Thanks to your continuous and warm support, ISOWA is celebrating 100th year anniversary in 2020. I would like to extend my most sincere thanks and share some of our company’s history. Since our founding, we have always strived to express our corporate identity, openly declaring who we are, what we are and what we want to be to the world. Today this is called “branding.”
To establish the brand, consistency is essential in good products, services, our corporate philosophy and action policy. Furthermore, it should be obvious for all customers, sub-contractors and employees through characters, words, visuals and designs.
With ISOWA’s traditions of diligence, faithfulness and persistent development, which were inherited from our seniors, our corporate philosophy and action policies — our brand — have been understood and shared with the ISOWA people. As more of them brought these ideals into action, a better and more fertile corporate culture has been cultivated.
The most important factors for a brand, of course, are good products and good services. Regardless of how admirable a corporate philosophy or culture we have, we cannot be a great brand if our products and services don’t reach the highest level. We are confident that we have been keeping our consistency in our corporate philosophy, action policies, statements and sending messages internally and externally. This is one of the great factors of our success during ISOWA’s corporate culture revolution. I believe this has been reflected in the evolution of our brand and our logo, which we have changed to clebrate our 100th anniversary.
The history of ISOWA’s logo began a century ago with the founding of Minoda Iron Works. Ancestors of the ISOWA family were shipbuilders on Shima peninsula, where they have a legend that gods on a log were cast up on the shore at Shima and since then, shipbuilding has been prosperous there. Considering the family name of Isowa is derived from “ship/wheel of seashore,” it might be fate that our first logo was that of a treasure ship.
After World War II in 1946, the company name was changed to ISOWA Industry. At that time the logo was a treasure ship with “IS mark” designed like a $ mark by Mr. Eichi Isowa, the second generation of the company, while he was under medical treatment for tuberculosis. The “IS mark” remained until our 70th anniversary, when the company name was changed from Isowa Industry to ISOWA Corporation. We also changed the corporate color to purplish blue from sky blue. The height of the logo was shortened a little, widened along the base, and the traditional “IS mark” was removed.
At our 80th anniversary, we started our “corporate culture revolution.” Things started from one simple action policy: “Speed and Dialogue.” Thereafter, “Take the Initiative,” “Extend a Hand,” and “Brighten the Atmosphere” were added to the action policy.
At our 90th anniversary, we set our concepts: “Bring results from corporate culture revolution in the midst of day-to-day operations” and “I Machine: human friendly and Kikai friendly.” In the development of machines with these concepts, we built a strong reputation among our customers. The word spread this resulted in attention from new customers who were not interested in our products before.
Now we are celebrating our 100th anniversary with a new logo that expresses our future direction visually. The metallic silver at the center shows our root in the Iron industry, and our tradition and pride as a standing 100-year-old machine manufacturer of corrugators and finishing equipment. The blue at the bottom is what we call “ISOWA blue,” which expresses our corporate philosophy: “Creating a company with the best corporate culture in the world that makes us and our families happy.” Originally, philosophy is not visually perceptible, but as it has been spread into all ISOWA employees, it shows its shape by their actions, little by little. The blue graduation at the bottom reflects this idea.
The last color is red. Our philosophy is not providing new value or benefits to our customers if we let it just be a philosophical idea. To deliver our philosophy, huge energy is necessary and indispensable. We can never gain that energy by external enforcement. Red is newly introduced as an accent to express ISOWA people’s, who declared to bring our machines and our services to a premium level, with the main purpose of preventive maintenance and to “bring results from the corporate culture revolution in the midst of day-to-day operations.”
Today our action policy is “Quickness and Interaction:”
1) Take the Initiative: Accepting challenges is the highest of virtues.
2) Extend a hand: Nurturing mutual trust and communication among people.
3) Brighten the atmosphere: Creating a frank and open working environment.
Let’s continue to take one more step forward together and onward to another 100 years!
Hideyuki Isowa is President of ISOWA Corporation in Aichi, Japan.
