He'd begun to diversify in the late 1980s, with an investment in geoducks. A geoduck is a type of large clam that lives in profusion in the mud flats of Puget Sound. It is popular in Japan, where it forms the base for many sushi recipes. Yoshida bought a geoduck harvesting and distributing company and started supplying customers in his native country. Business clicked along until fate intervened -- twice. First, a series of geoduck shipments arrived in Japan spoiled. Yoshida, whose b?te noir is disappointing a customer, was furious at the air freight company. The second episode was far more serious: A company diver died in an accident while harvesting geoducks under the sound.
"I always believe in karma," Yoshida says. "When that poor diver die, I understand that the karma no good for geoducks, and I get out. That another lesson I learn from my mother: When a business don't work, after you try like hell to make a success but it don't happen, then you just got to know to walk away."
The geoduck karma wasn't all bad, however. Studying the debacle of the spoiled shipment, Yoshida surmised that other companies shipping perishable goods to Asia must have had similar experiences. With remarkable acuity, the former gangbanger and current saucemeister recognized that the real opportunity lay not in geoducks, but in the supply lines delivering them to market. So Yoshida got into the global freight-forwarding business.
The former gangbanger and current saucemeister recognized that the real opportunity lay elsewhere. Yoshida got into global freight forwarding.
Except for Junki's office and the bottling plant, all of the Yoshida Group enterprises, including OIA Global Logistics, operate out of a bright, low-slung postindustrial cube farm in Gresham, east of Portland. Nothing tangible is produced here, which is a point of pride with Matt Guthrie, the group's president.
"We're information- rather than asset-based," says Guthrie, a tall, relaxed man with a fashionably sparse beard who could serve as a model for Portland's open-collar business culture. "For example, OIA is basically an airline without the airplanes. We do freight forwarding, import brokerage, warehousing, purchasing and delivery, inventory, and risk management. The Pacific Rim and Asia are our main beat: We have branch offices from Bangladesh to Beijing."
OIA's blue-chip customer is its Portland-area neighbor Nike. The progression from delivering clams to trafficking shoe components was actually fairly direct. In its early years, OIA carved a niche in facilitating the transport of perishable goods between the U.S. and Asia. At around the same time, Nike was rolling out its air soles, which were manufactured in Oregon, then delivered to assembly plants throughout Asia. OIA's Asian and air freight expertise made the company a natural choice for Nike.
Air soles, of course, revolutionized the shoe industry. Just as Mr. Yoshida's sauce hooked onto Costco's rise, so did OIA climb aboard the Nike rocket. While continuing to deliver air soles from Oregon to Asia, Yoshida's company now also manages the flow of shoe boxes through Nike factories worldwide. OIA now produces annual revenue of $130 million. Lucky Junki, perhaps; prescient, hustling, and adaptable Junki, definitely.
Whenever Yoshida starts a new venture, from Prison Blues, his inmate-produced line of denim clothes, to Straight Line Sports, which makes water ski gear, he follows the same pattern. During start-up, he immerses himself in the project. Once the enterprise is smoothly functioning, he disengages from day-to-day operations, turning it over to carefully chosen specialists in the field.
Just now, that pattern is playing out with Hagar's, Yoshida's new restaurant in Troutdale. He envisions the spot as both a neighborhood hangout and a place for families to stop after a day at the nearby Columbia Gorge. It might also serve as Yoshida's unofficial headquarters after he semiretires in a year or two to devote more time to philanthropy and civic affairs. Chief among these interests is Portland's Doernbecher Children's Hospital. Yoshida has never forgotten the vow he made years ago in Seattle, after his own daughter's life was saved.
"Once I retire, start doing charity full time, all my business buddies stop calling me real quick," he explains, deadpan. "But if I got a restaurant, I say, 'Come on in and have a free drink.' Everybody like a free drink. Everybody still my friend."
He knows he'll lose money on the restaurant, and it is far from one of his frontline enterprises, yet at this point no detail is too small to escape Yoshida's attention. Today, for instance, the primary item on his agenda is deciding what kind of chicken-wing appetizers Hagar's will serve. Such a task would seem a natural for the blaring, wild-man Junki, but instead he's playing it straight.
He has flourished by straddling actual and metaphorical borderlines, building a fortune on marrying East and West.
Yoshida sits on a sofa in his office, perched midway between the big executive's desk occupying one end of the room and the formal Japanese tea table and service that takes up the other. He has flourished by straddling such actual and metaphorical borderlines, building a fortune on marrying East and West, on managing to be both the quintessential Japanese and American, tycoon and clown.
Two staffers enter the office, each bearing a tray laden with chicken wings, one prepared with mild sauce, the other with spicy sauce. Reading their boss's mood, the staffers silently place the trays in front of Yoshida, then step back a safe distance.
Mr. Yoshida grabs a plastic fork -- the kind you get at a supermarket demo -- and spears a wing off the mild tray. He chews thoughtfully but says nothing. Then he samples one of the spicy wings. His grin lights up the room. i
