zlacker

Brother and Canon are both really good examples of long-term thinking in Japanese companies, along with Nintendo.

All these companies still have their original core competency: Canon still makes optics, Brother still makes home equipment like sewing machines, and Nintendo to this day has not discontinued their playing card products.

Yes, you can buy Nintendo playing cards. I have several sets both modern and older and they’re very good.

These companies think in terms of decades and half-centuries. They may fall trap to occasional trends, but they’re not the ones who rush into a market to innovate; Canon started making a clone of a Leica camera and happened into doing the first indirect X-ray system in Japan, as a single example.

>>indror+(OP)
And it’s not just Japanese companies that manage to pull that off. Some others have managed to do the same. See: Lego, for example. They branched out into movies, games, and parks, but their primary and core product remains bricks.

>>vGPU+6h
It's pretty much anything U.S. oligarchs don't control.

>>vGPU+6h
Lego has had issues for years, and has faced bankruptcy[1] through to several years ago just going "Whoops we made too many bricks..."[2]

Lego's original core competency was toys, but not plastic ones. The original Lego toys were nearly all wooden, but they gained success with the plastic bricks.

It's unfortunate how many spinoffs they've had that failed.

[1] https://business.time.com/2012/07/23/innovation-almost-bankr...

[2]https://www.bbc.com/news/business-43298897

>>indror+(OP)
Well let's not overdo it. Right now if you search the Brother knowledge base to troubleshoot something you'll be surprised to see that the questions are there, but each and every answer says "the page you requested was removed". It works as long it works but in the end, it's the same garbage company.