enough to hear from outside. I was sure that everyone was at the peak of exhaustion but our feeling of excitement and fulfillment was even greater.

As I sat there watching the faces of everyone, Umiyama came up to me quietly inhaling his Big Mac, and with a look of relief on his face, said,

“It seems as though we’ve pulled it off again…”

“Yeah, perhaps we have,” I replied, feeling relieved myself. “There is still plenty to worry over, but we’ve managed to do it again.”

The past few months since deciding to take on Taiwan, I had been trying to console myself, saying, “Bring it on! I’m more than ready! All that’s left to do is to just do it!” The fact was I was really just fooling myself. In actuality, I was scared.

The storewide 50% sale, the no additional cost campaign, our expansion into Singapore… all of our previous challenges stemmed from the fact that we were so unstable as a company that we would have fallen apart if we didn’t keep moving forward. We had continued head on, frantically, like a special attack unit.

This time with Taiwan, however, was completely different. This time we had stability to lose. With this gamble, we could have very well had to clip all of the buds in our garden that we had worked so hard to grow. Who knew that a gamble like this could take such a toll on one mentally? At this moment, in McDonalds, I had realized for the first time that for the past three months it was like I had a cold metal pipe shoved down my spine that I couldn’t get out.

It is much scarier to lose what you have already gained, than to lose a chance at new hope.

When I saw the store overflowing with customers, and the smiles on the faces of everyone that day, my fears had turned into an unexplainable feeling of comfort — like I was soaring in the sky. It was like I had bet my life on a colossal game of poker and won; like I had been rescued from a freezing cold ocean and was now laying on the shore, wrapped in a warm blanket… That was what it felt like.

By claiming this victory, we were able to show the world, yet again, that we were able to make it in another country.

Feeling uplifted and refreshed, I left McDonalds with the rest of my team and headed back to the hotel. On the way back, I looked up to the night sky to find a full moon shining down so bright and so beautiful I thought it would almost be a shame to go to sleep.

From the next day on, customers continued to flood our store in Taipei Station. Except this time, we couldn’t rejoice for long. Just like in Singapore, we were soon unable to deal with the sheer amount of customers. Their orders piled up, throwing our staff into a panic, and store operations began to stall.

Complaints began to flood our store counter and Facebook page — “My order hasn’t come yet,” “They messed up my eye exam,” “The staff’s attitude was bad,” etc. We were unable to keep up with the amount of complaints and we had to rely on our HQ staff back in Japan to deal with them. We had Teng Yuchun and Ann, one of our newly hired Taiwanese staff members, to take care of them. This kept them busy as complaints kept flooding in day and night. We even sent Nagao, Osawa and Okuda as an emergency backup team, but the amount of customers had surpassed our expectations. Chaos didn’t only continue, it in fact got worse.

“Hamachi, we need to find more staff!” I said. “As fast and as many as possible. Find some people with experience and hire them!”

Hamachi spent the next few days and nights interviewing dozens of people. I can imagine how daunting of a task it must have been to interview such a freighting amount applicants. Unfortunately, we had no luck finding anyone with experience working in an eyeglass shop that we could rely on.

And then one day, after a few weeks had passed since the grand opening, I got a very excited phone call from Hamachi.

“Mr. President, I’ve found one! He seems pretty promising and even has experience! Would you like to join the interview?”

“Oh, that’s great news,” I replied. “I just so happen to have time. I think I will.”

He showed up at our tiny office which was now so packed with boxes and equipment you could hardly walk at all. His name was Ken and he had a tall, slender yet solid build. He didn’t look like an eyeglass shop employee and seemed more of the sports type. He seemed like he would fit right in. My first thought when meeting him was, “This is the guy.”

Ken had studied opticianry at university, a field made especially for people aiming to work in the eyeglass industry. After graduating, he entered a big name Taiwanese eyewear chain and became manager. He was exactly the kind of working talent we were looking for. In fact, we couldn’t have asked for better.

“OWNDAYS is becoming quite the topic of conversation in the eyeglass industry in Taiwan right now,” he said at the beginning of the interview, eyes glistening. “I’ve visited your store to see it with my own eyes and I was convinced that OWNDAYS would do great in Taiwan, without a doubt. I admit that my life is stable at the place I’m working now, but I would much rather take my chances at something bigger and chase my dreams!”

We were all more than happy to welcome Ken into the company and promised him a position right away. However, there was just one problem.

