Masters of Reinvention

The Japan Connection

In the early 1990s, Sacher went to Japan on a U.S. government trade mission for catalogers, and he became fascinated with Asia. He recognized that the convergence of two forces made doing business in Japan possible.

First, the dollar was very strong against the yen. “But more importantly, Japanese retailers use trading companies,” Sacher explains. “That means an extra middleman, which pretty nearly doubles the price.