Hinoden Electric Industries Ltd. in Matsue, Japan, in July. Whether businesses like Hinoden can raise prices will determine whether Japan’s much-touted economic revival is real.
Photographer: Fred Mery/BloombergJapanese Businesses Are Taking Lessons in Raising Prices to Survive
After decades of deflation, many smaller companies don’t know how to ask for more money, preventing a healthy wage-price cycle from taking root.
In the 23 years that Koji Shiratsuki has worked for Hinoden Electric Industries Ltd., the company hardly ever asked customers to pay more. Now it needs to — and nobody there knows how it’s done.
So the 44-year-old at the control-panel maker in western Japan took an unusual step. He joined a class on negotiating higher prices, a given in most of the rest of the world but a forgotten skill in the Asian country, where decades of deflation had kept prices and salaries frozen in time.