We showed him the best salary we were able to offer him according to our company’s policy at the time, but it was much lower than what he was already receiving. He was exactly the kind of talent we needed. He had the skill and the character. Considering the team of “beginners” that we had at the time, it would have been completely fine to offer him even more than he had requested.

However, to give him an executive position and a high paying salary right off the bat would be to go against the ideology and system, the very culture that we had already set up in the company — that employees choose their bosses by vote. In the long run of things, it could have negative effects on the implementing of our OWNDAYS culture down the road. We were really at a loss of what to do.

“Mr. President, what shall we do?” asked Hamachi. “He’s saying that he’ll have a hard time living off the pay we’re offering him.”

“For now, we’ll just have to do our best to gain his understanding. I want to avoid having to break our policy for temporary measures as much as possible. Explain our vision to him as sincerely as you can and see if we can convince him. I would love it if he still agrees to join us. If he is as capable as he says, we should be able to offer him the salary he requests after our first assessment. Maybe even more.”

Upon informing him that we wouldn’t be able to offer him the starting salary he wished for, his face clouded over slightly. For the next two hours, we passionately told him the history of our company, how we got to where we were and what we hoped to do in Taiwan. Ken, who was listening very intently, finally spoke after a thoughtful silence.

“The truth is I’ve just bought a house and I’m planning to get married. I would like to talk it over with my family if that’s alright with you. Could I please have a day to consider your offer?”

The next day, Ken called our office.

“I’ve thought about it all night. My family has said they support my decision. I want to become a part of your team. I will prove to you, early on, that I have what it takes. We can talk about salary when the time comes. Either way, please let me work with you.”

We literally jumped for joy.

Thanks to Ken’s addition to the company, we were able to bring a colleague of his, Sean, and Allen, who had over 10 years’ experience, on board very shortly after. These three became the core members of our Taiwanese team and helped put us amongst the ranks of eyeglass professionals in no time.

Mid-September

A month had passed since the grand opening and now that we had our experienced team of Ken, Sean and Allen, we began to know the ins and outs of the Taiwanese eyeglass industry. Thanks to this, we were now able to obtain necessary applications and permits for minor things and negotiate more smoothly with new lens manufacturers. Things had finally started to calm down at our store as well. That was when “it” happened.

“Mr. President! Take a look at this!!”

Around 7:00 p.m., I got a message over LINE from Hamachi while I was working at our HQ in Japan. It included a URL link. Upon clicking the link, it brought me to a video of a Taiwanese news channel on YouTube. It is common for TV stations to post a video of their show on their official YouTube account the same time they broadcast on TV.

Being the happy-go-lucky guy that I was, I showed the video to Teng Yuchun sitting next to me, asking, “Oh, wow. Are we being featured on the news again?”

She took one glance at the video and her face changed instantly.

“Mr. President, this is… they’re saying bad things about us,” she said angrily, turning redder and redder with every passing second. “They’re calling us con artists… This is very bad…”

“Huh? What are they saying?”

“That we’re tricking our customers by saying our lenses are made in Japan when they’re really low grade lenses made in China.”

“What??”

The video showed an angry man holding a fake lens bag with the words “made in Japan” written by hand, saying “I bought these at OWNDAYS but they’re poor quality lenses made in China! I’ve been conned!”

The news anchor was saying the exact same thing that Teng had told me, without so much as a single phone call or email to us to check up on any of the claims.

“What the hell! This is just crazy. This is an obstruction of business. Teng, Ann, get a hold of that TV station right now and tell them we’re not gonna take it!”

“Yes sir. We can’t let them get away with this. We’ll let them know directly!”

Teng and Ann called the news station right then and there and protested against their false claims over the phone. We let them know that we were prepared to take legal actions. Unfortunately, no matter how hard we tried, not once did they retract or correct any of their statements about our business being a scam.

Their false accusations continued, and eventually the Public Health Bureau had to conduct an on-site inspection. Needless to say we were doing everything according to the law so they found no problems with our operations. At the most they advised us on some of our advertising methods and merchandise displays, but we received no large penalty whatsoever.

However, no matter how little some people thought of us, or how much they tried to damage our name, customers wouldn’t lie. There were still some people who felt the need to resort to slander and tried publically insulting us with unfounded claims, but that never affected our customer traffic, even in the slightest way.

Our business model still received rave support from our Taiwanese customers and thanks to word-of-mouth and social media, consumers kept coming and coming, just like in Singapore. And then, in the blink of an eye, it was time to open our second store in Ximending in October. Though we didn’t reach the sales we had hoped for, this store also did well.

