Founded in 1935, Karcher Japan's German parent developed Europe's first hot-water high-pressure cleaner in 1950, and these products are still the company's mainstay. In 1980 the company cleaned the Statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, and since then has cleaned and restored some of the world's most famous buildings and sculptures, including the Statue of Liberty in New York and the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. In fact, the company is so well known that "Karcher" has become more than just a brand name: in Europe and North America it is now a widely used verb meaning "high-pressure clean".

Karcher, which currently has subsidiaries in 38 countries and regions around the globe, made its Japan entry in 1988 with the establishment of Karcher Cleaning Systems Co., Ltd. in Tokyo. In 1992 the company changed its name to the current Karcher Japan, and in 2000 cleaned nine of the monuments in Hiroshima's Peace Memorial Park, including the Children's Peace Monument and the Statue of Mother and Child in the Storm. The company uses proprietary technology to clean the precious structures and sculptures without damaging them, and also shows consideration for the environment by using harmless calcium carbonate as a detergent. In Japan, the person charged with uncovering the need for such services and nurturing a market for Karcher products is President Hachiro Sato.

Sato previously served as deputy president of Hilti (Japan) Ltd., the Japanese arm of Liechtenstein's Hilti Corp., and in 1995 accepted an offer to become president and representative director of Karcher Japan, a post he assumed later that year. "Karcher Japan was Karcher's 19th overseas subsidiary, and was established as part of a strategy to expand the market for Karcher products to the United States and Asia. The company's top management believes that local subsidiaries should be run by local people, and that's why a Japanese like me is at the helm. When the Japanese arm was first established, its head office was in Tokyo and its sole factory was in Sagamihara. This geographical separation was hardly efficient, and because we also wanted to construct a new custom-designed building to serve as our head office, we started looking into the possibility of relocating our headquarters and our factory." In other words, Karcher adopted the somewhat unusual view that "it's perfectly possible to do well even when you're not in Tokyo or its vicinity."

Unlike Japan, German society doesn't revolve around a single megacity. Instead, the country is studded with cities with populations in the 500,000 to three million range, such as Munich, Berlin and Hamburg. Even so, they all make the most of their own individual characteristics and function as unique cities.

"For example, even though the state of Baden-Wurttenburg, where Karcher has its head office, is a fairly humdrum area, the state's goal is to grow in economic and industrial importance. It therefore possesses a clear vision for its future. In Japan, on the other hand, people still cling to the belief that a Tokyo address is crucial. Obviously, firms in the fashion or jewellery business will tend to choose Tokyo when they set up shop in Japan, but industrial firms like us don't necessarily need to. As long as there are no problems on the distribution front, practically anywhere is OK."

It was this attitude that led Karcher Japan to a lot in Sendai Hokubu Chukaku Industrial Park in the city of Taiwa, Miyagi Prefecture, where it completed a state-of-the-art head-office building and factory in 1994. The new complex has allowed the company to achieve integrated management of delivery and after-sales service. Sato explains why the firm chose Sendai Hokubu Chukaku Industrial Park as follows: "Access is excellent, because Sendai is only two hours from Tokyo on the bullet train and we're only 10 minutes from the Taiwa interchange on the Tohoku Expressway. But we chose this location after conducting an exhaustive analysis that took into account not just accessibility, but also the tax breaks and the fact that there's a city of one million people right next door. Sendai's climate and natural features are also a lot like those of Stuttgart, where our parent's head office is located, so that was another plus."

Karcher Japan has branches in eight locations across Japan, including Sapporo, Tokyo and Nagoya. For the first ten years, the firm focused on increasing sales to corporate customers which include companies in the car, construction and building-maintenance industries. Later, in 1996, the company began to target consumers, and Sato says that the firm's sales have grown steadily from around 1.01 billion yen in 1995 to around 4.0 billion yen in 2003, and that he is aiming for annual sales of 10 billion yen in the near future.

In May 2003 Karcher Japan reached an agreement with Toyota to become a sponsor partner for Panasonic Toyota Racing, Toyota's Formula One racing team. This global partnership with Toyota should also give Karcher Japan a real boost for the future.

Although President Sato himself is no stranger to Tohoku, having lived in Yamagata until his fifth year of primary school, he says that "people from outside the region tend to have an image of Sendai and Miyagi Prefecture as cold and distant places, and a lot of them don't even know what part of Tohoku Miyagi is in." "And outside Japan," he says, "while people might have heard of Sapporo, Hiroshima or Fukuoka, they tend to view Sendai as just another provincial city, despite the fact that it has a population of over a million."

"While the creation of the new Rakuten Eagles professional baseball team has increased awareness of Sendai and Miyagi within Japan, it hasn't done much to raise the area's profile outside the country. To make Sendai a familiar name to people overseas, I think the area needs to host sporting, artistic or cultural events that have worldwide appeal. Take Stuttgart, for example. The city and the area around it has a population of only 500,000, but its 1993 hosting of the World Championships in Athletics made its name familiar to people all around the world." Sato also makes the following observations. "Germany thinks nothing of accepting workers from other countries such as Turkey, and there have been periods when these workers have actually kept the German economy afloat. With Japan's birth rate continuing to decline, it may become necessary for us to rely on foreign workers to do certain types of jobs, which means that the government will need to act to eliminate discrimination and ensure that these new workers can live comfortably. In addition, efforts to attract companies should not be geared just towards firms that can build big plants. Sendai's convenient location should be touted to encourage firms to establish offices here, and the living environment should be improved to accommodate incoming families."

It is extremely unusual for a foreign-affiliated company to base itself in Sendai or the Tohoku region. It could therefore be said that Karcher Japan's decision to do just that "has opened the door to new possibilities for the Tohoku region." Moreover, new futures cannot be drawn without first-class personnel, and Sato's message that "Tohoku is rich in human resources" could serve as yet another clarion call for firms to come to the region.