A Solution to the Global Water Shortage?

Home-Grown Skills

Higashiosaka boasts Japan’s highest concentration of small neighborhood factories and workshops, and the skills nurtured there played a large role in the development of the Bubble90.

When Takano launched his company after working in the IT industry, he was asked to help market some water-conserving products for a mail-order company. He looked at the products and thought, “I can do much better than these.” This inspired him to start development on his own.

“As I was doing market research, I discovered that the scarcity of water is an increasingly serious problem around the world, and I decided to focus on this area. My father runs a small factory in Higashiosaka and has a wealth of experience. When I told him about my idea, he came up with a prototype in just a few hours. If I had commissioned the task to someone else, it would have taken at least several days, so his skills were a great asset that enhanced the efficiency of the development work. I’m not taking over my father’s business, but I like to think I’ve inherited his technical skills.”

World-class machine tools are arrayed in DG Takano’s small factory.

Despite winning a major award in Japan and receiving praise from overseas, the Bubble90 was not an immediate hit.

“When we first started developing the product, Japan was in the midst of an LED lighting boom. Companies were more interested in saving electricity than in saving water,” says Takano.

The Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 also had a large impact, as the disaster spurred public institutions and private companies to direct their attention toward saving energy by switching to LED lighting. As a result, there were few organizations embracing water-saving products.

“I decided to start a sales company with an acquaintance in Tokyo and changed our sales strategy to concentrate on restaurants. At first we didn’t have much luck, but one restaurant chain let us install them in a single location on a trial basis free of charge. Several months later they came back and said, ‘It’s amazing how much our water costs have come down!’ They decided to install them in more than a dozen restaurants. After that, we used the same method and steadily increased our customers. Together with word-of-mouth, we saw a sudden jump in orders,” says Takano.

A well-known national restaurant chain has installed Bubble90 in many of its restaurants, and Takano’s company has grown from just 3 employees a couple of years ago to more than 50 today.

Each Bubble90 is machined with precision.

A Solution to a Global Problem

Today the Bubble90 is marketed only to businesses, and there are no home versions for sale yet. But surely there is great latent demand for a product that is so effective in conserving water.

“Currently we can barely keep up with orders from restaurants, and our sales department has all that it can handle. We hope to slowly build up our organization and are looking to launch a home-use version in 2017,” says Takano.

The Bubble90 is currently being used in washrooms in schools, hospitals, and factories in addition to restaurants. It is also used to wash parts contaminated with toxic substances, and the result has been a dramatic reduction in the amount of polluted wastewater to just 10% of previous levels.

In recent years, the global decline in water resources due to abnormal weather has been a concern along with water pollution. The Bubble90 has demonstrated its effectiveness and is promising for the contribution it can make to preserving the environment.

“The Bubble90 was originally developed to be attached to faucets to reduce the amount of water used in washing under running water. This alone makes it an environmentally friendly product. In Japan, the amount of tap water conserved can be converted to CO₂ reductions. The Bubble90 can also be used for hot water, and decreases in the amount of hot water used will lead to decreases in electricity or gas consumption. Thus, it can also be considered a total energy-saving product. We want to build up solid manufacturing and marketing systems that take full advantage of ideas, technical skills, and production skills so that people around the world can use Bubble90,” says Takano.

Takano operates the latest machine tools himself and is involved in development and manufacturing.