After that, we opened our third store in December, in the new shopping mall Xiang Mei Song-Gao, and just like with our Taipei Station store, our sales far surpassed our initial estimate.

We had reached out to Taiwan with one foot on Hell’s doorstep. At the end of the first year, we had two wins and one tie. We had successfully landed and built our new fortress in our second foreign country.

October

Now that we had two new markets in Singapore and Taiwan, we continued to siege forward. We opened a new store in Singapore practically every month and we already had plans to open a forth and many more in Taiwan. At this point in time, we had a total of 120 stores both in and outside of Japan and were bringing in a total of 10 billion yen in sales.

Though our sales were never better, the excessive debt that our “Japanese company” still carried kept us from being able to take out new loans with the banks. Eventually, things started to change. The banks gradually started to look at us differently.

On the second term of 2014, we managed to rake in almost 300 million yen in profits. On top of which, our overseas companies were growing at an extremely fast rate. If things kept going the way they were, we would have been able to completely escape the “excessive debt” label that we had been painted with for so long. Upon seeing our balance sheets and realizing the prospects, the attitude of the banks began to change. After our first shop opened in Taiwan, the branch managers of two mega banks made appointments to meet with us at the end of August.

Not once, during my entire time as company president, did this happen. Not only did the banks never come to our office, I had never even met any of the branch managers, except for the very first meeting with them during our transition to new management.

The first one to visit our office was manager Kobayashi from Bank Fujiyama. Mr. Kobayashi was a colleague of Okuno-san who had joined the banking industry at the same time. They had excited talks that ended with Mr. Kobayashi humbly lowering his head and saying, “Let’s forget everything that’s happened. I hope we can conduct some constructive business from now on, hahaha”

The next bank to pay us a visit was Hozumi Bank. This was the bank that had the nerve to tell us they didn’t want to hear anything or see any material about our success in Singapore because it would be too much of a hassle to write up a report. They too wanted to do “constructive” business with us in the future.

Around the same time, Nippon GE Leasing, a foreign capital leasing firm also started reconsidering their stance with us. Unlike Japanese leasing companies that shut their doors in our face the instant they saw our recent balance sheets, they were open to looking at our overseas operations as well as our current and “forecasted” figures.

When Okuno-san returned from his meetings with these financial institutions, he had a refreshing smile on his face, a look that I had never seen on him before.

“Mr. President, more and more banks are starting to make appointments with us. The tides have finally begun to turn.”

“That means our finances have begun to return to normal, huh?” I said. “I had totally forgotten about it, hahaha.”

Though both Okuno-san and I were having a hard time understanding the sudden change of attitude, we felt like we had finally seen a light at the end of the tunnel.

After several major banks started to reconsider their relationship with us, Okuno-san began to have concrete talks with Bank Mitsui Sumitomo about future transactions. Mitsui Sumitomo was the only bank that started putting their words into concrete action in hopes of becoming our main lender, by actively supporting our further expansion in Singapore and drastically lowering transaction rates on the exchange of foreign currency, building a smooth flowing pipe through which we could make payments.

This was also thanks to the fact that their assistant manager had only changed once in the previous seven years so they knew more than any other bank just how far we had come as a company.

In addition, the former assistant manager Imai, who was in charge of rescheduling our payment plans back in 2008 had apparently told his successor Koyama, “OWNDAYS is gonna transform one of these days, now you be sure to back ’em up.” The first thing that Koyama said, once Okuno-san told him that the banks were now all beginning to cooperate, was “I’ve been waiting for that!”

“In fact,” he added, “we’re in the process of talking with our HQ about setting up a syndicated loan (a loan offered by a group of lenders who work together to provide funds for a single borrower). Okuno-san, let’s hurry up and get your finances back to normal as soon as possible.”

Okuno-san accepted the offer right then and there and closed it with a firm handshake.

Mid-October

Nippon GE approved our request for a 30-million-yen lease. Ever since taking over OWNDAYS, I’ve had nothing but bad memories with leasing firms. For instance, they insisted that we make a hefty payment of 30 million all at once and promised to recommend us to a bank and then all of a sudden refused to do so after getting our hopes up.

Without being able to take out loans or leases, our machines (eye exam and lens processing machines) continued to deteriorate. At some shops, we had even used the same machines for nearly ten years.

We were able to make up for the trouble these machines cost us with the hard work and technical skills of our staff, but that didn’t change the fact that they caused our employees unnecessary stress. Now that we were able to get financial help from Nippon GE we could finally replace our machines with new ones.

