Inaugurated in 1972 as Nagai Bellows, the company was formally established in 1988 before being reorganized in 1992 and renamed Nabell Corporation. The GMI Post team sat company president Norio Nagai to understand more about Nabell’s activities and priorities in the years to come.
GMI: With rising competition both in Japan and the international market, how does Nabell maintain its standing in the industry and what sets the company apart?
Nagai: Nabell Corporation started with camera bellows in 1972 then the smart phone phenomenon completely changed the industry. To keep up with the changing landscape, we incorporated different features and functions to the bellows to cater to different industries and markets.
During this successful development process, my father, the founder, created patents for all our products and materials. This is very important because we produce our own materials for different functions. This allows us to control cost and production.
Our competitive advantage and ultimate strength center on the philosophy that we are here to create solutions for the problems of our customers. Our company motto is, “We shall consistently think of production from the position of end users.”
GMI: How important is feedback from your subsidiaries and customers for the product development of Nabell?
Nagai: Our offices are in Japan, the U.S., Korea, China and Taiwan. All of these cater to different countries and cultures, so it’s a very diverse set of customers and industries. From there, we get different input and feedback. And it helps us be more innovative and create more products that could cater to new markets in the future.
We appreciate all the information we get from our customers and subsidiaries. We feel this synergy with our worldwide network and we learn from each other in the process.
GMI: What are you priorities in the next few years and how is Nabell working towards that?
Nagai: We are optimistic about business prospects this year and in the future. We want to expand and strengthen our networks overseas and have more activities for our subsidiaries. Especially in the US, we believe that there many opportunities for innovation. Hopefully in the future, we can establish more offices there too.
We want to cover different locations and work together like small satellite offices where every employee’s strengths are developed. That way, we can really expand worldwide instead of just building on one site.
