Kashio Tadao
Commercializing the invention of his brother Toshio
During the time of Casio’s predecessor Kashio Seisakujo, Kashio Tadao, who had always been skillful with his hands and had mastered processing technology, turned the ideas of the second eldest brother Toshio, who was an inventor, into reality one after another. He led the development of calculators such as the solenoid calculator and the relay calculator, supporting the early years of Casio.
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Kashio Kazuo
Discovering product value
and creating new markets
Kashio Kazuo, a marketing and sales representative at Casio, had a knack for predicting market trends. He saw the potential in products such as the world’s first personal calculator, the Casio Mini, the shock-resistant G-SHOCK watch, and the world’s first consumer-grade LCD digital camera, QV-10. He turned them into big hits, opening up entirely new markets.
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Kashio Tadao
Fulfilling financing responsibilities
In order to win the "calculator wars,"Kashio Tadao decided to list his company on the Tokyo Stock Exchange to improve the company’s management capital. By establishing a funding mechanism, he aimed to further improve development, production, and sales capabilities. Even amid the rapid appreciation of the yen in 1985, he strengthened the company’s financial base by issuing a total of 85.8 billion yen in bonds. Despite the challenging business environment, he made every effort to strengthen the corporate structure.
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Kashio Toshio
Inventing the Yubiwa pipe
Utilizing his natural inventiveness, Kashio Toshio tried out several new ideas. One of these was “the yubiwa (finger ring) pipe.” In postwar Japan, commodities were in short supply, and people smoked their cigarettes down to the very nub. For this reason, Toshio came up with a ring-mounted cigarette holder so that he could also smoke while doing his work. The product became a big hit, and Casio later used its profits to start a brand of calculators.
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Kashio Toshio
Inventing the 14-A relay calculator
Focusing on the fact that conventional calculators take about 10 seconds for each multiplication and division operation, during which time the high-speed rotation of the gears within the device generated a lot of noise, Kashio Toshio developed the 14-A, a relay calculator with a completely novel concept. The 14-A is roughly the size of an office desk and is capable of quietly performing multiplication and division in only 5 to 6 seconds. It provided superior calculation efficiency and labor savings.
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Kashio Tadao
Serving as President for 29 years
Kashio Tadao succeeded his father, Shigeru, as President of Casio Computer Co., Ltd. in 1960. He led Casio for the next 29 years, until 1988. In their founding period, Tadao handled all accounting work, carrying a notebook in which sales figures, ordinary income, and other information had been written. Equipped with expert knowledge, he made sharp business analyses, taking even the finest details into account.
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Kashio Kazuo
Advertisements
that provide new value
It was also part of Kashio Kazuo's job to advertise and promote Casio's products. When launching the Casio Mini, he put his efforts into publicity and promotion activities by making the most of the funds obtained from the company’s listing. The copy “The first and final answer, the Casio Mini,” which took Japan by storm, boosted the product’s popularity. He also generated high-impact advertising for the Casiotron and G-SHOCK, providing new value to society.
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Kashio Tadao
Casio gets listed on the stock market
As Casio’s earnings continued to double each year, the capacity of the existing plants was not enough to meet demand. Therefore, in April 1968, Kashio Tadao decided to list its shares on the public stock exchange in order to procure the capital needed to build new plants and to meet rapidly expanding operating capital needs. In September 1970, Casio was listed on the second section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The funds raised at this time became the driving force behind the company’s victory in the “calculator wars.”
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Kashio Toshio
Inventing the Casiotron
In 1974, Kashio Toshio invented the Casiotron, Casio’s first digital wristwatch, making the most of the LSI technologies the company had cultivated thus far with the manufacturing of calculators. Under the concept of a “fully automatic wristwatch,” the Casiotron displayed not only hours, minutes, and seconds, but also had a calendar function that automatically adjusted for longer and shorter months. This saved users the step of resetting the date on the calendar at the beginning of each month.
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Kashio Yukio
Developing a watch that runs for a long time on batteries
In 1974, Casio launched the Casiotron, an electronic wristwatch with an automatic calendar that eliminated the need for date correction. Kashio Yukio focused on improving the “digitalization” technology which allows for precision timekeeping. By using Casio's uniquely designed CMOS-LSI for the electronic circuits, Casio successfully overcame the reductions in lifetime caused by mechanical friction.
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Kashio Yukio
Improving the "14-A" relay calculator
The 14-A is the world’s first compact all-electric calculator. Although relays, which are one of core components of the calculator, were first manufactured by the eldest brother Tadao and the second eldest brother Toshio, it was Yukio who made the subsequent improvements. To improve the durability of the calculator, a shaft was passed through the part of the iron piece moved by magnetic force, improving its structure and making it less susceptible to metal fatigue. Yukio would continue to support the manufacturing backbone of Casio.
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Kashio Kazuo
Pricing that meets customer needs
Kashio Kazuo saw the potential of the world’s first personal calculator, the Casio Mini, and convinced employees to launch the product. However, to make the Casio Mini a product that could be purchased by as many people as possible, he agonized over its pricing to the very end. In fact, the price section was added to the printed press release at the very last minute.
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Kashio Kazuo
A calculator
for everyone
During the “calculator wars,” Casio launched the AS-8, a calculator priced lower than its competitors. The company sought to change the calculator from a business machine into a tool for home use. This is why Kashio Kazuo proposed switching to stationary store sales instead of the traditional door-to-door sales. He also formed the CASIO Eight Association with leading stationery wholesalers and established a nationwide sales system to expand sales bases.
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Kashio Yukio
Establishing a calculator production line
for 100,000 units per month
With the huge success of the Casio Mini personal calculator, Casio embarked on a radical reform of its calculator production line under the lead of Kashio Yukio. Production of the Casio Mini began at the Kofu factory in July 1972. Afterward, Casio opened a new plant in Hachioji City, Tokyo, making a company-wide effort to meet the rapid increase in demand.
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Kashio Toshio
Inventing the Casiotone
Kashio Toshio, who had loved music since his childhood, thought it would be wonderful to reproduce the sounds of instruments that are typically difficult to play using only his hands. This is why he invented the Casiotone electronic keyboard. Doing away with the convention that you need to learn how to play various instruments if you want to produce their sounds, he enabled anyone to easily enjoy music.
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Kashio Yukio
Inventing the Casio Mini
Kashio Yukio came up with the idea of creating a small and affordable calculator for bowling at a time when bowling scores needed to be calculated by hand. Working with in-house engineers, he developed the Casio Mini, a calculator that was a quarter of the size of other calculators at the time with a price of 12,800 yen, about a third as expensive as its competitors. This created a completely new market for a "personalized calculator," which gradually brought about the “one per family” era.
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Kashio Yukio
Automation at the Kofu factory
to streamline production
In 1985, the Kofu factory, Casio's main production site, achieved factory automation (FA) ahead of its competitors. It was Kashio Yukio who led these efforts. Casio automated the entire processes of calculator production, from part insertion to installation, automatic soldering, and screw tightening. As a result, 8,000 calculators were produced per day and defective devices were reduced to one fifth their former amount, contributing to higher quality products.
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Kashio Tadao
A commitment to company management
As a manager, Kashio Tadao devoted himself to multifaceted company operations, including human resources, finance, accounting, and general affairs. In particular, Casio has long had a policy of meritocracy for human resources, and he worked hard to create a system that would recognize employees for their abilities, not their educational background. He also introduced a qualification system based on the philosophy that “hard work should be rewarded” and strived to fairly distribute results.
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