Nikken was borne out of an idea that occurred to Isamu Masuda back in the early 70s. Seeking cash to help his handicapped son, the young Japanese shop assistant hit upon the idea of putting magnets in people’s shoes – and created a business empire.
Magnets? It all sounded so weird, as strange stories spread about astronauts using magnets in outer space to stay healthy, and self-styled experts peddled fanciful theories about why magnets have healing powers. It turned out that NASA really does put magnets in astronauts’ suits, and magnets have been used therapeutically for thousands of years...
Isamu Masuda is now a slim man in his 70s who glows with health and exudes warmth. However it wasn't always like that - he was a sickly child from a poor family, with chronic hepatitis. His father died in the Second World War and his mother managed a small shop. At 18, Masuda found a job with a bus company and over the next few years worked his way up from washing buses to being a desk clerk. At 27 he met and married his wife Fumie, who was working as a travel guide.
Obsessed with health, he worked part-time in a health shop, and the chances are he would have continued in this ordinary anonymous way, had not his son, Koji, been born with a tragic handicap. Doctors couldn’t explain why Koji had been born with this extreme defect. Isamu was devastated and, still sickly himself, was galvanized into action.
He decided, simply, that he had to make money:
“The doctors said it would be very expensive for Koji to have an operation and I had nothing.”
But he also wanted to do it in a way that would help others as well:
“I started thinking about how we use pebbles in our public hot baths. When you walk on them they stimulate the soles of your feet. I knew magnets were therapeutic. In Japan we’ve used them for thousands of years to help healing. I put the ideas together and made a magnetic insole for a shoe.”
He began to sell his insoles door to door. There was immediate success. His customers claimed they felt better. Their circulation improved, they had fewer illnesses; even chronic insomniacs began to sleep through the night.
“There were many problems and difficulties to face, but what drove me on and gave me courage was Koji. I had a vision. I was 100% certain that one day, people everywhere in the world, would be walking on my insoles. I knew I could do it, but I had no idea how.”
He approached Katsumasa Isobe, a financier, who remembers those early meetings:
“Isamu was not well. He coughed and looked awful but he had a good idea so I supported it.”
...and by the time Koji was two, Isamu could afford the medical treatments his son needed.
As part of the Japanese tradition of holistic medicine, Isobe and Masuda expanded the business without worrying too much about why the insoles actually helped people to feel better. They were circumspect, making no medical claims, and never saying they could cure the sick – only that their magnets would give energy, and promote health and well-being.
For the first three years Nikken sold only insoles. Soon the product line and geographical reach was extended first by distributors in Taiwan, China and Thailand, swiftly followed by management staff setting up offices and factories. Nikken became one of the fastest growing companies in Japan's history and by 1993 had moved into 12 countries.
As Nikken expanded, Isamu Masuda mused that physical health was not enough on its own:
“There are five pillars of ‘wellness’. You must also be healthy in your mind, in your close relationships, in finances and in your connections with your community to experience total ‘wellness’.”
Because his own life had been filled with health challenges, this visionary father, like many Nikken consultants since, determined within himself to find an answer that would provide his family with both the money it needed, and the health he himself had been deprived of as a child.
Nikken was built on Masuda's original magnetic insoles invention. Today Nikken still supplies the latest in advanced magnetic insoles. Click on the banner below
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Adapted from a story by Sam Westmacott via www.theroyalalliance.com
