Business history of Epson printer

Epson is part of the Seiko Group, a worldwide conglomerate descended from a clock and watch trading company founded by Kintaro Hattori in 1881. It is a large multinational company that manufactures printers, scanners, multifunction printers, large format printers, cartridge, cameras, LCDs, chips, watches, and clocks, among other products.

Epson printers trace their ancestor back to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, when Seiko designed a device for timing athletic events. The company’s legendary engineer, Susumu Aizawa invented a quartz clock that also printed a record of the time.

After the Olympics, the printing device was initially marketed by Shinshu Seiki, a subsidiary of Suwa Seikosha, as a miniature printer mechanist, the EP-101, which help pave the way for development of pocket sized calculators and smaller, more compact cash registers.

In 1975, Epson America, Inc was formed with US headquarters in Long Beach, California. It entered the US armlet to supply original equipment manufacturer (OEM) components and peripherals to the computer and electronics market.

Four years later, as the personal computer market grew, a need developed for a competitively priced desktop printer for some consumers.

At that time, Epson introduced the MX-80. This successful and widely distributed printer became for many the de facto industry standard for serial impact dot matrix printers. In 2000, Epson introduced its first pigmented-ink printers: the Epson Stylus Pro 7500, 9500, Stylus Photo P2000 printers.
Business history of Epson printer

Seiko Corporation

The founder of the Hattori watch empire, Kintarō Hattori, began his career by opening up his own timepiece shop in 1881. The first company originally called K. Hattori & Co. However, it was not until 1924 that his first brand Seiko watches came on the market.

Hattori started making his own timepieces in 1892 by building a small, experimental production facility. The next year he geared up and built a true factory in Honjo Yanagishima and named the organization Seiko.

The Hattori Tokei Ten (((Timepiece Store) became a full-fledged kabushiki kaisha in 1917. In 1937, the Hattori family established another company call Dai Ni Seiko and build new head office and factory in Kamedo area of Tokyo and taking over all of Seiko’s watch production responsibilities.

By 1938, Seiko was producing more than a million watches a year. In terms of production volume, Seiko overtook its Swiss rival as early as 1949, and its production was more than double Omega’s from 1953.

In 1959, Seiko launched the first self-winding watches, which became the top-end watch after the war, and went on to mass produce it; the production volume of self-winding watches manufactured by the company Suwa Seiko - one of the two watch companies of the Seiko group soared from 430,000 pieces in 1961 to nearly 4.3 million in 1970.

In 1969, Seiko would debut the first quartz movement watch that would change the way consumers viewed wristwatches. They were more accurate than a mechanical watch, and cheaper.
Seiko Corporation