Japan Camera

From Mushrooms to Millions:
The Asa Family

The word "asa" is a mountain in Japan. The
letters A.S.A. refer to film speed in cameras.
When you bring the two together, you end up with the Asa Family of Vancouver/Japan/
Toronto, whose Japan Camera Centres number over 100 from coast to coast, with
sales (including those of Asa Corporation
Limited) of over $100 million. Nearly 1,000
people work within the system across
Canada, and the story of how three brothers
ended up creating that immense company is
one of the most extraordinary -- and fearful
-- business stories since World War II.

The war is worth mentioning, since it lies at the core of how three young Japanese-
Canadians -- Roy, the president of Japan
Camera, born in 1934; Kenji, its executive
vice-president, born in 1936; and John, the general manager/secretary/treasurer, born
the following year -- have worked together as if they were one. Yet if your initial response
was "They must have been interned during the war," you are wrong. And in many ways, it
might have been better for them if they had been.

For although the father of the boys had come to Vancouver in 1925 and had two thriving
grocery stores in that city by the time his three sons were born, he actually chose to send
his family back to Japan in 1939, and took the last boat out himself. The reason was logical as it was ultimately horrible, for he had been in the army, and felt that he had to return to his native land.

One can already guess to where the family moved: a small suburb of Hiroshima, which lost
391 of every 1,000 inhabitants when the bomb fell on August 6, 1945. Exactly three days
earlier, women from the Asas' village were ordered into Hiroshima to help tear down
buildings in case there was a bombing, and when The Bomb fell, Mrs. Asa, among
thousands of others, was killed. Overnight, the three teenagers found themselves orphaned.

Their father was fighting in China; their mother was dead. "Either we stick together or we
go to an orphanage," they said, and it became the basis of their lifelong relationship. "It's
unusual for three brothers of such close ages to work together," says John Asa. Oldest
brother Roy is given most of the credit for running the child-run family, as they all took
turns cooking, cleaning, and going to school. They remained on their little farm until their
father returned from China three years later. (Since he could speak English, thanks to his
years in Canada, he interpreted for the Allied forces.) "We didn't know if he was alive!"
say the sons today. "It was a blessing, since that lack of knowledge forced us to work
together." The other blessing was that none of the boys ever got radiation poisoning; nor
have any of their children been born with birth defects.

There was no major immigration to Canada after the war, but the word came of a
mushroom farm in Port Credit, just west of Toronto, which was looking for Japanese to
pick for them. "We were small, and hard workers, and so, good for the job." Their father
declared, "Canada is a great country; you three go together, or no one goes." In 1954
three young Japanese Canadians arrived at Toronto's Union Station knowing no English.
Nor would they learn any at the mushroom farm, where there were 100 Japanese working, all speaking their native tongue.

The $75 a month, which included room and board, was acceptable, but not the lack of the vernacular. So the three Asa brothers studied English twice a week at night, after picking mushrooms all day. It is an insight into their mutual drive that they felt the two nights a week inadequate and soon began hitch-hiking into Toronto to take two more nights a week of English.

Eventually, the two oldest Asas declared, "We have to know the Canadian way of life!" So they placed ads in the Toronto papers, announcing, "SCHOOLBOYS LOOKING FOR ROOM AND BOARD; WILL DO HOUSEWORK, IN EXCHANGE FOR THE PRIVILEGE OF ATTENDING A TORONTO HIGH SCHOOL." Kenji Asa soon found a home, as did John, nearby. Oldest brother Roy stayed at the mushroom farm, since his contract ran for several more years.

As soon as they were settled in suburbia, Kenji and John Asa started a garden business
in their neighbourhood, handing out mimeographed sheets which read, "Expert Japanese
gardeners want to do your work!" They hired children at $1 an hour, putting them to work
at different houses, and handled about 20 homes at $5 a throw. "Our secret was service,"
they recall today. "We would go in the middle of the night to sprinkle water on the lawns.
Our houses were always green, while the professionally-cared for ones were brown!"
(They also changed summer/winter windows.) This went on for two years, and they
managed to save $1,500 each summer.

