A door opens to a conference room and the red brick facade of Tokyo Station fills the window. A wood desk sits solidly in the middle of the room. Jan Dusek, a business development officer for Belgian environment-related venture company shecco’s Tokyo subsidiary, offers a seat to a visiting executive from a Japanese manufacturer.
“Thank you for coming,” Dusek says confidently in Japanese.
Its headquarters in Tokyo’s prestigious Marunouchi district, shecco Japan is located on the 10th floor of the Shin-Marunouchi Building. This 1,300-square-meter space is currently occupied by 14 venture companies from Japan and abroad, including shecco, which moved in this spring. It is a rental office platform called EGG Japan (Entrepreneur Group for Growing Japan) that was created by Mitsubishi Estate to coincide with the building’s opening in 2007, providing a base for ventures pursuing growth on a global scale.
A small company, shecco has a staff of only about 20 people worldwide. Through seminars and other activities, it works to popularize natural refrigerants that have a low impact on global warming. Its Marunouchi office is its first outside Belgium. Dusek, who is the only member of the staff stationed in Japan on a permanent basis, explains why shecco chose to set up an office in this high-priced district.
“In Japan, first impressions are important,” the 31-year-old Dusek says. “When doing business with major corporations, your location and key meeting room must establish credibility.”
EGG Japan’s 23 partitioned offices are only large enough to accommodate a few people. They are furnished, and have telephone and Internet access. There is a shared conference room and a cafeteria offering cuisine prepared by chefs from the Royal Park Hotel. It also frequently serves as a venue for networking events for entrepreneurs and investment companies, such as a party put on by shecco Japan in April with the assistance of Mitsubishi Estate. Mitsubishi Estate has also helped to explain how to read Japanese business cards.
Rental fees on the 10th floor are lower than others catering to major companies, but the only companies that can take up occupancy are those that Mitsubishi Estate regards as having promising future prospects. In October 2012, it created the Tokyo Client Business Development Office to attract companies and support their endeavors. Its staff travel far afield to places such as Silicon Valley in Northern California, and in spring of this year it welcomed Palo Alto Research Center, known for developing basic technologies for computers such as the LAN system, and social networking giant LinkedIn as new tenants.
“Companies won’t open offices in Japan just because of buildings and other infrastructure,” says Takashi Kato of the Tokyo Client Business Development Office. “The key is the kind of tangible support that’s available to them.”
Mitsubishi Estate is the largest landowner in the area that encompasses Marunouchi, Otemachi to the north, and Yurakucho to the south. Thirty percent of the land and structures of the 109 buildings in this neighborhood are in its possession. It also has a plan to complete another business support platform in 2022 with 33,000 square meters of floor space, roughly 16 times that of EGG Japan, and has already created a business center for Japanese subsidiaries of Indian companies and Japanese firms that want to break into the Indian market. Even Tokyu Corp., one of Mitsubishi Estate’s rivals in the real estate business, admits that Mitsubishi Estate has “amazing vision.”
The ultimate motivation for attracting foreign capital and venture companies is a new form of prosperity for the Marunouchi area. Hopes are high that their interaction with established corporate giants and the impetus they provide to one another will generate a “chemical reaction” through which new business opportunities and partnerships are created.
Seventy-five major firms listed in the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange have their headquarters in this district, which has long been the nerve center of the Japanese economy. Their consolidated net earnings amount to approximately 130 trillion yen ($1.304 trillion), equivalent to 1.4 times the Japanese government budget.
However, in recent years, high-rise complexes have been popping up one after another in Asia’s major cities such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Seoul, consolidating their business infrastructure. Companies have begun to move freely throughout the world in search of locations that are most advantageous to their operations. There are fears that if Tokyo cannot emerge victorious from this intercity competition, even its most impressive areas will lose their luster.
Marunouchi has a history of redevelopment in tune with the times.
“It’s currently experiencing its third phase of transformation,” says Toshiyuki Inoue, Mitsubishi Estate deputy general manager.
The first phase took place during the Meiji Era (1868-1912). It had been home to the residences of daimyo (feudal lords) in the Edo Period (1603-1867) until it was sold after the Meiji Restoration to Yanosuke Iwasaki, the second head of the Mitsubishi zaibatsu (conglomerate), and became Japan’s first genuine office district. Tokyo Station began operating in 1914, which drew more companies to the district. The second phase took place in the Showa Era (1926-1989) as Japan experienced accelerated economic development. Rows of high-rises were constructed at the maximum permitted height of 31 meters, including the old Marunochi Building.
The current phase of transformation began in 2002. Height restrictions were eased, and the Marunouchi Building was reborn as a 180-meter skyscraper. In the 10 years that followed, more than 20 additional large-scale buildings went up in the wider area, including Otemachi and Yurakucho.
The makeover has been driven by the Council for Area Development and Management of Otemachi, Marunouchi, and Yurakucho, an association of landowners with 89 member companies. It has devised guidelines such as one to unify the height of buildings’ lower levels to maintain a local aesthetic, and been successful in lobbying the metropolitan and national governments to allow more high-rise construction.
As buildings have become increasingly taller, their lower levels have been expectantly turned into shopping centers, which has tripled the number of retailers in the area in just over 10 years. Although the area previously had an image as a center for major banks and manufacturers, the newly created floor space has been conspicuously snapped up by foreign financial institutions as well as law and accounting firms as the shift from to hard to soft industries has progressed.
In addition, more facilities are attracting non-Japanese. Hoshino Resort is building a luxury Japanese-style inn scheduled for completion in 2016, and the MediLocus branch clinic was opened in Otemachi in October 2012 by St. Luke’s International Hospital, which has a trusted reputation among foreign residents.
“Eating and drinking establishments and brand retailers have moved into this business district, which has drawn more shoppers and tourists,” Inoue says. “If they’re joined by more foreign companies, people from many different walks of life will come together, and we’ll be able to promote a new outlook to the world.”
MARUNOUCHI: Attracting foreign ventures to spur growth, interactions with ...
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét