CEO MESSAGE

Manufacturing that values people

MATSUOKA’s history began with a single kimono shop. In those days, there were only a few ready-to-wear clothes sold at stores. It was normal to buy raw fabric and then tailor both Japanese-style clothes and Western-style clothes from it. I recall that people took good care of an outfit that had been made from a single carefully sewn cloth. This is my formative experience, and still is the source of motivation for my work.

Currently, we make over 50 million clothes a year. Every process involved in such mass production comes with great responsibility. Having launched many factories in China, ASEAN countries, etc., we, working with many colleagues, value the weight of that responsibility. It is our work to realize reasonable costs and high quality not by manufacturing that relies on someone else’s sacrifice, but by eliminating wasteful processes and valuing materials and time.

Making the future of the garment industry together

Instead of making extra products on the assumption of defective products, MATSUOKA works to improve the accuracy of work so as not to produce them . The MATSUOKA way of thinking comes from my formative experience. In other words, it is the concept of “mottainai (respecting all objects and not wasting them)” that Japanese people have nurtured in their daily lives. As long as we let ourselves create excess products to err on the side of safety, we will never reach top quality. Our determination to not to create excess products and futile labor is what motivates us to predict every possible outcome and prepare for it.

Long before people around the world realized the importance of “sustainability,” Japanese people had a culture of valuing things. We satisfy our customers, while valuing the above “matter of course": a culture of valuing things. It would be difficult to build stable supply chains around the world without building relationships of trust with our customers. And for this, we hold hands with and help each other, while openly sharing information. We will continue to address challenges with that thought in mind. That is the reason for our manufacturing.