Investor Relations

Medium to Long Term Business Strategy

Medium to Long Term Business StrategyPrinting Tips

Because the Roland Group carries a wide range of products, it employs a multi-brand strategy for its various businesses and product lines, in order to strengthen its identity in each of its fields.

Roland Brand

In order to respond swiftly to market changes, the Roland Group has created a management structure that focuses on each of its brands. Each company in the Roland Group bases its actions on improving the value of its respective brands, with an overall goal of ensuring a stable revenue base.

The Company's business-specific strategies are described below.

Electronic Musical Instruments Business
  • 1. Realization of "Better Life with Music"
  • "Better Life with Music" is an initiative to create demand for the Company's musical instruments by proposing the enjoyment of music that enriches people’s lives through the playing of musical instruments. It will be possible to enable more people to enjoy playing musical instruments by resolving each of the issues holding back people who are interested in playing a musical instrument, but have held back until now. Adding to people’s lives, the Company proposes the enjoyment of playing a musical instrument and a life more filled with enjoyment.
  • Better Life with Music
  • 2.Promote "MONO-KOTO 301 Project"
  • MONO-KOTO 301 ProjectThe goal of the "MONO-KOTO 301 Project" is to create and develop products that are No. 1 in their categories and increase the Roland Value by 30%.
    "Roland Value" refers to the entire value that the Company can offer its customers. In addition to "MONO-Zukuri ("Design & Manufacturing") through which it seeks to perfect its musical instruments, the Company is also engaged in a variety of widely disseminated "KOTO-Zukuri ("Value Creation") efforts to tell customers about the products such as contests and events, shop-in-shops, and customer support services, through which the Company aims to raise Roland Value by 30% and achieving the highest rank in each product area.
  • 3.Initiatives in Growth Fields
  • In addition to musical instrument fields with a focus on keyboard instruments, percussion instruments, and guitar-related equipment, the Company has identified the following new growth fields; audio equipment fields for professional use; video equipment fields; media production fields based on computer music; and it is focusing its efforts on expanding sales in these fields.
  • In the increasingly digital field of audio and video equipment for professional use, the Company will continue to offer one-stop audio and video solutions, integrating everything from concerts and other live performances to recording, editing, and production.
    In the media production field as well, improved computer performance has made sophisticated music production possible in the home. The Company is committed to cultivating new demand, by offering package solutions that fuse hardware and software that make it easy to produce music with high-quality audio.
    Professional AudioProfessional VideoMedia Production
  • 4.Build a Global Production Regime
  • The Company is advancing a "local production" system: making products close to where they are consumed based on the basic and applied technologies developed in Japan. The goal of this system is to make the business more efficient in terms of transportation and other factors, while also supplying products that match the differing needs of each region. At its production sites in China as well, the Company is moving beyond the manufacture of low-end products for export, and is expanding its production with a view to the domestic Chinese market. It is combining these sites with its production sites in Japan, Taiwan, North America, and Europe, in order to build a global production regime capable of flexible response.
  • 5.Enhance Music Education Business
  • Roland Music SchoolThe Company advocates a new style of lessons based on a unique philosophy called "ism," which improves musicality by making effective use of the distinctive features of electronic musical instruments, such as music data and automated accompaniment.
    Based on this philosophy, in Japan, the Company has deployed a nationwide network of music schools in collaboration with retailers, capitalizing on its assets of proprietary education system and instructor force fostered in-house. The Company will also strive to enhance its business overseas through further collaboration with music education institutions and retailers in each country. Furthermore, the Company has established an Educational Product Division in the fiscal year under review, with an aim to enhance products for the education market along with application proposals.
  • 6.Enhance Distribution through Shop-in-Shop Concept
  • The Company is rolling out a global "shop-in-shop" model, by partnering with retailers to create dedicated sales space for the products in stores. The goal of this model is to enable customers to make purchases with a full understanding of the Company's products, in a crowded field. The attraction of the the Company's products is communicated directly to customers through extensive product displays and dedicated sales staff.
    The Company currently deploys the shop-in-shop model in three formats: Roland Planet, which offers the fun of band performances and music production; Roland Planet X, which is Roland Planet in a more compact format; and Roland Foresta, which brings the enjoyment of playing musical instruments to the home. Moving forward, it will provide extensive support for enriching customers’ lives with music, through the "Better Life with Music" concept including solutions to improve quality of life, applications that stimulate new interest, and richer communication through music.
  • PLANETPLANET XRoland Foresta
    PLANETPLANET XRoland Foresta
Computer Peripherals Business

In the Computer Peripherals Business, the Company is making efforts to provide products and services which transforms customers’ imagination into reality, using color and 3D digital control technologies.
The sign market in developed countries, the Company’s core market, is growing mature, and printer product commoditization is progressing. Against this background, the Company has begun initiatives to shift from "manufacturing (product)" centered business activities to business activities aimed at "value creation" for customers, in order to vitalize the market and create a new value-added market.
The Company will also strive to achieve sustainable growth by cultivating new businesses, while actively responding to changes in the societal structure, such as the economic growth of emerging countries and the development of digital networking technology.

  • 1.Implement Structural Reforms to Unify the Corporate Group
  • In order to respond to environmental changes in the increasingly globalizing market and achieve "value creation," it is important to reflect the customer needs and market trends of individual regions in the Company’s business strategy, and rapidly implement the strategy.
    The Company is moving forward with efforts to create an organization and structure that allows it to not only unify its manufacturing and sales & marketing functions, but also manage the global market in regional blocks to steadily execute business strategies such as cultivation of new markets in addition to efforts on existing markets and joint development with local partners. Moreover, the Company will identify new business opportunities from the perspectives of both markets and technologies, and establish a Steering Committee to promote commercialization, with an aim to enhance the Company’s product planning abilities, improving both speed and competitiveness.
  • 2.Enhancing the Development and Production Regime
  • Based on the "Digital Factory" concept of sharing digital data and working in parallel, the Company has taken a flexible approach to manufacturing, as seen in its concurrent realization of products, and its adoption of cell manufacturing system in high-mix/low-volume production, etc. As diversification of customer value continues, the Company must achieve new levels of product planning strength, cost competitiveness, currency exchange responsiveness, quality, and manufacturing lead time reductions, etc., in order to provide value to customers. The Company will further enhance its manufacturing structure, through renovation of its global marketing-coordinated processes, overseas production through the establishment of a plant in Thailand, overseas procurement, and research and development investments aimed at strengthening core technologies.
  • 3. Increase Efficiency of Business Group Management
  • Business fields are growing more complex, but in order to achieve increased business group competitiveness, the Company must fully utilize all its management resources, improving both its superior position and its efficiency. In 2011, the Company started the "IV" (Integration Values) project in Europe, home to five sales companies, integrating their overlapping management operations and increasing their SCM (Supply Chain Management) efficiency, thereby reducing lead times and costs. It also began initiatives such as reallocation of resources to new business cultivation. This project will be expanded to all business groups, with the aim of increasing both profitability and growth.
    The Company is also increasing web-based marketing and sales activities for consumer products, in order to both improve efficiency and establish a new business model for market creation.
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