In the meantime, oldest brother Roy finished his indenture at the mushroom farm and began to work at the Japan Trade Centre for $36 a week, "doing everything." After a number of months, his boss there told him, "Roy, you work so hard! You should go into business!" One day, almost mystically, the oldest Asa dreamt of a store-for-rent sign which he had seen sometime before. He went there the next day and asked how much. It was $200 a month, which was "a lot of money." He decided that it would be a camera store, although the reasons were hardly profound: "We'd taken a few pictures; that's all."

Asa Camera Store opened its doors on June 11, 1959, with a stock totalling $2,000 in
value. "We made our own showcases," they reminisce today. They didn't even know what
insurance was, and were turned down when they applied. When they wanted to do
photofinishing, they were told by the developers that the negatives must be brought in. So
John, who had a $5 bike, would ride the film each day to the developers. It was all cash,
no credit, and although the boys lived in a $16-a-week rooming house, they did
surprisingly well on the tiny street off Yonge, in downtown Toronto: Sales were around
$300,000 the first year.

As with Kenji's and John's Japanese gardening business, service and sincerity were all.
"We couldn't advertise, so we mimeographed announcements and stuffed thousands into
mailboxes of homes and apartment houses all over downtown." They looked after their
customers carefully, and claim still to have many of their original ones.

They soon changed their name to Japan's A.S.A. Camera Shop, and then, after a move to
Yonge Street to take advantage of the new subway which had just opened its doors, they
changed it, for the last time, to Japan Camera Centre (although they sold German cameras, too).

By 1962 the Asa brothers obtained the first of their exclusives: Ricoh of Canada asked them to handle the distribution of their products. The following year they opened their first branch store in Hamilton, Ontario, about 40 minutes to the west of Toronto, which "did so much business that Roy had to commute there every day."

The expansion was hardly explosive; their third store did not open until 1965, in a mall in suburban Toronto, and "it was a bomb." With the first three stores, sales were about $1
million. In 1968 the first Montreal store opened, and by 1970 they established camera
departments in seven Sayvette stores, and seven more in the Robinson chain. "But we
never thought about franchising at that time," recall the brothers. "We weren't that smart."

What was smart, as well as lucky, was the chance meeting that Roy Asa had in 1974 with
a man who made photofinishing equipment. Four years later the Asas once again ran into
the man, and soon they were in Japan, in October 1978, working out the Canadian
distributorship to the revolutionary QSS Noritsu, a machine which does quality printing in
less than one hour.

Although the Asa brothers did not invent it, their faith in the machine, and the way they
grabbed the Canadian rights, would be as important to the future of Japan Camera Centres as Albert Cohen's discovery of a minor Japanese firm which eventually became Sony, back in 1955. Cohen's recognition of a breakthrough in transistor radios turned his Winnipeg centred General Distributors into a half-a-billion-dollar-a-year company, and the Asas would experience a similar explosion of success.

The Noritsu meant that 110, 126, and 135 film could be processed, printed, and paper-
processed within one minilab system, and since it worked without darkroom facilities, it
could be placed almost anywhere, taking up little space-less than 300 square feet. There is now one of the minilabs in every single Japan Camera Centre store, and they have sold
300, at a cost of between $100,000 and $250,000 each, even to their competition.

The machine wasn't accepted at first, and because no camera stores would buy them, the
brothers started selling them to shopping centres. John Asa supplied the one-hour photo
trademark, and the logo, design, merchandizing, and construction of various locations,
since he kept selling the machines to people who had no retail experience.

By 1979 the Japan Camera Centres had reached a hiatus. The concessions in the Sayvette camera departments had all gone under, and they had only nine stores -- "all good stores" -- in Ontario and Quebec, with sales of under $10 million a year.

