If you travel overseas regularly, you’ve heard of ‘‘Global WiFi”, the mobile router rental service that gives you cheap, reliable internet access in over 200 countries and territories around the world. Developed by Vision Inc., a leading supplier of telecommunication infrastructure to private industry for the past 20 years, Global WiFi has already been used by over one million customers. We asked Vision Inc. president Kenichi Sano to describe the history behind this popular worldwide service, as well as future growth projections and his ideas and strategies for promoting inbound tourism market in Japan.

―First of all, can you tell us briefly what Vision Inc. does?

Vision Inc. was founded in 1995 as an ICT distributor operating in three main areas: mobile phone and broadband services, office equipment and infrastructure, and marketing services such as website development and internet advertising. We currently have around 200,000 corporate clients, which I suspect is the largest client base in the industry. We have sold more Softbank mobile phones and fixed-line corporate contracts in Japan than anyone else for 14 years in a row. And for four years, we had the highest sales of the new Canon photocopiers.

Our client base continues to grow at 2,000 new businesses per month. Around half of these are venture business startups. There are about 10,000 new companies set up every month in Japan, so this means we are capturing around 10%. This is a fantastic number, making us one of the strongest performers in Japan right now. And we are ambitious; in the future we hope to get it up to 20%.

―What are the key principles of your operations?

Our aim is to supply clients with the things they need, without any unnecessary extras, at a reasonable price. This has been our basic underlying philosophy in developing and supporting new clients. There are many distributors and thirdparty vendors that charge more than they need to. Venture startups have limited access to funds because they’re so new, yet you often hear of them paying exorbitant rates for office equipment and IT services, which makes me sad. We aren’t in it for short-term profits; we’re looking for ongoing growth, so we make a point of keeping our prices low by cutting out unnecessary extras that our clients don’t need. We choose all of our products and services ourselves to make sure that they meet our standards. We are committed to providing the best products and services at the lowest possible prices.

We also place great importance on our relationships with clients. We have a call center specifically for existing clients. Often with venture businesses, you get the situation where the person who signed the initial contact is gone after a few years, and the person who takes over from them has to renew or modify the contract but doesn’t really know what to do because there hasn’t been a proper succession procedure. Our support structure is designed to reduce the workload on the client in scenarios such as this.

In order to be successful and grow your business, you have to minimize wastage of time and money. At Vision Inc., our aim is to help out in both respects.