From eyeglasses to medical items : The chairman of Charmant Inc. Mr. Kaoru Horikawa

Sabae City, Fukui Prefecture is famous for worldwide production area of eyeglasses. Among the manufacturers, we visited Charmant Inc.'s headquarters which leads the industry with its own original technology and interviewed with the founder and the chairman Mr.Kaoru Horikawa.

Horikawa showed us the eyeglasses, their famous product "LineArt" which actually he was wearing. Its incredible flexibility was created by their own original new material "Excellence Titan" and their own original processing technology "Laser Welding". The "LineArt"' is so comfortable to wear by the light material and the flexibility so it became a huge hit and had the best sales record at a leading department store in Japan for more than 50 months. (at the time of this interview)

In their showroom, the "LintArt" and other products won the successive Good Design Awards are displayed. They won the award in 1984 for the first time and since then, they won 15 times. Recently, they have won the award for medical items in 2012 and 2014.

Reference : Micro Neuro Surgical Instruments(Micro Scissors) GOOD DESIGN AWARD

Horikawa picked up one of the medical items and explained to us how the technology of eyeglasses manufacturing was used for them.

He says "Medical field is difficult." However, the company which challenges a new field exuded unshakeable confidence toward the technology cultivated through eyeglasses manufacturing.

May 7th, 2015
The interviewer : Genji Nosaka