30 Jun Takenaka Partners Advises Izawa Towel Co., Ltd. on its Business Alliance with WestPoint Group

In early 2020, Takenaka Partners LLC (Los Angeles, CA) acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Izawa Towel Co., Ltd. (“Izawa”) on forming a business alliance with a world-leading towel manufacturer, WestPoint Home LLC (New York) and its subsidiary, Vision Support Services Group Limited (Lancashire, UK) (collectively “WestPoint Group”). Takenaka Partners successfully advised Izawa through the entire process, including partner identification.

Izawa is the leading towel manufacturer in Japan, with 50 years of operation history. It engages in OEM production for many brands, including the largest one in Japan.

WestPoint Home has been a home fashion pioneer for over 200 years. Established in 1813 as a manufacturer of woolen broadcloth, it has become the leader in innovation and construction for home fashions.

Vision Support Services is a world-leading textile company. It is an expert in the sourcing and distribution of textiles to key players within the global hospitality, laundry, retail, and public sector markets. It became a subsidiary of WestPoint Home in 2019.

These three companies aim to reduce their production costs by globalizing their production and sales activities, as well as strengthening their product development capability by combining their respective areas of expertise.

The production cost per towel weight that is typical in Japan, is higher than that of towels conventional in Europe and the USA. This is due to factors peculiar to Japanese towel companies, such as small-lot manufacturing, inefficient production specifications, and high manufacturing loss ratio.

These three companies have been conducting global market research and drawing a new product specification. Significant cost reduction (i.e. more than 20-30%) is forecasted from that of the bath towels ordinary in Japan. The companies are aiming to revolutionize the cost structure in the towel industry. They will establish a global network and supply towels whose specification is uniform across the world, to the worldwide market. They plan to launch the new product with the global specification this summer.

This alliance is expected to enable these companies to construct an infrastructure of big data around the global towel market, and to accumulate advanced technologies, such as sustainable manufacturing technology. They are aiming to increase their product development capability in addition to the low-cost manufacturing capability.