KOKUYO Furniture held a press release announcing the change of its corporate name and the debut of new products in Shanghai, aiming for the expansion of its business to China's inland provinces.

On September 12, 2014, KOKUYO Furniture Co., Ltd., an affiliated company of KOKUYO Group; the world’s largest full-line manufacturer of stationery and furniture, held a press release to announce the change of its corporate name and the debut of new products at Shanghai Flagship Showroom. The company is officially changing its corporate name from KOKUYO Furniture Commerce & Trading (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., to KOKUYO Furniture (China) Co., Ltd. The change of its corporate name not only aims to expand the products and services of KOKUYO to large cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, but it also aims to expand its business to inland provinces where the economic growth is remarkable. Also, the launch event unveiled its strategic products, including an office chair ENTRY and a panel system PRESENCE II.

The launch event began with opening remarks from Kozo Sakagami, director of the overseas business of KOKUYO Furniture Co., Ltd., and chairperson of the board of KOKUYO Furniture (China) Co., Ltd., as well as to explain KOKUYO’s history and its future prospects to the media.

Subsequently, Katsuyuki Konishi, managing director of KOKUYO Furniture (China) Co., Ltd., and chairperson and managing director of KOKUYO Design Consultants (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., announced the official change of the corporate name from KOKUYO Furniture Commerce & Trading (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., to KOKUYO Furniture (China) Co., Ltd., expressing the company’s desire to take new steps.

The change of its corporate name has two significance—the one is to expand the scope of business operations. By removing “Commerce & Trading” from the name of KOKUYO Furniture Commerce & Trading (Shanghai), the company aims to focus on promoting its business in China as a furniture manufacturer, not simply as a dealer, delivering products with more affluence and warmth to Chinese consumers.

The second is to expand the scope of sales activities. By changing the corporate name from Shanghai to China, the company declares the intent to expand from the activities mainly in large coastal cities, such as Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou, across the rest of China including the inland area where the economic growth is remarkable. Needless to say, no matter how the corporate name stands out, it is meaningless if it lacks content. For the past three years, KOKUYO Furniture has made a major investment in human resources, physical assets and IT, with the goal of becoming a company suited to its corporate name.

Founded in Japan in 1905, KOKUYO began as a producer of covers for account ledgers. The company later expanded its operations to encompass the production and sales of stationery and paper products and from 1960, KOKUYO started the sales of office furniture. At present, the KOKUYO Group operates its business based on three main pillars; stationery business, office furniture business, and mail-order retail business, and it has grown to become a group of companies with nearly 6,000 employees generating consolidated sales of 260 billion yen in 2011. The Group has been highly praised by customers for its many years of efforts, achieving high brand awareness that everyone in Japan knows the KOKUYO brand.

KOKUYO expanded its operations throughout China in 2003 to establish KOKUYO Furniture Commerce & Trading (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. After the business expansion, the company now has 51 dealers across China. As for the percentage of customers, the Chinese companies account for 40%, and by area, north China accounts for 25%, east China accounts for 50%, south China accounts for 15% and inland China accounts for 10%. KOKUYO Furniture changed its corporate name as the company sees China’s massive inland area as an area of particular emphasis and aims to capture the Chinese market as a whole, as well as to express its anticipation and confidence toward success in business in the future.

In addition, Joanna Qian, managing director of KOKUYO Furniture (China) Co., Ltd., and Sales Director China Domestic Dept, made an introduction of a new office chair, ENTRY, and a panel system, PRESENCE II. The ENTRY has three features, such as the comfort and quality of AIRFORT for many more workers, lumber support that takes account of individual difference in the shape of backbone and the simple design that inherits DNA from AIRFORT. The panel system PRESENCE II is also characterized by three features; the design combining the simplicity of a panel system and the beauty of proportionality, a paneled workstation with the KOKUYO’s design quality that perfects the degree of completion and the realization of both reasonable price and ease of use. These products have inherited the traditional design quality unique to KOKUYO and embraced the use of new materials to offer products at reasonable prices. Moreover, the company is aiming to overwhelm competitors in the China’s inland market by realizing the cost that wins the market added with the KOKUYO’s quality, which has been cultivated up to the present time.

Under the product design concept of “People + Design”, KOKUYO continues with strategic product development and the establishment of sales structure in the Chinese market to design, study and produce high-quality office furniture with warmth, with the goal of becoming the number one furniture manufacturer in China by 2020. KOKUYO Furniture continues to use its official site (http://www.kokuyo.cn/furniture/) to introduce new information and offer valuable products to the consumers. It is the company’s objective to become a furniture manufacturer loved by consumers by manifesting the imagination of workers to boost efficiency, while making a contribution to the economic development in China as much as possible.