The new company, dubbed Eitopia K.K., will officially be formed in January 2001, with Teijin and Toray contributing 200 million-yen each in investment capital and NEC investing 80 million-yen.
Eitopia will develop an e-commerce system that will not only have one-to-one transaction functionality, but will also allow member businesses to jointly engage in transactions. Eitopia will also serve as a holding company for the purposes of establishing companies that will individually engage in managing e-commerce operations.
The first e-commerce operations company to be established in January 2001 will be Fiber Frontier K.K. The firm, to be formed with a 200 million-yen investment from Eitopia, will mainly engage in business related to the textile industries. In the future, Eitopia will establish new e-commerce firms as it expands its operations to include not only fibers, but also textiles and plastics.
Fiber Frontier will operate two e-commerce sites. One will be a procurement site, supplying raw materials and supplies for member businesses. The second site will handle sales between member businesses and textile manufacturers. Fiber Frontier will attempt to attract a large number of businesses, with the aim of establishing the transaction process on its sites as the de facto standard for the textile industries. Fiber Frontier will also seek financial backing from the participating businesses.
The two new companies, Eitopia and Fiber Frontier, are scheduled to begin operations in May 2001. The goal is for Fiber Frontier’s e-commerce site to attract 170 member businesses in 2003, while handling approximately 100 billion-yen in transactions. With the rapid proliferation of the Internet, a variety of industries have recently begun venturing into e-commerce. In the textile industry, many businesses have also worked on establishing an e-commerce quick response system of procurement and sales using their own specifications.
But for transactions to become more efficient and delivery times to be shortened, as well as to increase customer satisfaction for not only textile manufacturers but for all of the companies making up the supply chain, transactions on websites must be based on a common specification for the entire industry. The new companies are being set up for this purpose, and the participation of many businesses will be sought.
By using these sites for the procurement of raw materials and product sales, Teijin and Toray will improve the efficiency and speed of their operations via the resulting standardization of the business process. With its experience in building and operating e-commerce systems, NEC will utilize the infrastructure of its BIGLOBE ISP service to support the operation and expansion of a secure and efficient e-commerce system.