So they started franchising, a concept which now proved rather irresistible, thanks to the
Noritsu minilab. In May 1981 the Asas opened their first franchised store in Ottawa. The
fee was $30,000, as well as $200,000 in equipment, $40,000 in inventory, and $100,000
for the lease. It wasn't cheap, but by the end of that year they had 18 company-owned
stores and 27 franchises, with sales of about $12 million.

In 1982 there were only 15 company-owned stores, but 46 franchises, totalling 61, with
sales up to $26 million. In 1983 there were 16 companyowned and 71 franchises, with
$37 million in sales, and the following year there were 26 company-owned and 87
franchises, with $50 million in sales. The end of 1985 had Japan Camera Centres in all ten
provinces, numbering 28 company-owned and 103 franchises, with sales of over $65
million. As of the mid-1980s, the Asas were running the only national camera store chain in the country, since Black's is primarily in Ontario, Direct Film is in Ontario and the east,
Astral appears in only a few provinces, and Kits Camera operates mainly in the west.

Although the stores average around $550,000 a year each, the basic breakdown in
earnings is a shocker, and clearly shows how wise the Asas were to go with the minilab.
Film, cameras, frames, and accessories make up only about 30% in sales, while a full 70% of sales comes from photofinishing. And what an attractive breakdown that is, since while there is, at the most, 25% profit in the former items, photofinishing offers profits of between 75 and 80%! In other words, there is up to a $16 dollar profit on a $20 roll of film, using the Noritsu.

The Asa brothers note that, by 1990, 60% of all photofinishing in the States will be of the
one-hour variety, and that is a $5 billion business. "In Canada, assuming that the number
will be around $600 million," says John Asa, "that means at least $300 million should be
one-hour. We'll get our share!" There are technicians and quality control in every Canadian province to fix the minilabs, and the Asas have built up a substantial inventory of Noritsu parts.

What is especially promising, in a geographically absurd country with few major population centres, is that the Asas feel there are profits to be made in smaller towns as well: "I just came back from a small place in Nova Scotia," notes John Asa. "There were only eight thousand in the town, but seventy thousand in the surrounding area. I see possibilities in small communities enjoying the same one-hour service as the big ones." Like many camera store owners, the Asas once "looked down on photofinishing," but no longer: "Now we see camera sales enhancing photofinishing." And with average new-camera buyers using 14 rolls in their first year behind the shutter, the potential is almost endless. (And it should be noted that the tens of millions of dollars in sales of the Noritsu minilab were not included in the sales noted above; these fall under the Asa Corporation Ltd., which, like Japan Camera Centres, is divided equally among Roy, Kenji, and John, and their families.)

The three brothers from Vancouver, Hiroshima, and Toronto feel that the real reason for
their success is their faith in the Golden Rule ("Jesus Christ was right," they say). "We treat
staff like partners," they insist, "not as employees." There is no profit sharing, but they feel
they have a close understanding of their workers, since they were never store managers
and worked on the floors of their shops as late as 1976. They also have as much faith in
franchising as do their franchisees: "Franchising makes more people rich! It's a life-style,
and a happy business. Memories are precious to customers, and photofinishing provides
them."

They certainly never bled the business: "Our philosophy is, we can only eat three meals a
day and can only drive one car." When the brothers were starting their families, back in the early 1960s, they were taking home $20 a week each, while the salesmen in the stores
took home between $80 and $100 weekly.

In 1959 the brothers joked with one another, "We want to be the best, not necessarily the
biggest." Indeed, they never imagined having more than one store. But there are clues in
that past which help explain why one store became 131, and $300,000 in sales turned into $100,000,000, in barely over a quarter century: the death of their mother, their decision to work together, their passion to learn English, their gardening service, their recognition of the Noritsu minilab, and the madly successful franchising. And one more, which suggests that work is work, no matter how much money, prestige, or future is involved: "I enjoyed the mushroom picking too!" says John Asa, smiling. "Although Roy held the record there; he once picked two hundred sixty-one five-pound boxes of mushrooms in a single day!"


