Brother Industries

The company was founded in 1908 by two brothers to repair imported sewing machines. Then known as the Yasui Sewing Machine Company, the firm launched Japan's first domestically produced sewing machine under the Brother label in 1928. Yasui's early sewing machines were industrial models used in the manufacture of straw hats. The company launched its first household sewing machine in 1932. The growing firm was incorporated two years later and continued to refine its sewing machines throughout the period between the World War I and World War II, adding advanced capabilities like lock stitching and buttonholing, for example. Renamed Brother Sales, Ltd., in 1941, the company began to apply its accrued expertise in motors and manufacturing to diversification during the postwar era. Some of the side projects, like a 1956 motorcycle named the "Darling," turned out to be dead ends. But in 1954 the company launched a series of small and large home appliances that soon grew to include electric washing machines, irons, mixers, fans, and refrigerators. Brother augmented its home apparel line with its first knitting machine during this period as well. Brother rode the wave of Japanese imports into the United States in the postwar era, as its high-quality products were quickly recognized by consumers in there and around the world. The company established a U.S. marketing subsidiary, Brother International Corporation, in 1954 and established European sales operations three years later to guide overseas expansion. The 1960s and 1970s witnessed concurrent moves into industrial machine tools and the electric, and then electronic, office machines that would become Brother's largest product group. The company launched its first portable typewriter in 1961 and changed its name to Brother Industries, Ltd., the following year. Cash registers, calculators, and adding machines filled out the office machine segment over the course of the 1960s. At the same time, Brother applied electronics technology to its line of home appliances, offering tape recorders and stereos in the mid- and late 1960s, microwave ovens in the 1970s. Brother's mechanical know-how combined with emerging electronics to result in the world's first high-speed dot matrix printer in 1971. By 1981 Brother's Information Systems Division carried one of the largest lines of printers. Continuous innovation in the typewriter segment throughout the 1970s culminated in the 1980 launch of an electronic office typewriter. The company founded its Office Equipment Division in 1981 to market a new generation of electronic and computerized typewriters, fax machines, and word processors. By 1983 sales in this segment of Brother's business surpassed its traditionally dominant sewing machine sales. In order to compete with personal computers, Brother added editing screens and memory to its electronic typewriters and launched a word processor in 1987. The company's line of printers diversified widely from its base in traditional impact models (dot matrix and daisy wheel) to nonimpact technologies like thermal transfer and laser delivery systems by the end of the 1980s. Brother applied its expertise in printing and computing to new lines of copiers and fax machines in the latter years of the decade and added specialty office machines, including Japanese-language word processors and memory devices, during this period. The innovative P-Touch Electronic Labeling System enjoyed extraordinary popularity, selling more than 1 million units within just three years of its 1988 launch. Notwithstanding its wide-ranging diversification, Brother continued not only to manufacture but to refine its historical product lines. The company applied computerization to industrial and home sewing machines as well as knitting machines. Brother produced its ten-millionth typewriter in 1980 and its ten-millionth knitting machine three years later. One of Brother's sales strategies has been to keep prices as low as possibl