Appeal of Gloves

Appeal of Gloves
Best gloves created with top athlete

In Kagawa prefecture in Shikoku, Japan, there is a glove production site consisting of about 80 companies. This area was started with a winter gloves production and has a history of more than 120 years. Now it has grown to deal in three productions: winter fashion gloves, sport gloves and special-use gloves.

Such as the U.S. major-leaguer Ichiro and a golfer Ryo Ishikawa and Isao Aoki, most of gloves the world's top athletes are now using are made in this production area.

Since the quality of gloves affects the result of games, requests from professional athletes are very severe. To respond to these requests, the companies provide an exclusive designer and operators for each athlete. Those gloves specialists give counsel personally to athletes to create gloves. Besides, comprehensive skills and knowledge of materials development, processing, tools and equipment, and management control are necessary.

Stitch position, texture of materials, and fitting feeling require delicate adjustments. Although Japanese synthetic leather's quality is stable and reliable because of a proper quality control system, quality of natural leather varies depending on season and production place. Therefore natural leather is very difficult to adjust to athletes' requests. But, it is also true that technique has been improving thanks to these severe demands. The manufacturers in this production site now acquired a top-class sophisticated technique in the world.

As requests from professionals are used to improve techniques and products, complaints and demands about general products from customers are used to develop new products. For example, summer season products having UV protection and cool function were created from consumer's needs. These products were started from development of functional fabric, and now became summer's hit products and brought a huge profit to the industry.

Japanese glove industry started overseas productions in the 1970's, which was comparatively earlier than other Japanese leather product industries. Started from Taiwan and Korea, now it spreads to China, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
Because of this early start, all the companies already prepared English-speaking and Chinese-speaking staff and are ready to advance into the world markets.

Sales in overseas market might be still future tasks, but the companies are already handling OEM manufacturing of world-famous brands, and receiving good evaluations. Japanese-made gloves are excellent in design and unique in their high functionalities. They offer a well-balanced wide range of products as well.

In APLF2009, a functional glove of MATSUOKA GLOVE Co., Ltd. won Best Technology Award in the technology category. This award is a good proof of high-technology in Japanese glove production. Some fashion gloves are already sold in department stores in China.

A campaign symbol of JGIA (Japan Gloves Industry Association) has a heart icon in it because spelling of "glove" has "love" in it. At APLF, JGIA showcases the best gloves with love.

Mr. Yasuo HASHIMOTO
Chairman of HASHISEN Co., LTD.
JAPAN GLOVES INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION

List of participants in Hong Kong APLF: Gloves

We send "kindness" and "warmth" through fashion
KURODA CO., LTD. (Leather gloves, Work gloves, Knit products)

KURODA Co., LTD. is one of the top leather gloves production companies in Japan. Since our starting in 1974, we have focused on creation of gloves of our own design, development of new materials and improvement of technology.

Customers these days are more conscious of designs and functions of products. Our company's own brands "STYLISH", "Premium", "Nostalgie", "Limited", "mixture", "RACINE", "neuf", are all planned and produced within our company from concept-decision to target-market setting. Because of this strategy, these brands are highly praised by a wide range of clients such as high-end department stores and mass retailers.

Our company's longtime concept, "Manufacturing products of appreciated and desired", has come down to the present. Now, we handle planning, production and distribution of leather gloves under the slogan of "We send 'kindness' and 'warmth' through fashion".

Having built two factories in Shanghai, KURODA Co., LTD. is now able to accept a high-volume production. A strong connection between the two factories and the office in Japan helps to prevent delivery delay, and to establish reliability.

For clients' prosperity, for employees' job satisfaction, and, more than anything, for customer satisfaction, we will keep evolving by offering "valuable quality and price".

Company name: KURODA Co.,ltd.
Address: 722-1 Sanbonmatsu, Higashi-Kagawa, Kagawa, Japan 769-2601
President: Keiji TANATSUGU (Mr.)
Person in charge: Teruaki KADOTOMO (Mr.) /
             Chen Xueshi (Ms.)
Tel: +81-879-25-9581
Fax: +81-879-24-0227
Email: terry@kuroda.co.jp
xueshi@kuroda.co.jp
URL: http://www.kuroda.co.jp

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