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Recalling “Frenzy” from Two Years Ago in the Silence of 2013
2013. I left the company I had poured my heart and soul into, and I was alone again. The stable revenue built up over many years, and the intense days shared with colleagues who had gone through thick and thin, all slipped through my fingers in an instant. In that silence, what vividly came back to my mind was the “three months” of unbridled madness that had occurred just two years prior.

It was the summer of 2011. A time when the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake was shaking the foundations of all manufacturing sites in Japan. In the midst of an unprecedented national crisis, supply chains were severed, and what had been commonplace yesterday was no longer so today.

The catalyst was a single phone call.
“…Is it still possible to make the original fans listed on your company’s website?”

At first, I thought I had misheard. Our main businesses were advertising and stock photo services. Fans were merely one of our past production achievements, listed in a corner. My immediate response was, “Yes, we can make them.” However, the caller’s strained, almost desperate voice on the other end of the line struck me as odd.

“Really?!… Actually, wherever I’ve called, they’ve all told me it’s no longer possible to manufacture them domestically and that there are no materials. I’ve already called dozens of places…”

After hanging up, I immediately investigated the situation. The reality was more serious than I had imagined. Power shortages due to the earthquake and damage to manufacturing plants. The supply of the ribs and handles needed to make “fans,” a summer staple, had stopped, and fans were on the verge of disappearing from Japan entirely.
Pioneering a “System” Across the Sea: Weekends in Korea, Weekdays in Japan
“If we can’t make them in Japan, we have no choice but to look elsewhere.”

My thinking immediately shifted into the builder’s mode of “how to fill this void.” It wasn’t rational. It was an intuition that simply stated, “If there are people in trouble and a solution exists, we should connect them.” The female staff member from sales planning contacted a Korean vendor with whom she had dealings for POP and print production.

“In Korea, although the shape is slightly different from Japan’s, we have a manufacturing route.”

A few days after hearing this, I had already landed at Incheon International Airport. In my hand were samples and a quote from the local vendor. Back in the hotel lounge, I immediately finalized the advertising pricing and submitted it to Google Ads (then AdWords).

At that moment, the world changed.

Minutes after the ads were approved and began to run, orders began to flood in.
“We want 10,000 units.” “Will it be ready for the event?” “Please send us a sample.”

Orders for fans, which had been almost non-existent until then, poured in like a torrent.

The existing operations could no longer handle the volume.
I made up my mind.

For the next three months, my life plunged into a literal double life: “Flying to Seoul on Friday nights, securing vendors and coordinating delivery times and quality over the weekend, and returning to Japan by Monday morning to take command.”
“Extraordinary Busyness” and Confronting “Immaturity”
The quality of Korean printing at the time was far less stable than it is today.
“We placed an order for 100,000 units, but we can only accept 20,000.”
“When we opened the delivered products, the print colors had faded, and half of them were defective.”

Trouble was a daily occurrence. There was even an “incident” where local vendors, sensing Japan’s predicament, unscrupulously bought up fan handles (ribs) and attempted to inflate prices. While engaged in near-shouting matches in local warehouses, I, along with local partners, ran around Seoul seeking new and trustworthy vendors.

Meanwhile, to ensure timely deliveries, I personally inspected the products that arrived in Japan.
In the bonded area of the international post office at Kansai International Airport. Late at night, I bowed to the staff and had them help me open stacks of cardboard boxes throughout the night. It was a painstaking process of manually rejecting defective items one by one. Then, the next morning, I drove a truck non-stop to the delivery destination in the Kanto region.

Sleepiness was obliterated by adrenaline. While gripping the steering wheel on the highway as the sun rose, I was consumed by a fierce determination: “I will push through this system, even if I have to take the dirt myself.”
The Reason an Organization Without Salespeople Generated 15 Million
Remarkably, my company had not a single person with the title of “salesperson.”

In principle, everyone was a designer, an operator, and a director. In other words, everyone was on the “production side,” a group of artisans. Only the two of us, myself and the female sales planning staff member, were actively out in the field. Everything else was handled by the “customer acquisition and production system” that I had refined over many years.

We arranged consolidated customer routes on our website, and the production team behind it accurately handled the processing of a vast volume of incoming orders, the creation of design data, and schedule management, all without disrupting our regular routine services.

The marketing team kept pace with the constantly changing trends in search demand, optimizing advertising costs to the last yen.

By the end of those three months, which we ran through in a state of frenzied, almost euphoric, hard work, the sales figure for fans alone recorded in our bank account exceeded 15 million yen.
A New “Solidarity”: The Moment the System Gained a Soul
However, the true treasure I gained was not that figure of 15 million yen.

By overcoming the grueling, extreme project together, our team had forged a strong and passionate “solidarity” that could never have been born during our peaceful times.

“What we created, what we connected, is supporting summer events all over Japan.”

That realization became a source of pride far beyond mere profit, transforming into the team’s underlying strength. When I decided to leave the company in 2013, the most painful part was losing this “solidarity” that had been nurtured there, more so than the “system” itself.

However, what I learned that frenzied summer still courses through my veins.
“If there is a void in the market, we must create our own path. With technology and networks (a system), people can rise again and turn the impossible into the possible.”

In my fresh start in 2013, I had nothing and was back at zero. But the “agility” and the “ability to foster solidarity” that I had proven that summer remained in my heart as an unassailable “builder’s soul.”

Founder Principles 5: Humans decide, agents execute.
What I did at that time in 2011 was to make the “decision to open up a route in Korea” and manage the overall coordination. The vast amount of backend work was perfectly and autonomously handled by the members who possessed a “powerful system of the field.” In today’s AI era, that partner is transforming from humans to digital agents, but my role remains the same. I find market distortions and decide the path to navigate them. That is the builder’s job.