Second City

Making "The Second Country" Own Second City: Andrew Alexander

Second City. Chicago's self-deprecating name for itself, ever in the shadow of New York.
But also the name of the most successful improvisational troupe in North America history,
creating some of the best satire on earth. Second City, where Mike Nichols, Elaine May,
Ed Asner, Alan Arkin, Joan Rivers got their start. When Andrew Alexander opened the
Canadian branch plant of Second City in the "Second Country" to the north of the First, the opening cast included Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, John Candy, Eugene Levy, and Joe Flaherty. Later additions included Dave Thomas, Andrea Martin, Catherine O'Hara,
Harold Ramis, and Martin Short, making the Canadian version, even more than the original American one, responsible for shaping what would be North American humor for the last quarter of the 20th century. And today, in the 1980s, it is that Canadian, Andrew
Alexander, who owns it all -- even the Chicago "branch plant." Thus are the ways of
Canadian imperialism, in all their insidiousness.

Andrew Alexander -- baby face on a huge head, solid good looks, and greying hair --
sits stretched out on a couch below a photo of the cast of "SCTV," the inspired television
version of Second City, which had received such praise in the late '70s and early '80s.

Across from him is a giant painting of the "owner" of that mythical TV station, Guy
Caballero (alias Joef Flaherty). He was born in the spring of 1944 in London, England, the third of five children, and came over with his family in 1951. His father was an aeronautical engineer, his mother a homemaker. "I was a daydreamer," he recalls."I had an imagination." His parents dreamed as well, wanting a "fresh start," and it was a "coin toss" between Australia and Canada. "There was a whole movement from England in the 1950s," remembers Alexander.

The initial move was to Caledon East, a small community north of Toronto. The children
attended a one-room schoolhouse there, or rather, the other Alexander children did. "I
played hookey all the time," says the future entertainment czar. "I used to sneak off and
go swimming."

The family later moved to Brampton, a larger and closer suburb of Toronto, where
Alexander graduated high school. "I had a real problem with schools all the way through,"
he confesses. "I kept being transferred, and just didn't like it." He finally spent two years in
technical schools, switched to business and commercial, and went to Tri-State College in
Indiana, where he took business for a year. Then it was back to Toronto's Ryerson for two more years, the first in business administration, the second in hotel management, "since I heard that there was wine tasting at ten A.M. each day." Lifelong occupations have been chosen for lesser reasons.

In 1967 Andrew Alexander left school and went to work for the Thomson Newspapers.
He sold advertising in the Port Credit Weekly for $65 a week, and then graduated, in
1969, to Inland Publishing, which eventually started the first Sunday Sun newspaper. "I
enjoyed the freedom," he recalls, noting that his parents were plenty worried about these
rotten kids of theirs. They were right to worry: Alexander next opened the first "speakeasy" in downtown Toronto, where you could drink until 4:00 or 5:00 A.M., as well as another in Port Credit, a community just west of Toronto, "in a beautiful estate we rented for three hundred a month." There were "huge parties" in the latter each weekend; the one in Toronto was suitably open all week. Known as the Exit Clubs -- since you entered them through the exit -- they gave the young and still rather immature Alexander "an opportunity to party, and a way for paying for the partying and making some money." The police eventually closed them both down after two years, since this still was, at the time at least, Toronto the Good. "They were very successful," Alexander says, laughing, adding quickly that "they were very, very illegal, too."

But Alexander got tired of the craziness and moved on, although still in the entertainment
field. He started a sports magazine, Ski Life, eventually becoming the editor. "I was not
thinking about making a lot of money in my twenties," he declares. He was involved in that
project for about a year and a half, when he was approached by three men to assist in the
famous/infamous John Lennon Peace Festival in 1970. "That's a book in itself," he
proposes, but this writer refuses the offer. It was right after Woodstock, and an
"extraordinary event," with maharishis and the Ontario Provincial Police all involved.

