Tohru Yamai | Snow Peak Co., Ltd. - User's Voice | TranTixxii - Material transcending ages: Superior material properties and Elegance

Mr. Tohru Yamai
Snow Peak Co., Ltd.

An item to connect man with nature Titanium mug

Snow Peak Co., Ltd.
Tohru Yamai
Representative Director & President

I make myself what I really want.

©Snow Peak Co., Ltd.

I am still camping out 45 to 60 nights a year.
The core value of camping is in the revitalization of humanity. The outdoor market exists only in advanced countries. We, the people living in the excessively civilized society, are living with a lot of stress which should be relieved.

In 1986, I proposed an outdoor style of auto-camping meaning to go on a camping trip by car. Until then, camping was associated with the image of being an inexpensive means of travelling for young people like backpackers and hitchhikers.
However, an outdoor life to enjoy camping in a systematically designed kitchen under a canvas in a dome tent and tarp was regarded anew as a life-style and the camping scene was transformed into a rich time for deepening family ties and having a good healing time in nature.

High-end, “pointy” image

Titanium mug ©Snow Peak Co., Ltd.

My father, the founder of the company, was a climber who loved above all Mt. Tanigawa. He developed his own climbing gear as he was not satisfied with the then available equivalents. The will that you should make yourselves what you really want underlies the manufacturing practice of our company.

There are two reasons why our company has come to manufacture titanium mugs. One reason is that titanium is lightweight and does not rust, meaning that it is an excellent product. The other is that the time of the launch overlapped with the timing of global expansion of our company. I wanted to create a high-end, “pointy” image of our brand. We promoted titanium mugs as one of our flagship products in an attempt to position our company as a platform to convert the manufacturing technologies fostered in Tsubame-Sanjo of our locality into a life-style and transmit information globally.

Our mugs bear the engraved mark of “titanium JAPAN”. It symbolizes our respect for NIPPON STEEL that supplies the material chosen by our company, a manufacturer of outdoor goods that require the most rigorous quality control in the world and the pride of the Japanese way of manufacturing.

Last year, we newly developed a tubular sake container and small sake cup both made of titanium. It bears our implied message that you will enjoy with this set of sakeware the taste of crispy and dry local sake from Niigata served at an ambient temperature. The tubular sake container and the Japanese sake in a bottle are displayed at our own store in New York City. Titanium still plays the role to showcase the image of the high-end, “pointy” brand of our company.

A new proposal for restoration of humanness

The titanium mug took shape by means of drawing on the expertise of metal processing fostered in Tsubame-Sanjo.

We value sensing through communications with our customers what are their life-style and potential needs, and I believe such products that exceed customers’ needs can be created by making what we as users really want. We are making efforts in product development to accomplish our mission that those who use the products created through a unique process of manufacturing not available elsewhere should be embraced by nature to recover their humanness and that those who know such pleasure should increase in number. Since our company is a manufacturer that makes products from titanium and other materials and creates new values, we are happy that a new material has been made available to us. We have great expectations about NIPPON STEEL’s development of materials.

Our resolutions for the future

The auto-camping population is Japan is said to be about eight million. Those who are released from daily stress to restore their humanness account for only 6% of the total population. So, we jointly developed a “half-outdoor space” plan with a developer of condominiums. The half-outdoor space is a proposal for an urban outdoors that means outdoor life representing non-daily “outdoors” is incorporated into a home representing daily “indoors”. We created the space by installing a dedicated canvas shelter-like structure designed by our company over the terrace through to the private garden area of the condominium on the ground floor where people can eat, relax and sleep and enjoy a comfortable nature-oriented life on a daily basis by combining the outdoor products of our company. The intervention of our company helped heighten the real-estate values of the condominium on the ground floor. A social reason for existence is required of a corporation. I would like to collaborate with many different industry circles beyond the field of outdoor business for enhanced value so as to contribute to the restoration of the humanness of many people.