From auditing with a Big Four firm in Chicago to international amber trading to a joint venture with a Swiss CBD firm in the Japanese market, there have been few predictable steps in Yuichi Takamori’s life and career.
When his father’s work at an automotive supplier took the family from Japan to Ohio while Takamori was in junior high school, “everything was different, even the smells were different,” he recalls. The inevitable linguistic challenges were also “pretty stressful,” but his 14-year-old brain was able to adapt quickly. After completing high school, he went to Ohio State University to study accounting: “I didn’t know what to do and I was advised to be an accountant.”
Following an internship with PwC, in 2008 Takamori joined PwC in Chicago, where he would put in some 19-hour days. “Three years was good enough to understand how audit procedures work and just crunching numbers.” While on reflection, Takamori says he realises the value of the experience, at the time he was more than keen to move on. A new opportunity presented itself in the shape of his brother-in-law, who asked Takamori to join him in a new venture in amber gemstones.
Treasure hunting
From 2011 to 2019, Amber Brothers was in the business of buying amber directly from mines in Mexico and the Dominican Republic and selling it in the Chinese market. Naturally enough, this required a new set of skills, including negotiations and communicating in Spanish, which he had studied in high school but needed to take to another level.
“Landing in Mexico at 25 was maybe even more difficult than arriving in Ohio at 14 in terms of having to adjust to a new environment as an adult.”
While he found the locals in Mexico and the Dominican Republic friendly and easy to get along with, Takamori says a different level of caution was required doing business there. Among the most hair-raising episodes was being held up and briefly detained at gunpoint in the Dominican Republic.
Going green
Returning to Japan for family reasons, Takamori worked for a couple of years before coming across cannabidiol (CBD), one of more than a hundred compounds found in cannabis plants, and one that has shown promise in treating a number of neurological disorders, anxiety, epilepsy, insomnia and pain.
On the assumption that it often takes two or three years for the Japanese market to catch up with developments overseas, Takamori saw an opportunity and in January 2022 founded a joint venture, Green Brothers Japan, with a Swiss family-run cultivator of hemp and producer of CBD (Green Brothers).
Though Takamori had extensive experience in international trade, importing into Japan meant learning new procedures, somewhat complicated by the fact that CBD is tightly regulated, with restrictions that don’t apply in many other countries. Despite the regulations and negative perceptions in some quarters because the compound comes from the cannabis plant, Takamori has been pleasantly surprised by the receptiveness to his business. He received government support for the company’s research and production facility in Nagoya, Sumitomo-Mitsui opened a corporate bank account for the business, and was welcomed into the SCCIJ fold.
Nevertheless, Takamori firmly believes that there is much work to be done before the Japanese CBD sector develops into a sustainable market, including educating people around its potentials, of which he cites better sleep as a primary benefit. Green Brothers Japan is currently focused on its two main brands: Sixty8 CBD vapes and Alpinium CBD oil for sports recovery.
Doing business back in Japan still brings its own challenges for Takamori after working and living overseas for so long. “Even though I look Japanese, inside I’m fully Americanised. When people ask me questions, they expect a Japanese-style response and then are often shocked at how direct I am. I tell them I’m kikoku-shijo [returnee from abroad] and they understand.”
Still, he feels sure he’s exactly where he’s supposed to be. “Steve Jobs talked in a commencement address [Stanford University 2005] about connecting the dots. CBD is a turning point in my life, it connects the dots.”
Text: Gavin Blair for SCCIJ.
