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Goodbye Sanyo
Saturday, December 24th, 2011Last day for Sanyo’s brand and logo appearing in public
On the 23rd of December, the huge Sanyo sign –each letter 2-3 meters high and 1.8 meters wide- was taken off the building at the main office in Moriguchi-shi. It will be replaced by Panasonic’s (Ticker: 6752 http://stocks.finance.yahoo.co.jp/stocks/detail/?code=6752.t) sign. (http://panasonic.net/sanyo/ )
Panasonic “re-“acquired the company after it initially started as a kind of spin-off of Panasonic (then Matsushita) in 1947. Sanyo was founded by Toshio Iue who married Hideko Niioka. The main strengths of Sanyo Energy such as lithium ion batteries, etc. made it worth buying the company despite its financial predicament.
Sanyo (previously under Ticker: 6764) was delisted on March 29th, 2011. (http://www.tse.or.jp/english/listing/delisting/list.html)
Right business strategy/marketing decision?
It will be interesting to see the eventual results of this this business strategy decision. Sanyo is a strong brand with high consumer recognition globally and more than 50 years of history. It used to be worth a couple of billion US dollars. There is some argument that removing the brand from the company portfolio will avoid a cannibalization situation, however, there is no guarantee that ex Sanyo customers will default to Panasonic. Looking at commentary in the media, there seem to be different opinions even within the company as to whether or not this has been the right decision and it will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next months and years.
Goodbye Sanyo… A company that my father devoted his entire working life to – over 50 years.
An interesting link on the history of Sanyo. http://sanyo.com/museum/jp/history/iue/iue_history.html