Fujigen

Established in 1960, FUJIGEN has been manufacturing guitars and basses for many world famous labels for half a century. As the original manufacturer, we sign responsible for the high quality (and probably for the success) of many of the worlds most respected brands. Today, FUJIGEN is expanding into a global market with the aim toestablish the name FUJIGEN as its original brand. FUJIGEN claims its leadership in the world of electric guitars due toits know-how in the treatment of wood.

Overseas and global Markets/Becoming No.1

The Fujigen instrumental Manufacturing Co., Ltd. was established in 1960. The term "Fuji" refer to Japans holy Mount Fuji, it was chosen to underline the company's goal to become the world's No.1 guitar manufacturer. At FUJIGEN we started with classical guitars manufacturing, but soon shifted to electric guitars to meet a quickly growing demand by overseas business partners, especially in the USA, where electric guitars were becoming very popular. Classical guitars remained our main product in the domestic Japanese market.Inexperienced with this new approach of electric instruments, our craftsmen and engineers did meticulous analysis of existing guitar products and accumulated its experience and skills by continuous research. By trial and error and through a long series of tests and prototypes, we gathered substantiated experiences as our key to become one of the top guitar makers of the world. It was in 1965 when "The Ventures" entered Japan as the first popular guitar band. Their performance started pop music and a guitar boom in Japan, customer demands soared. Many upcoming guitar manufacturing companies tried to compete in the new market. FUJIGEN was a high rank guitar maker and soon won leadershipin the majority of sales, especially in the electric guitar market. But towards the end of the 60's the guitar boom subsided.Many newcomers closed their business one after another. In the Matsumoto area in Nagano alone, over 50 guitar manufacturing companies went bankrupt. Between 1964 and 1969, more than 80 domestic companies had competed in the electric guitar market. After the crash, only a few manufacturing companies survived, among them FUJIGEN. The years 1965 to 1975 were not very successful, party because of the oil crisis, the high-rising yen and also because some foreign makers pushed into the guitar manufacturing market.

FUJIGEN decided to face the situation. In the middle of the crisis, we decided to face the situation. In the middle of the crisis, we decided on two goals: To become the world's leading guitar manufacturer and to focus investment on the development of products. Striving to reach these goals enhanced our corporate strength. In 1977, through a joint capital investment between Roland Corporation and FUJIGEN, we established the FUJI ROLAND CORP, based in Matsumoto. Together we developed the world's first guitar synthesizer GR-500. As its succesor, the most successful GR-300 / G-808 is still favored by many of today's guitarists such as Pat Metheny. In 1982, we started to cooperate with CBS Fender Corporation to strengthen our footing in the American market. In the early 80's many famous brands had their production outsourced to so called OEMs (Origiinal Equipment Manufactures). FUJIGEN was a top OEM with great experience and production capacity. Our monthly output raised up to 14000 electric guitars. This was world leadership. In 1983, we had reach out goal. But this situation did not last for very long.

Crisis and Rebirth/Entry into disparate industries

Rising costs for production and labor made it soon difficult to manufacture popular products in Japan. Both producers and OEM suppliers started to look for lower production expenses, focusing low-cost factories, especially in China. For a long period, Japan had been called ≪The factory of the World≫, but then businesses were gradually moved to Korea and China and the title has gone over to them. In April 1989 we changed our name from "Fuji Gen Gakki Manufacturing Corp." to simply "Fujigen" and decided to supporting companies, form a group and promote each company's development individually. Together we motivated and encouraged all employees to open up a new era in the world guitar business. FUJIGEN has an accumulation of knowledge and technology in the field of guitar production that has been developed over many years. For the methods of care, drying, and coating for all woods, our know-how and technology are unrivaled by any other maker. We see a worldwide increasing demand into improvement, thus we invest into continuous research for superior original products. In the field of electric guitars, we have decided to put quality over quantity and establish ourselves as a brand for middle and high grade guitars. To develop technologies and to establish them in various working fields is an economical key factor of today's manufacturing companies. Today, FUJIGEN has two business divisions: The M.I. Division (Music Instruments) and the C.A. Division (Car Audio).

FUJIGEN's M.I. division has excellent production lines for electric guitars. We concentrate on top signature models for famous domestic and overseas brands. Within this line, we produce our original FUJIGEN brand guitars and the FgN series for Japanese market. The C.A. division became possible due to our experiences with coating- and sound applications. We produce wooden dashboards, sound control panels, cabinets and gearshift levers for luxury cars. The processes to manufacture all these products from the selection of woods to the final polishing are nearly the same as those of electric guitars. In particular our top coating technology is able to render stunning colors to any wooden surface. There are some secondary business FUJIGEN is engaged: small music boxes named HEART FIELD, an ukulele named PUPUKEA and a Japanese traditional drum named RYU-SYO (rising dragon). Like our electric guitar products, our original music boxes are made of a large variety of wood with expertly calculated sound propeties. In the field of genuine musical instruments, the original PUPUKA ukulele and the traditional RYU-SHO drum stay ahead in terms of manufacturing and sound quality. We have even built a practice hall in our head factory for people interested in drum lessons. All our musical instruments and products are estimated highly for their beautiful sounds.

FUJIGEN has now 3 factories in 3 locations: The head factory in Matsumoto City, the Omachi factory in Matsumoto surrounding area and the Hirooka factory in Shiojiri City. At the Omachi factory, timber is seasoned by our proprietary drying system. Top conditioned wood gets accurately shaped by 5 axis CNC-routers for guitar bodies and necks. In both the head factory in Matsumoto and in the Hirooka factory, products are coated, assembled and finished. Besides these factories, we have affiliate companies such as the Ohotsk Public Wood Craft Promotion Ltd. in the booth of Hokkaido, who cooperate with us in the processing of wood and coating facilities. There are 22 supporting companies in the Matsumoto area cooperating with us as a group. This network of support and cooperation is a strong production key for FUJIGEN. As an investment into the future we take great care of our employees who's accumulation and tradition of technologies and technology is passed on to apprentices.

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