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Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

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Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#61

Post by sevensor »

dfc wrote: post #53
sevensor wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless of what metric you choose, Arrow's Paradox will bite you. Single-objective optimization will always force you to ignore good alternatives.

I do not understand the reference to Arrow's Paradox in a discussion of procurement policy (almost certainly related to my lack of knowledge). Can you elaborate?

Sure --- there's a neat paper by Franssen (2006) that demonstrates the formal equivalence between optimization problems and the social policy problems Arrow was concerned with. Basically, Arrow says that some constituents will always lose out under any social policy. Franssen showed that you can swap out "composite cost metric" for social policy and "components of the cost metric" for constituents, and the same arguments apply.

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#62

Post by dfc »

sevensor wrote: post #61
dfc wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not understand the reference to Arrow's Paradox in a discussion of procurement policy (almost certainly related to my lack of knowledge). Can you elaborate?

Sure --- there's a neat paper by Franssen (2006) that demonstrates the formal equivalence between optimization problems and the social policy problems Arrow was concerned with. Basically, Arrow says that some constituents will always lose out under any social policy. Franssen showed that you can swap out "composite cost metric" for social policy and "components of the cost metric" for constituents, and the same argum…

It must be too early for me. I can not find the franssen citation. Title?

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#63

Post by sevensor »

dfc wrote: post #62
sevensor wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure --- there's a neat paper by Franssen (2006) that demonstrates the formal equivalence between optimization problems and the social policy problems Arrow was concerned with. Basically, Arrow says that some constituents will always lose out under any social policy. Franssen showed that you can swap out "composite cost metric" for social policy and "components of the cost metric" for constituents, and the same argum…

It must be too early for me. I can not find the franssen citation. Title?

Here's the full citation. Turns out I misremembered the year (2005).

Franssen M (2005) Arrow’s theorem, multi-criteria decision problems and multi-attribute preferences in engineering design. Research in Engineering Design 16(1):42–56

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#64

Post by specialist »

kriro wrote: post #12

This whole saga pretty much has to inspire someone to build and reverse engineer the machine/recipe. The overlap of people who like to tinker with this stuff and people who love the chalk seems big enough. It's also interesting that they seem to be somewhat oblivious of the US demand. At least it seemed like that. My guess is that they could have sold one of the machines to a US based entrepreneur. I can pretty much…

pretty much has to inspire someone to build and reverse engineer the machine/recipe.

A recent example: Nitram fine art charcoal.

http://www.nitramcharcoal.com

Grandson of founder sells business, gear, and secret recipe to enthusiastic customer, who relaunches a beloved product line.

http://www.nitramcharcoal.com/blog/the-history-of-nitram-cha...

Obsolete technologies become forms of art. Vinyl records, polaroid pictures, book making, knitting, etc.

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#65

Post by etep »

kvcc01 wrote: post #57

I read the whole letter and loved the tone of it! It jumps at you right away that: (1) Here's a guy who really cares about his business, its future, his employees. (2) He talks candidly about the reasons for closing up: his declining health, sales volumes, even including awkward sentences like " So chalk is more environmentally friendly, I think. " I am now a fan of Hagoromo. It was rather refreshing at a time when I…

Not awkward, the sentence you call out. Beautiful, rather, and whether it is an artifact of translation or not, no matter. You didn't mean awkward in a pejorative sense; this is just an affirmation.

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#66

Post by acveilleux »

navait wrote: post #51
rmc wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's common amoung US companies as well. How many tech companies aren't available in !USA? How much "streaming TV shows" aren't available in !USA?

90% of those are legal issues, whether it be in the US or in the country they are expanding to, especially in the case of copyrighted media.

I don't buy that (outside of copyright licensing). Especially for anything cloud based. As a Canadian, we don't have a choice but to expand to include the US early on (since it's a market 10x bigger) and I've not really seen that become a stumbling block.

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#67

Post by mathattack »

Two passages stood out.

At first, we considered selling the whole company, enabling the Hagoromo brand to survive and helping overall chalk sales. But we could not find the right deal for the company.

I'm sad that I have been forced to close down my company. But I am pleased I have been able to contribute to education by providing high-quality chalk over the last 50 years.

Commendable passion to a bigger cause, but sometimes that isn't enough. Very touching note.

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#68

Post by yawaramin »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #31
JorgeGT wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ecclesiastes 3 King James Version (KJV) 3 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: 2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; 5 A time to cast away stones, and…

Ecclesiastes! A good book, and I think a lot of people in our field could relate to it a little: "Then I hated all my labor in which I had toiled under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will rule over all my labor in which I toiled and in which I have shown myself wise under the sun. This also is vanity."

This is so appropriate for Hagoromo's story.

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#69

Post by GuiA »

mathattack wrote: post #67

Two passages stood out. At first, we considered selling the whole company, enabling the Hagoromo brand to survive and helping overall chalk sales. But we could not find the right deal for the company. I'm sad that I have been forced to close down my company. But I am pleased I have been able to contribute to education by providing high-quality chalk over the last 50 years. Commendable passion to a bigger cause, but s…

> Commendable passion to a bigger cause, but sometimes that isn't enough.

How is it "not enough"? He ran a successful business that brought joy and utility to millions for 50 years. Sure, it ends on a sad note - but such is life. That is success if I ever saw it.

Re: Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

#70

Post by paulmd »

creshal wrote: post #14
kriro wrote: post #12

This whole saga pretty much has to inspire someone to build and reverse engineer the machine/recipe. The overlap of people who like to tinker with this stuff and people who love the chalk seems big enough. It's also interesting that they seem to be somewhat oblivious of the US demand. At least it seemed like that. My guess is that they could have sold one of the machines to a US based entrepreneur. I can pretty much…

> It's also interesting that they seem to be somewhat oblivious of the US demand. I have no idea why, but with Japanese companies it's a common theme. Most don't even care about overseas expansion, and if they do, it's poorly executed (say, Daihatsu, who dicked around on the European market for decades without ever listening to even trivial customer wishes, and then wrote the whole business off because it "obviously…

That's very true. Fuji is notorious for this - they build fantastic cameras/lenses but until recently there was little advertising and they were difficult to source outside Japan. They're also very bad at keeping US customers in the loop about their supply issues.
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