I am going to send you an interesting text soon, hopefully, in the next week. Pls look forward to it.
As you know, I work for over three hundred businesses and organizations as their translator. As many as 300 companies don't give me their translation orders at the same time. If so, I would be in a great panic and tremendously too busy.
Always, several different businesses give me translation orders on a regular basis. Some of them give me translation orders almost everyday.
An importer of Outdoor Bags is one of them. Almost every day I translate for the importer which is based in Fukuoka.
This company was a spinoff from a major rubber manufacturer in Japan, specializing in importing American products to Japan and developing the market of American products in Japan. Since the establishment of this company, they have been importing and dealing in Outdoor Brand Backpacks, bags and other types of products under this brand. These products are from Outdoor Recreation Group based in USA.
Some of you may already know this brand, because Outdoor Brand bags are popular among young generations in Japan all the time. Actually I see many young people wearing backpack of this brand.
Unfortunately, this company has not signed with the Outdoor Recreation Group any exclusive sole agent right so far. They have concluded with an ordinary non-exclusive sales agent right in Japan, so other big companies such as major trading firms like Marubeni and others have imported Outdoor Brand bags and promoted the sales of the bags in Japan too, just like suddenly cutting into a long line of people patiently waiting in front of a popular restaurant.
If you sign the exclusive sole agent right of any product or service with an overseas or domestic manufacturer or other types of company, you have to guarantee the annual sales amount of the product or the annual sales achievement of the serve you have signed the exclusivity for.
Of course, the bright side of this exclusive contract is that only you is able to deal in the product or service in the market you are in. So wholesalers and consumers will have to buy the products only through you.
The Hakata-based trading firm, which I have been working as their translator for, has not signed the exclusive sole agent contract with Outdoor Recreation Group, and so this has allowed other trading firms including major trading firms to import Outdoor Brand Bags also from the American manufacturer and sell their bags in the same Japanese market. Probably the Hakata-based company was not confident to satisfy the annual sales quantity of the bags they would have to guarantee, that's why they hesitated to conclude the exclusive sales agreement with the American maker.
So, the Hakata-based trading firms very often has had to compete with Marubeni, Kitamura and other major trading firms in the sales of Outdoor Brand Bags. And in order to survive this competition, the customer of mine tied up with domestic bag wholesalers to produce various unique and original varieties of Outdoor Bags under the American maker's authorization.
Then, recently I found the following article: Pls carefully check this article. This article has been shocking not only to the people at the Hakata-based trading firm but also me as their translator.
Itochu has purchased the sales rights of Outdoor Bag over as many as 19 countries including Japan. This means that the above customer of mine will not have to make correspondences with the American maker and its overseas factories in English. They will keep in touch in Japanese with Itochu. This also means that I will no longer work for them as their translator.
As a result, I will lose one of great profit sources.
This has been somewhat damage to me, but this should be a good opportunity for me to explore new customers.