Shoji Kodama, President and CEO of Laxus Technology Inc.

Originally, I wanted to be a doctor and aimed for medical school. In my second year of high school, I got an A and thought "I'll get in this" so I went off and played around, but sure enough, my academic ability dropped and I ended up not being able to take the exam, which made me feel really inferior. Even after entering university, I had a strong desire to "do something different from now" and "become someone", so at the age of 18, I started a private tutoring agency. I realized that attending university was a means to an end, not an end in itself, so I ended up quitting after six months.

I started companies like tutor matching, used car sales, and outsourcing, and learned how to make money in my 20s. As a teenager, I just wanted to make money, but when I saw Steve Jobs say "Change the World" in the 2000s, I wanted to change the world, not just make money. 2015, when I founded Luxus, was the era of mass production and mass waste. As labor costs in China rose, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Africa followed, and the trend was to simply make things cheap and then throw them away. I wanted to make that more "ethical." To achieve this, I had to start with the top tier of luxury brands with social influence, so I launched with brand bags, which are the most easily shared and least resistant to them.

When we launched Luxus, we surveyed employees, asking them if they would rent a bag for 6800 yen. Group A responded with comments like, "These days, luxury bags for around 20,000 to 30,000 yen are cooler than bags that cost 400,000 yen," and "Expensive bags are unfashionable," and no one agreed. However, when we said, "You can take one home each," everyone chose the 400,000 yen bag. Thinking this was odd, I changed the subject and asked Group B, "Would your acquaintances rent this bag?" The answer was yes, one after another. In short, in a survey, your acquaintances are your true selves. That's why I think of surveys as a game of how to elicit true opinions while lying. In fact, when we put nearly new bags worth around 400,000 yen on sale for 30 million yen, we had 50 borrowers without any advertising. I knew we could do it.

An investor once told me, "Branded goods are pointless unless you buy them. What's the point of borrowing them?" But then I realized that the primary purpose of a bag is to carry things, not to buy them. Buying is a means to an end. In many cases, the ends and means are often reversed, so we must first see through that. Increasing the means of transportation is a good thing, even from a historical perspective. For example, in addition to eating at a restaurant, there are now options like takeout and delivery. What I'm trying to do now is to increase those means, and I realized that what this person was saying was wrong. Common sense is a collection of prejudices collected by the age of 18, so it's important to be willing to challenge the common sense that others tell you.

I'm often told, "That was a brilliant idea." But ideas don't come by chance. In other words, "good input leads to good output." Almost all of my strategies are plagiarized. I read all sorts of strategies, and if I think, "This and that are close to the problem I'm trying to solve right now," I apply them. I don't have an original strategy. But when it comes to making decisions, you can't make them without a variety of knowledge and information. At Laxus, we encourage our employees to input independently by setting up group chats where employees can report on what they've studied, and by having a system where employees can receive raises by writing reports on recommended books.

Luxus' first customers were the wealthy. For this demographic, having money is no longer something to be admired; instead, showing off your ethical lifestyle is what's cool. Their values ​​are that "faux leather, not animal skin, is the norm." Cotton, often thought of as a natural and environmentally friendly material, is actually produced in India by mothers carrying their babies while their skin is torn apart by Agent Orange. While this background is commonly reported in the Western media, it's not reported in Japan, where it's protected by advertising dollars. In this context, I believe that the increased visibility of platforms like ours will lead to an increase in people adopting an earth-friendly mindset. Going forward, I'd like to expand what I'm currently doing globally.

When I was taking the entrance exams, I heard the phrase "Once you get into university, you don't need to study anymore" about 500 times (laughs). I think there are still many people who keep that promise to their cram school teachers. In fact, the average American executive spends two hours studying, regardless of weekends, while Japanese people only spend six minutes. You graduate from university having learned to "keep studying," so I hope you keep studying. What we want is people who can think for themselves and keep learning.

Student Newspaper WEB December 21, 2020 coverage

　Tsuda University, second-year student, Ayako Miyata

Tsujiuchi Kaisei, third year student at Nihon University / Miyata Ayako, second year student at Tsuda College / Suzuki Nao, fourth year student at International Christian University / Harada Hiroshi, third year student at Waseda University