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Ohga and Ozawa wanted everyone in the company to experience the joy of creation, as if painting a picture on a clean white canvas. Most Japanese companies operated on a lifetime employment system based on seniority. Under this system, it was very difficult for individuals to realize dreams such as becoming millionaires. CBS/Sony Records wanted to create a new system, one that allowed employees to work toward achieving their dreams and goals and to establish their own identity within the company. Ohga and Ozawa wanted employees to take personal responsibility for creating such a company and they encouraged independent decision-making in a number of areas.
Ozawa, who had personally witnessed the restructuring of Japan's coal mining industry, was determined to avoid a similar situation in which many employees had lost their jobs. Based on the principle of expanding its range of business in order to expand its work force, CBS/Sony Records strove to develop new recording industry-related business. This approach resulted in operations such as the CBS/Sony Family Club mail-order business being established.
In 1973, the company was renamed CBS/Sony Inc., and a new head office building was constructed using the profits made in the five years since its founding. CBS/Sony's determination to become an integrated music company handling all stages of music production from planning and design, through to promotion, manufacture, and sales, had brought it much faster growth than its competitors. Within ten years of its founding, the company became an industry sales leader. In addition to having no debt, the company rewarded its employees with bonuses three times a year and its shareholders with high dividends.
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The CBS/Sony head office in Ichigaya, Tokyo, built five years after the company was established |
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By the end of its tenth anniversary, CBS/Sony had created five separate companies: CBS/Sony Family Club Inc., April Music Inc., CBS/Sony Records Inc. (the manufacturing operation), Japan Records Distribution Inc., and CBS/Sony California Inc. To avoid the stagnancy and inflexibility that often infects large companies, CBS/Sony continued to spin-off operations. This also helped the company maintain a streamlined organizational structure throughout its operations. In August 1978 EPIC/Sony Inc. was established followed by CBS/Sony Publishing Inc. in February of the following year. Furthermore, in May 1979, Sony Creative Products Inc. was set up as a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation. Ozawa succeeded Ohga as president of CBS/Sony in 1980, and he continued to develop and grow the group of CBS/Sony companies in the years that followed.
To mark its 15th anniversary, the company was renamed the CBS/Sony Group Inc. in 1983. At the time, the CBS/Sony Group was working with Sony Corporation to promote CDs and CD hardware. It would take just a few years for the CD to replace the LP as the principal music recording medium. The invaluable know-how of the CBS/Sony Group played a large role in the success of the CD system as it gained acceptance worldwide. By 1983, the CBS/Sony Group's success and accumulated earnings were so impressive that the company was able to build factories and invest in the CD format drawing solely on its own resources, without any injection of funds from either Sony Corporation or CBS.
In 1988, the CBS/Sony Group celebrated its 20 year anniversary. At that time, Ozawa proudly said, "The history of our Group has been similar to a painter painting on a blank canvas. And we have been painting our own portrait on a blank canvas successfully for the past twenty years." In the first year of operation, company sales had amounted to 700 million yen. In the twentieth year, Group sales exceeded 110 billion yen.
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