Kontex's corporate slogans. 

Kontex: Resilience Through Integration

Kontex, one of Imabari's highest revenue towel companies, originated in the immediate postwar era. After returning from military service, Seiji Kondo’s grandfather found employment at Matsushita Electric (now Panasonic). From that experience, he absorbed two lessons that later shaped his own entrepreneurial path when he established a towel company in Imabari.

The first lesson concerned quality. In the mid-twentieth century, towels in Japan were sold by weight. Heavier products could command higher prices even when coarsely woven or poorly finished. Kontex departed from this practice by selling towels as individual items, positioning quality rather than mass as the measure of value.

The second lesson concerned distribution. Drawing from Matsushita’s model, Kondo built an exclusive distributor network. Each territory was assigned a single authorized distributor, who was required to sell at fixed prices. This structure established Kontex as a recognized marker of quality within Japan while also ensuring internal expertise in design, production, and sales.

Together, these principles of product quality and disciplined distribution distinguished Kontex in the mid-twentieth century and laid the groundwork for an identity rooted in integration and control across the supply chain.

Resilience Through Integration

Kontex’s distinctiveness becomes especially clear when contrasted with the specialized model dominant among many Imabari firms. Figure 1 illustrates the structural difference.

In the integrated model exemplified by Kontex, design, production, and sales are housed within the same organization. This eliminates the layers of markup that occur when these functions are outsourced to independent firms. By keeping the entire value chain in-house, Kontex not only reduces costs but also increases control, allowing for rapid adjustments in design, flexible production runs, and coherent brand positioning.

In the specialized model, by contrast, different firms carry out each stage of the process: design firms develop patterns, production firms manufacture textiles, and distributors or large brands control access to markets. While this structure allows for deep specialization at each node, it also fragments control and raises costs as each stage adds a markup. For smaller players, this can limit competitiveness under globalization.

Resilience Through Technology

Two generations later, the leadership of Kontex passed to Seiji Kondo. Having studied computer science in Tokyo and worked in the IT sector during the early years of Japanese digitization, Seiji returned to Imabari with a technical fluency unusual among regional industrial leaders.

Kontex, like many firms in the region, had already begun integrating functions as the number of cooperating companies diminished. Under Seiji, however, integration acquired a technological foundation. He viewed technology not as a supplementary tool but as the infrastructure that rendered full integration possible.

• Digitization of orders. While most local firms continued to rely on fax machines, Seiji introduced a custom digital portal to process orders electronically.

• Digitization of production. Scheduling, inventory, and quality control were consolidated into a single software system, providing visibility and control across the value chain.

• Modern equipment. Kontex routinely invests in new looms and machinery, unlike firms such as Watanabe Pile, which still operate 1960s-era equipment.

The difference was visible on the factory floor. At Watanabe Pile, production retained an artisanal, analog character, whereas Kontex operated as a digital ecosystem. Orders appeared instantly on monitors, data flowed continuously, and even the heavy lifting of cotton strands was mechanized to reduce worker strain.

The outcomes were equally distinct. With a similar factory footprint and workforce to its peers, Kontex achieved significantly higher throughput and product diversity. Today its portfolio exceeds 350 unique products, compared to the limited ranges offered by most specialists. In this sense, technology became the mechanism through which full integration could be sustained and expanded.

Kontex's digital production management and ordering system contrasts with Watanabe Pile's analog equivalent. 

An assisted lift machine, which uses vacuum suction to lighten loads, thereby reducing long term injuries for workers who lift boxes. 

A Human-Centered Approach

For Seiji, technology and integration are inseparable from the human side of the business. He insists that every investment should make work more sustainable. Heavy lifting machines are installed to raise productivity and protect workers from long-term injury. “A machine should take the strain, not a person,” he explained. Digitized systems reduce paperwork and overtime, which he frames as a way to give employees back their evenings. Stability in pay and employment is designed with the future in mind. “If someone spends their life with us, their children should be able to reach further than they did,” he said.

This thinking extends to corporate identity. Statues of the founder line the hallways, slideshows narrate the company’s history, and slogans such as Always Think and Keep Challenge are printed across walls and documents. These reminders are part of Seiji’s effort to tie everyday routines to a larger purpose. In his words, “A good towel is made by good hands. Good hands are made by a good life. A good life is found when work has meaning". 

The result is that Kontex’s integrated system is held together as much by Seiji’s vision of human commitment as by the technology that supports it.

Conclusion

Kontex under Seiji Kondo represents a distinct model of industrial survival in Imabari, in contrast to the strategy pursued by Miyazaki Towel. Yohei Miyazaki safeguarded his firm by concentrating production on a single product line and relying on a small network of trusted collaborators. Seiji Kondo, by contrast, secured Kontex’s continuity by expanding the company’s scope, consolidating multiple functions, and embedding technological systems across the organization.

These divergent trajectories illustrate two pathways through which localized industries have adapted to globalization. Miyazaki pursued survival through specialization, while Kontex pursued survival through integration.

Neither approach can be explained by market conditions alone. Both are shaped by intergenerational legacies, the vision of current leadership, and the responsibilities articulated toward future generations. The endurance of these firms demonstrates that industrial resilience in Imabari is produced not only through economic adaptation but also through social and cultural commitments that extend beyond the market.