Great Figures of the World Series | Episode 26: Kiyoshi Matsumoto, Founder of Matsumoto Kiyoshi - The Man Who Solved Consumer Inconvenience Through Systems

There are many people in the world who have sold medicine.
However,

few have created a system where anyone can buy medicine.

He did not start a pharmaceutical company.

He was not a doctor.
He was not an inventor.
Yet, the system he created

is now spreading throughout Japan.


Matsumoto KiyoshiIt is a drugstore seen everywhere in the country.

But what he truly created
was not a drugstore.


It was a system to solve the inconveniences of daily life.

Kiyoshi Matsumoto
The man who created the prototype of the drugstore industry.
Mayor of Matsudo.
1909-1973 | Founder of Matsumoto Kiyoshi

【Growing up in poverty and inconvenience】

Kiyoshi Matsumoto was born in Chiba Prefecture in 1909.
In Japan at that time,
many people could not receive sufficient treatment even if they became ill.

Medicine was expensive.
It was not something you could buy easily like today.
Depending on the region, there were few pharmacies.
From a young age, he

grew up witnessing
medical disparities,
inconveniences in life,

and regional disparities.
And he had one question.

Why is medicine so expensive?
Why does it not reach the people who need it?

【The reality seen as a pharmacist】

Matsumoto, who became a pharmacist,
entered the industry.
What he saw there was

a complex distribution structure of
pharmaceutical companies
↓
wholesalers
↓
distributors
↓
pharmacies
↓

consumers.
Many intermediaries were involved.

As a result,
prices became high.
Prices were not visible to consumers.

Matsumoto felt uncomfortable with this.

Medicine is not a luxury item.
It is a daily necessity.

If so, shouldn't it be cheaper
and more accessible?

【The idea of a 1-yen pharmacy】

So, what he started
was low-price sales.

This was unusual for the time.
He did not aim for high profit margins.

He lowered prices.
Instead, he increased turnover.

This is a common way of thinking now, but
it was a revolution in the pharmaceutical industry at the time.

In an era when many pharmacies
focused on profit,
Matsumoto thought

with a focus on the user.

【From pharmacy to life infrastructure】

Eventually, Matsumoto realized something.
People do not just come to buy medicine.

They also need daily necessities.
They need cosmetics.
They need household goods.

Then, he should just provide everything together.

The idea expanded from
pharmacy
↓
household goods
↓
daily necessities
↓

to a general store.
This is the prototype of today's drugstore.

He was not building a pharmacy.
He was building convenience for the people.

【The man who put a monkey in the storefront】

There is a famous anecdote that symbolizes Matsumoto's character.
He kept a monkey at the storefront of his pharmacy.

At first glance, it sounds eccentric.
But what Matsumoto was thinking about was not the monkey.

How can I get people to come?
How can I get people to remember the store?
How can I become a topic of conversation in the region?

That was the only thing he cared about.
Local pharmacies at the time did not have advertising budgets like today.
They could not run TV commercials.
Even newspaper ads had their limits.

Then, he just had to create a reason for people to stop and look.

Thinking this, Matsumoto placed a monkey at the storefront.
However, Matsumoto did not stop there.

When children started gathering to see the monkey,
to prevent accidents and trouble,

he asked local schools for cooperation, saying,

"Do not come alone, come with a guardian."
Then, children would come to the store with their parents.

Parents would stop by the pharmacy.
They would learn about the store.
They would see the products.
And they would buy medicine.

However, the Matsumoto Pharmacy at the time
lacked the capital to hold sufficient inventory.
Popular products would sell out immediately.
So Matsumoto thought.

He asked his customers to
give him the empty boxes of the medicine.
And he lined the boxes up on the shelves.
Of course, there was nothing inside.
But to those who visited,

it conveyed that "this is a store that handles this many products."

In today's terms,
it is close to the idea of a showroom or sample display.
Here lies the essence of the man named Matsumoto.
It is not that putting a monkey there was amazing.

He thought about attracting customers.
He thought about publicity that didn't cost money.
He thought about relationships with the community.
He even thought about how to deal with the constraint of inventory shortages.
And he executed them all at once.

Matsumoto was not thinking about advertising.
He was designing the flow of people.
Children come to see the monkey.

Parents come along.
It becomes a topic in the region.
People remember the store.
And they buy medicine while they are at it.
That entire sequence of events

was marketing for Matsumoto.
The man who would later create the massive drugstore industry
was already, from this time on,


creating a system where people move.

【He didn't change even after becoming mayor】

Matsumoto later became the mayor of Matsudo.
But his way of thinking did not change.

When he entered the city hall, he immediately felt uncomfortable.

Citizens are in trouble.
But the response is slow.
The department in charge is unclear.
They are given the runaround.

So he created the

"Just Do It Division".

that was.

【The Just Do It Division】

The philosophy was simple.
Things that must be done immediately, do them immediately.

Potholes in the road,
broken gutters,
wasp nests,
animal carcasses.

If citizens are in trouble, move first.
Finding the department in charge can wait.

This was unusual for the time.
But for Matsumoto, it was natural.
Because he had been doing the same thing at the pharmacy.

Consumers are in trouble.
↓
Look at the site.
↓
Respond immediately.
↓
Gain trust.

This structure was exactly the same.

【Why did he succeed?】

Matsumoto did not like medicine.
He did not like administration either.

What he liked was
problem-solving.

