ASAKUSA Underground > Megane 21, a company without managers
megane: eyeglasses
It is about twenty years ago they made some rules. Their company president
must not do anything. He must not stay in the position any longer than
four years. If one earns too much, it is not good for him, they think.
So, no one in the company must earn more than 12,310,000 yen (about $110,000US)
annually, which is the legal limit to have a tax exemption for his wife.
Of course, the president is included.
They agreed not to make profit. When they foresee some profit before the end of the fiscal year, they panic and organize discount sales for the clients or give bonuses to their employees. But, wait. Who are the employees and who are the employers?
Megane 21 (two one) is a revolutionary company, where they don't have managers. They have a president symbolically for the sake of the laws. The salaried workers there are investors at the same time. Since they refuse to make profit, no banks lend money and the workers are the ones who lend money to the company with 10% annual interest.
They are not doing this for a social engineering experiment or communist credos. They have accidentally created this magical organization in Hiroshima to compete against giant eyeglass retailers. Their reasoning was simple. To fight against the giants, they had to reduce their prices. "All glasses 40% off" This is their motto. In order to keep the word, what they did was not to give unnecessary salaries to anyone. They need no managers who earn more. Everyone is a sales person. In exchange, everyone has the right to say anything about its management.
To allow everyone to say anything, everyone has to know everything if he wants. They have an Intra Net system to tell what is going on in the company. If you want to know your colleagues' salaries, for example, you can see them with a few clicks. An absolute transparency is thus established.
Customers are their kings, they say. Then, who are their queens? Female
sales representatives. They are the ones who sell the glasses.
They know what clients want. They can feel a customer's likes and dislikes much better with feminine sensitivity. To make clients happy, those ladies have to be happy first.
They reward their effort with good wages, which are 50% better than those of their counterparts in other chain stores. Secondly, they give them the total power of decision making in the shop level. "Treat our sales ladies as our clients because they are the ones who bring us money." This is what they say.
No power to the chief executive. Maximum power to sales ladies.
All the people working there have the right of "declaration of giving up". If you don't want to work with someone in the shop, you can write your "give up" declaration on the company's Intra Net. You don't have to justify yourself. After the declaration you can leave the shop and start working at another in the same organization. Or, the one you don't want to work with will work somewhere else. No one will judge either you or the other. They know that we need some "chemistry" in-between to work together comfortably. If not, without wasting their energy, they should find someone else to work happily with.
The most important thing for the company is the well-being of its workers and the happiness of people, not just its customers. They don't want to expand aggressively. They don't seem to feel like going out of Hiroshima. They don't want to attack someone else's commercial territory unnecessarily, but if somebody wants to invest and open a Megane 21 shop, they are happy to give away their know-how for meagre loyalty charge of 3% on its sales. There is one more thing they ask, which is to be kind to customers, workers, and, well, people in general.
It must not work, one might say. Then, tell him Megane 21 raised its annual sales from 0.3 billion yen to 8 billion yen in fifteen years.
[reference in Japanese]
-Mainichi Shinbun
-Nikkei Net IT+PLUS
-Nikkei bp Realtime Retail
See it for yourself. Here is the list of Megane 21 shops near Asakusa.
-Megane 21 Takenotsuka-ten
zip. 121-0813, 5-6-9 Takenotsuka, Adachi-ku, Tokyo
tel. & fax. 03-3858-0621
business hours; 10:00 ~ 20:00
holidays; Thursdays
東京都足立区竹ノ塚5-6-9
-Megane 21 Akabane-ten
zip. 115-0045, 2-4-3 Akabane, Kita-ku, Tokyo
tel. & fax. 03-3903-0013
business hours; 10:00 ~ 19:30
holidays; Thursdays
東京都北区赤羽2-4-3
-Megane 21 Yachiyo-ten
zip. 274-0049, akiba dai-2-building 101, 2-2-9 Midorigaoka, Yachiyo-shi, Chiba-ken
tel. & fax. 047-458-7269
business hours; 10:00 ~ 19:30
holidays; Thursdays
千葉県八千代市緑ヶ丘2-2-9
[Recommended sites]
・Website Design - Affordable small business website design, hosting and ecommerce solutions.
・ Ten Spider Enterprises
# Use Diddlefinger to find out the exact location of an address.
Please let us know what you think. ASAKUSA Underground editorship will sincerely appreciate your effort if you correct our inaccuracy and poor English.Pease write to us.
