How to Start an LLC

The Japanese corporation Sony is well known the world over.  The business’s televisions, computers, video games and other electronic products have developed solid reputations, making it one of the leading electronics manufacturers and biggest businesses in the world.

How did Sony establish itself as such a successful company?

Masaru Ibuka, Sony’s founder, returned from WWII and started a telecommunications business with other engineers he had worked with producing military electronics equipment during the war.  According the company’s prospectus, Ibuka wanted to provide an environment that enabled dedicated engineers to work as much as their passions dictated, as opposed to the poor conditions they worked in during the war.  Improving Japan with innovative, dynamic technologies drove the company’s initial efforts.

Sony’s mission involved bringing to common households the latest technology developed in both the war and academia.  Two examples of fulfilling this mission were the company’s effort to repair shortwave radios and manufacturing an electric rice cooker that consistently produced undercooked or overcooked rice.  Its radio repair was a success.

In 1949 and 1950, the company produced one of the earliest tape recorders and the first to be marketed in Japan.  An advertisement for the tape recorder even reported that the machine would eventually replace the phonograph in homes across Japan.  Later, Ibuka licensed the right to use the U.S. company Bell Lab’s transistor to produce portable radios.  The popularity of Sony’s various radio models in overseas markets like Canada, the U.S., Germany, and the Netherlands marked the company’s first export success.

With this export success, Sony decided to focus on foreign sales as a major part of its revenue.  But instead of simply exporting goods made in Japan, it believed the better strategy would be to establish offices in major foreign markets.  The company set up offices in New York, Shanghai, and Zurich.  Sony Corporation of America was born in 1960.  Truly daring, no Japanese company had ever attempted to do business in the U.S. as an American company (rather than selling imported goods to a U.S. business). 

The 1960s and 1970s saw Sony diversify into new, revolutionary technologies.  After pressure from Ibuka that video recorders were the next product to develop after tape recorders and televisions, the company’s engineers painstakingly developed a Video Cassette Recorder for home use.  The project succeeded tremendously, becoming known for its ease of use and high picture quality, Sony produced 2.2 million VCRs in 1979, an eightfold increase from its VCR production just three years earlier.  Film and television studios even sued Sony on claims of copyright infringement for VCR owners’ recordation of various TV programs and films.   

Next in Sony’s innovative climb to the top, it collaborated with Dutch electronics manufacturer Philips to create the Compact Disc.  The team settled on an optical disc read via laser because it would deteriorate far slower with no instrument contacting it physically as it played.  The CD of course went on to dominate physical music media during the 1990s and 2000s until the rise of digital music files like MP3s and FLACs. 

Sony continues to leave its mark on the electronics industry with its foray into the computer, video game, and Blu-Ray markets, and continues to be ranked high among the largest companies in the world, coming in at the 73rd largest in 2011 with $83.845 billion in total revenue that year.  

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