The pharmacy,
the drugstore,
the city hall.

Everything was a means to an end.
The goal was one.
To eliminate the inconveniences of daily life.
That is why his business expanded.
However, the path was by no means flat.

【Why didn't he fail miserably?】

Matsumoto did not have any major failures like being on the verge of bankruptcy.
He did not have cash flow shortages like Konosuke Matsushita.
He did not have massive deficits like Isao Nakauchi.
He did not have organizational collapse like Seiji Tsutsumi.

That does not mean,
it was all smooth sailing.
Rather, his life was

a series of battles with small frictions.

The first wall was the pharmaceutical industry itself.
The pharmaceutical industry at the time
was built on the structure of

wholesalers
↓
pharmacies
↓
consumers.

Prices were effectively fixed, and discounting was not welcomed.
In such an environment, Matsumoto


thought that "medicine is a daily necessity."So he sold it cheaply.

Naturally, this caused a backlash.
Relationships with wholesalers deteriorated.
Purchasing conditions became stricter.

He became an outcast in the industry.
But Matsumoto did not back down.
Because the person he was looking at

was not the pharmaceutical industry, but the consumer.

Another struggle was
low-price management itself.

High turnover with low margins sounds good.
But in reality,
it is premised on continuous sales.

If it stops, it becomes painful.
Inventory piles up.
Capital gets tied up.

Especially in the early days of the business,
there was no such thing as modern chain store theory.
Matsumoto was constantly
thinking about how to increase turnover rates.

The monkey story,
and the 'Do It Now' division,
are both extensions of that.

He wasn't trying to just sell products.
He was trying to create a flow of people.

Furthermore, at the time,
cheap medicine itself was viewed with suspicion.
Today, low prices are welcomed.
But it was different back then.

Cheap medicine is dangerous.
Isn't the quality poor?
There were many such voices.

Matsumoto didn't compete on price alone.
He built trust at the same time.

He provided consultations as a pharmacist.
He built relationships with the community.
He collaborated with the local government.

That is why his low-price strategy succeeded.
It wasn't just price destruction.
It was paired with building trust.

It was the same after he became mayor.
The famous 'Do It Now' division.
It is talked about as a matter of course today.
But from the perspective of the government at the time, it was heresy.

Government offices operate by assigned departments.
However, Matsumoto said,

'The departments don't matter to the citizens.'

There are people in trouble.
Then do it immediately.
It is extremely simple.

But because it was simple, it clashed with existing organizations.

Siloed administration
Precedent-based thinking
Budget allocation

There was resistance everywhere.
Even so, Matsumoto pushed through.
Because he was looking at

the inconveniences of the residents,
not the convenience of the government office.

And even after succeeding, other problems arose.
Organizational expansion.
More stores.

More people.
More regions.
Then the founder's vision becomes diluted.

The sense of the front lines is lost.
Every company struggles with this.

Matsumoto was no exception.
But until the end,
he prioritized looking at the front lines.
The front lines over numbers

The storefront over the conference room
This was the person Kiyoshi Matsumoto was.

Matsumoto's life
is not a hero's tale of falling and rising many times.
It is the opposite.

It was a life of continuously solving small problems immediately
so as not to fall down hard.
That is why he

created the 'Do It Now' division.

Actually, that was not administrative reform.
It was Matsumoto's own life philosophy.

[The Opponents He Fought]

What Matsumoto was fighting against
was not other pharmacies.
What he was truly fighting against were:

・Excessively high drug price structures
・Opaque distribution
・Disparities in medical access
・Siloed government administration
・Consumer inconvenience
・Slow-moving organizations

He didn't want to sell medicine.

He wanted to eliminate inconvenience.

[Was This a Strategy?]

Looking only at the results, it is a success story of Matsumoto Kiyoshi.
However, within it, there is an extremely strong pattern.

Find consumer inconvenience
↓
Go to the front lines
↓
Find the cause
↓
Create a system
↓
Increase users
↓
Gain trust
↓
Become regional infrastructure

Furthermore,

lower the price of medicine
↓
Increase store visitors
↓
Stock daily necessities
↓
Increase visit frequency
↓
Become life infrastructure
↓
Expand as a chain

And even in government,

listen to problems
↓
Act immediately
↓
Solve on the front lines
↓
Trust is born
↓
Support gathers
↓
The region develops

Everything had the same structure.

[Summary]

What Kiyoshi Matsumoto created was not a pharmacy.
It wasn't a drugstore either.
Much less was it city hall reform.
What he created was

'a system to solve consumer inconvenience'

.

Lowering medicine prices.
Creating a 'Do It Now' division.
Putting a monkey at the storefront.

At first glance, they look like completely different stories.
But the underlying philosophy is the same.

How can people be helped?
How can things be made more convenient?
How can things be solved immediately?

Matsumoto was not a pharmacist.
He was not an administrator.
He was a man who solved the inconveniences of daily life through systems.

Next Episode Preview

Great Figures of the World Series | Episode 27: Hirotaro Higuchi
The Restorer of Asahi Breweries

This is the index of posted articles.
If there are any articles you are interested in, please take a look.

Posted Article Index ★You can search for articles of interest here
Posted Article Index #2 ★Explaining the benefits of reading by series
Sun Tzu's Art of War Series Table of Contents ※You can check all 42 episodes
Thirty-Six Stratagems Series Table of Contents
Great Figures of the World Series | Index