Megane 21, a company without managers
megane: eyeglasses
It is about twenty years ago they made some rules. Their company president
must not do anything. He must not stay in the position any longer than
four years. If one earns too much, it is not good for him, they think.
So, no one in the company must earn more than 12,310,000 yen (about $110,000US)
annually, which is the legal limit to have a tax exemption for his wife.
Of course, the president is included.They agreed not to make profit. When they foresee some profit before the end of the fiscal year, they panic and organize discount sales for the clients or give bonuses to their employees. But, wait. Who are the employees and who are the employers?
Megane 21 (two one) is a revolutionary company, where they don't have managers. They have a president symbolically for the sake of the laws. The salaried workers there are investors at the same time. Since they refuse to make profit, no banks lend money and the workers are the ones who lend money to the company with 10% annual interest.
They are not doing this for a social engineering experiment or communist credos. They have accidentally created this magical organization in Hiroshima to compete against giant eyeglass retailers. Their reasoning was simple. To fight against the giants, they had to reduce their prices. "All glasses 40% off" This is their motto. In order to keep the word, what they did was not to give unnecessary salaries to anyone. They need no managers who earn more. Everyone is a sales person. In exchange, everyone has the right to say anything about its management.
To allow everyone to say anything, everyone has to know everything if he wants. They have an Intra Net system to tell what is going on in the company. If you want to know your colleagues' salaries, for example, you can see them with a few clicks. An absolute transparency is thus established.
Customers are their kings, they say. Then, who are their queens? Female
sales representatives. They are the ones who sell the glasses. They know what clients want. They can feel a customer's likes and dislikes much better with feminine sensitivity. To make clients happy, those ladies have to be happy first.
They reward their effort with good wages, which are 50% better than those of their counterparts in other chain stores. Secondly, they give them the total power of decision making in the shop level. "Treat our sales ladies as our clients because they are the ones who bring us money." This is what they say.
No power to the chief executive. Maximum power to sales ladies.
All the people working there have the right of "declaration of giving up". If you don't want to work with someone in the shop, you can write your "give up" declaration on the company's Intra Net. You don't have to justify yourself. After the declaration you can leave the shop and start working at another in the same organization. Or, the one you don't want to work with will work somewhere else. No one will judge either you or the other. They know that we need some "chemistry" in-between to work together comfortably. If not, without wasting their energy, they should find someone else to work happily with.
The most important thing for the company is the well-being of its workers and the happiness of people, not just its customers. They don't want to expand aggressively. They don't seem to feel like going out of Hiroshima. They don't want to attack someone else's commercial territory unnecessarily, but if somebody wants to invest and open a Megane 21 shop, they are happy to give away their know-how for meagre loyalty charge of 3% on its sales. There is one more thing they ask, which is to be kind to customers, workers, and, well, people in general.
It must not work, one might say. Then, tell him Megane 21 raised its annual sales from 0.3 billion yen to 8 billion yen in fifteen years.
[reference in Japanese]
-Mainichi Shinbun
-Nikkei Net IT+PLUS
-Nikkei bp Realtime Retail
See it for yourself. Here is the list of Megane 21 shops near Asakusa.
-Megane 21 Takenotsuka-ten
zip. 121-0813, 5-6-9 Takenotsuka, Adachi-ku, Tokyo
tel. & fax. 03-3858-0621
business hours; 10:00 ~ 20:00
holidays; Thursdays
東京都足立区竹ノ塚5-6-9
-Megane 21 Akabane-ten
zip. 115-0045, 2-4-3 Akabane, Kita-ku, Tokyo
tel. & fax. 03-3903-0013
business hours; 10:00 ~ 19:30
holidays; Thursdays
東京都北区赤羽2-4-3
-Megane 21 Yachiyo-ten
zip. 274-0049, akiba dai-2-building 101, 2-2-9 Midorigaoka, Yachiyo-shi, Chiba-ken
tel. & fax. 047-458-7269
business hours; 10:00 ~ 19:30
holidays; Thursdays
千葉県八千代市緑ヶ丘2-2-9
[Recommended sites]
・Website Design - Affordable small business website design, hosting and ecommerce solutions.
・ Ten Spider Enterprises
If you are looking for a job abroad, check
Tenspider's International Jobs & Overseas Jobs page.
(海外での仕事をお探しの方は、テンスパイダーの国際ジョブ・ページをご覧になってはいかがでしょうか？)
# Use Diddlefinger to find out the exact location of an address.
Please let us know what you think. ASAKUSA Underground editorship will sincerely appreciate your effort if you correct our inaccuracy and poor English.Pease write to us.