(Back at Ryerson, Alexander had done some booking of a number of entertainment acts,
such as Ian Tyson and Gordon Lightfoot. He had also run for Student Council president,
with David Crombie, then a teacher there, as his campaign manager. He got "womped,"
with Crombie going on merely to become mayor of Toronto and a federal MP and cabinet minister, while Alexander got to take over American culture.)

"I really caught the bug of entertainment," says Alexander, sitting up from his sprawl on his
Toronto office couch. "I felt that I was starting to find an area in which I felt comfortable."
John Lennon, of blessed memory, eventually took his name off that project, and Alexander still feels it was "a shame. Every major rock group wanted to be in it." He made a salary for eight months from the investors.

He then moved on to start Platform, a late-night comedy and jazz club, which swung from
midnight to 5:00 A.M., with Gilda Radner working at the box office, and people like Dan
Aykroyd and Valerie Bromfield, future Second City stars all, trying out. "It was the
beginning of the growing theatre movement in Toronto," he declares. "I found that really
exciting!"

Then, Alexander got the rights for the perennial stage revue, Spring Thaw, from Mavor
Moore, and produced the 1971 version. "It was a disaster. I lost all the investors' money,
about $50,000 in all." No one ever said that show biz would be easy.

Throughout the 1960s Alexander drove cabs, and would whip into a suit, have meetings
with businessmen, accountants, and lawyers to raise money for his shows, and then return
to the cab. Once, he picked up a businessman who had just invested in Spring Thaw, who was impressed by such a driven fellow who could do both, and was glad he had invested. He was only half right.

"I was dead broke," Alexander moans, referring to the early 1970s. Then he met a publicist at the new St. Lawrence Centre in Toronto who let him help her with promotion. For the next 18 months he was able to introduce an idea which moved the number of subscribers from 3,000 up to 15,000. He had hired a bunch of students to knock on doors and sell them right and left. The future entrepreneur was budding.

A further example: Alexander had "a tremendous fear of flying, but I tackled it," so he
could zap around Canada, doing consultant work for theatres from coast to coast. Then he got a permit job in Chicago, working at the Ivanhoe Theatre there. He would go and watch Second City all the time. Eventually, on a napkin, he made out a contract with Bernie Sahlins, its founder, for the rights to Second City in Canada, for $1 -- plus a percentage of the take if it was successful. He borrowed $7,000, rented space at the Fireball, at that time a discotheque and restaurant in Toronto, and began it in 1973. (An earlier Toronto Second City had gone bankrupt, due to absentee management. The owners would fly back and forth from Chicago, and the Toronto branch lacked a liquor license as well. But most of all, Alexander feels, it was time. "They needed time to take off.") It should be noted here that Alexander is still not sure if he ever paid Sahlins the dollar for the Canadian rights to Second City. And back then, our dollar was worth $1.06 U.S., too.

The first Andrew Alexander-produced Toronto Second City opened in February 1974.
Although the productions were usually quite brilliant, they were often in "dire straits," and in 1977 it "technically went under, and into receivership." The many doctors and lawyers who owned the Firehall had a lot of debts, and had their problems. But Andrew Alexander got the company out of certain obligations, and after he bought out some partners and brought in two new ones, it began to be more successful. (There were often good earnings over this period: In 1975 Second City had $750,000 in sales, up to $1.3 million in 1978. In 1985 it had hit $3 million, thanks to an introduction of a dinner/theatre package in the late 1970s.)

Andrew Alexander was still single at this time, which was probably for the best; he would
work from 9:00 A.M. to 3:00 A.M. , six and even seven days a week, usually sleeping at
his office in the theatre complex. In the early years he "took home nothing; just enough to
pay the rent." What rent?

