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Hagoromo president explains why he closed down his beloved chalk business

asia.nikkei.com

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

#71

Post by paulmd »

specialist wrote: post #64
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 pictu…

Film, also.

The Impossible Project is truly impressive. Polaroid film is a mindblowingly complex product to develop, since it's basically a photo lab sandwiched into a thin sheet. Even if their results aren't perfect, it's amazing they're making it work at all.

There's also a small group of people who are rebooting the Ferriana film line.

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

#72

Post by kjs3 »

putchdes wrote: post #52

When he said that people sent a flood of faxes, it made me totally cool with no more chalk. When your customers are still sending faxes, that pretty much sums up your dire situation.

You should perhaps learn something about cultures other than your own...

https://www.google.com/search?q=japanese+fax+machine+culture

tl;dr: Fax machines are still fundamental to Japanese business communications.

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

#73

Post by surge »

This man expresses such a passion for chalk...chalk of all things, and it's inspiring. I could see someone reading this and becoming an artisan chalk maker as a result(I kid, but its probably true). Even I kind of want to run a chalk business after reading it.

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

#74

Post by gknoy »

fsloth wrote: post #7
qnaal wrote: post #3

OPEN SOURCE THE MAGIC CHALK RECIPE AND MACHINE PLANS

I don't think there is any concise secret formula that one could just copy to paper and readapt. The article gives the impression there was a specific highly custom production system where the materials were selected for the machines and the machines were fit for the materials. And the machines were apparently jury rigged adaptations which probably lack detailed blueprints. Sounds a bit hard to formalize, after the f…

I'd bet that, if he made some Youtube videos explaining the recipe, and the way it changes based on the local situation (and manufacturing equipment), as well as some videos giving a tour of the manufacturing equipment, some enterprising Makers would find a way to whip up a "Make your own Chalk" machine.

While it wouldn't be perfect, such a machine could be standardized or improved, and quality could be iterated on by people who care about it until they could make their own chalk that was better than what they can easily buy.

Heck, just the recipe might be sufficient for people to do that.

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

#75

Post by astaroth360 »

Chalk makes me feel weird when I use it. Tactically it just rubs me the wrong way and gives me the same chills I get from fingernails on a chalkboard. Just thinking about it bothers me :\

However, it is nice to read about people who have a passion for what they do, and this man seems to have passion in spades.

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

#77

Post by twblalock »

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…

> 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 can't work" – well, duh).

The Japanese domestic consumer market is so enormous that many Japanese companies are simply not interested in selling their goods internationally, because they don't need to. They can make plenty of money without dealing with the complications of selling their products in other countries. Many are small businesses and are content with making enough money to cover payroll.

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

#78

Post by paxtonab »

astaroth360 wrote: post #75

Chalk makes me feel weird when I use it. Tactically it just rubs me the wrong way and gives me the same chills I get from fingernails on a chalkboard. Just thinking about it bothers me :\ However, it is nice to read about people who have a passion for what they do, and this man seems to have passion in spades.

This chalk actually has a special coating that prevents that from happening.

This post from a while ago explains why "Mathematicians Are Hoarding a Type of Japanese Chalk"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9723202

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

#79

Post by mcphage »

ansible wrote: post #40
wlesieutre wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention I've never had a piece of chalk dry out. Seems whenever I try to use a whiteboard, the first 5 markers I try don't write and I have to spend 15 minutes hunting for spares. And if you have a "sort of working" marker, which is what I'd usually end up with, it won't write very dark and the whiteboard text has worse contrast than a chalkboard.

What drives me up a wall is when people find a non-working marker... and then put it back! No! Throw it away! It is better to have no markers than have non-working ones. That is an easy and clear signal that it is time to find / buy more markers.

> when people find a non-working marker... and then put it back! No! Throw it away!

I trained myself to, whenever I found a non-working whiteboard marker, literally throw it into a back corner to pick up later.

Similarly, when I take off a sock with holes, I tear the hole a lot bigger so I don't feel tempted to keep it in use.

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

#80

Post by emodendroket »

toyg wrote: post #22
creshal wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

There is a cultural element -- the Japanese perceive the cultural contrast between their world and "ours" more acutely than we do, in both directions (i.e. their positions go from "the West is much better than us" to "the West is so much worse than us" very quickly, it's hard to find level-headed assessments of both positions). Most of the "obviously it can't work" sentiment actually comes from there, in many cases.…

> There is also the obvious difficulty of limited chances for local expansion: the country closest to them in cultural terms are Korea, which they historically see as inferior and poorer, and China, which they know they simply cannot match on equal terms.

I'm not so sure about this analysis.

Korea is a much smaller market than Japan and also has regulations hostile foreign products in general (high import tariffs and so on) or to Japanese products in particular (such as limitations on how much Japanese-language material can be broadcast). I don't know what it means to say that they "simply cannot match China on equal terms;" it's only recently that Japan's economy's size was surpassed by that of China and even then it has a number of advantages that China does not (much higher per-capita income, a more stable regulatory environment, lower levels of corruption, etc., you get the idea).

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