Okuno-san, in hopes of getting our financial situation back to normal as soon as possible, gathered the assistant managers and representatives of three more of the major banks willing to be a part of the syndicate and held a bank meeting at our HQ.

“I would like to ask your cooperation in a syndicated loan comprised of you four banks, at 300 million yen each, for a total of 1.2 billion yen. It will be used for funding our expansion overseas and to pay back the remaining lump sum of 800 million yen that we owe eleven different banks, all at once. This will nullify our postponement of payments and put us back on normal terms with the banks. At the same time, we will be reducing the number of banks that we will deal with.”

Okuno-san handed out the material he prepared and explained his plans for the near future. The participating bank representatives had complicated looks on their faces.

“And if we are unable to provide 300 million, what will you do then?” asked one of the banks.

“In that case, we will have to speak with more banks in order to reach the necessary amount,” replied Okuno-san. “We would much rather keep the number of banks to a minimum though…”

“Hmm… And only three weeks with which to make our decision, huh… Would it be possible to have more time?”

“I’m sorry, but we are just growing too fast for that. We really cannot wait.”

There was an obvious difference in how the banks responded to our offer. Depending on how much information they had been storing on us, the limit as to how much burden they would be willing to take on differed greatly. It was easy to tell which banks were all talk and which banks had been actually doing their homework in preparation for our offer.

The good news, however, was that none of the banks intended on backing out and refusing to cooperate, like they had before. Either way, this meeting proved to be the first big step in getting our finances back on track.

“Mr. President, it seems our talks with the banks for a syndicated loan will go well. If they do, we’ll have 400 million yen of fresh funds to use freely!”

“That means we’ll be able to pick up the pace in Singapore and Taiwan, doesn’t it? It’s a really crucial time. We need to get out and take a hold in as many markets as possible, before our competitors do. I mean, we’re receiving offers from so many developers right now and I would love to just be able to accept every single one of them.”

Around this time, the top malls in Singapore and Taiwan had heard of how well our stores were doing, and the offers were pouring in on end. However, since each of the locations was top notch, so was their rent. I personally wanted to accept every last one, but our stamina wouldn’t have held up. And now, just as I was about to bite my lip and decline such valuable offers, we were being blessed with a sudden chance.

If we were able to set up this syndicated loan and speed up our return to normal standings, we would be able to accept all of our current offers, allowing us to, not just step, but leap into our next phase.

The only sure thing was that if this idea of ours didn’t work out, we would be facing the largest shortage of funds we had ever had to face at the end of the year. It was our biggest and most crucial gamble to date.

“Let’s go out on a limb and make the wager,” said Okuno-san one day. “We can’t let this chance go by. Let’s trust the banks for once. We’ve been treated terribly up until now, but the banks aren’t complete idiots. Anyone can see by now that we’re just steps away from getting rid of our debt. They ought to give us proper support by now.”

“Alright,” I replied. “Let’s do it! Call up Umiyama and Hamachi and give them the go sign.”

“You got it!”

This was how Umiyama and I made the decision to open up over ten new stores in Singapore and Taiwan. With the help of Bank Mitsui Sumitomo, Okuno-san took the dive, fought against time and acted as the facilitator for the syndicated loan.

December 24th, 2014

It was the eve of my seventh Christmas as company president. Just as evening rolled around, it started to snow and Tokyo became a silent yet exciting, mystical white wonderland. People briskly walked through the city streets, eager to get home to be with their special someone.

The same went for the employees at our HQ. Right around 7:00p.m., they started to leave the office one after another. In no time the office was empty and quiet.

Okuno-san and I were left sitting alone in the dimly lit meeting room. On the other side of the large computer monitor was a painfully silent Umiyama in his office in Singapore. Okuno-san was trying to keep his cool as he was explaining the latest developments. I wasn’t quite able to wrap my head around what had happened to us either… Indeed, the syndicated loan was supposed to be moving along on schedule…

Everything was supposed to be going fine…

We were supposed to be back on track by now, ready to speed up our expansion into new markets and enjoying our Christmas holidays…

A heavy silence continued to linger throughout the empty meeting room.

“Merry Christmas.”

The present that Santa Claus brought us on this night of holy nights, was neither dream nor hope… instead it was a stocking full of despair — a shortage of funds, reaching over 300 million yen, first thing, come the New Year…


To be continued in Episode 31

Shuji Tanaka

Written by

I became the president of OWNDAYS that was said to go bankrupt for sure. 10 years on, OWNDAYS is now found in 10 countries. Here’s the story of my journey.

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