In 1977 had come the most exciting development: Alexander and his gifted crew of
performers came up with the idea of a fictional station parodying television, called SCTV
(Actually, it was first called Second City Television, but Sahlins wanted the name back,
so they went with the initials.) Even with the success of the TV show on Canadian, and
eventually American, television, it was in "constant deficit financing." The Toronto theatre
supported the TV series for over three years, and they accumulated nearly $3 million in
debts. "By the time we got to network on NBC," recalls Alexander, "it cost $400,000 to
produce a ninety-minute show." There were no profits seen until after the end of the run,
surprisingly. "That's the function of TV," he says. "The return in investment is low until the
show is stripped"-meaning until it goes into syndication, and endless repeats. But Alexander was able to get a "huge guarantee" for syndication from a major company in the United States, in "the high millions," he says, by 1985. "SCTV" is now seen and enjoyed in over three dozen markets in the States, and in Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, and Vancouver, in Canada. With many more markets yet to come.

During these hectic years, Andrew Alexander did other things as well, opening a few
restaurants (including the Flying Food Circus), eventually selling them, "making money for a while," but irritated at being "caught between the restaurant business and producing shows." It was not until 1980 that he "started getting comfortable." He finally married in 1983, and for the first time -- possibly a record in show business.

"I found an affinity with Second City," says Andrew Alexander, barely into his 40s, and a
multimillionaire at last. "It was something subconscious. If you believe in an idea enough -- this could apply to any industry -- it affects other people. They recognize that they are
committed as well." Second City, Canadian version, taught Alexander a lesson. That
"if you give something long enough, it can come together. Chemistry develops."

But on paper, at least, Andrew Alexander was bankrupt with his TV show. He could draw a decent salary, it's true -- maybe $50,000 -- but he had major bank guarantees. And if the show hadn't gotten past 1981, he admits, "I'd have been driving a cab again!"

The future, as of the mid-1980s, looks more promising than ever. Alexander believes that
the old SCTV shows will "always be in syndication," zooming around the world's airwaves
much as the old I Love Lucy's still do, for decades to come. "But the real future is the
acquisition of Chicago." In January 1985 the child became the father of the man (to coin
another phrase), as Andrew Alexander of Toronto took over as executive producer of the
original Chicago company, with an option to buy the theatre. "It cost a few million," says
the Canadian. It's a "very profitable" company, grossing some $2 1/2 million annually --
and that's in real dollars.

As of the end of 1985 Andrew Alexander owned the controlling interest, about 51%, of
Second City Inc. There are three Second Citys at this time, in Chicago, Toronto, and
London, Ontario. A Second City is just opening in West Hollywood, California, in
conjunction with Harold Ramis, an old alumnus of the company. "L.A. will give the
opportunity of having all our people work out in, and showcase themselves," Alexander
says.

But that's only four Second Citys. Some people are currently looking at real estate in
London, England, the birthplace of the Canadian entrepreneur. "And I'm thinking of a live,
five-night-a-week TV show out of Britain, Toronto, Chicago, and L.A.," says Alexander,
his eyes ever on the Big Possibility. There are at present about 60 actors on payroll; with
Los Angeles and London, England, that number will be close to 100. And even more
employees if this new TV concept comes to fruition -- an American studio came to him
with the idea -- and it could be on the air by the fall of 1986. But even today, the total
employees "must be 300 people."

Alexander has a five-year plan, which is more than one might expect from a kid who used
to play hookey all the time, and run illegal speakeasies. He plans to establish himself
permanently in Los Angeles, "where the industry is." He expects to have an even greater
effect on TV and film by 1990, as Second City's "whole philosophy of approach to work"
spreads across the world. ("Harold Ramis says that most of the movies he's done and
written have been improvised, in the tradition of Second City," Alexander comments,
referring to one of the creative geniuses behind the hugely successful Ghostbusters.)

Second City, Chicago-born, is now Canadian-owned, and is worth upwards of $10
million. Alexander's sister is running the London, Ontario, branch, "doing a superb job. It's
like a sports franchise, where you develop people on the farm team and bring them up to
the majors."

Andrew Alexander hopes to have an organization that he can "pass on," and he sees it
going another quarter century, at least. "I do see myself as an entrepreneur," he says. "I
have the ability to make things happen, and one of the priorities of the entrepreneur is to
shake things up in business. And Second City has a new role in business. It can't be like
it was in the 'sixties." And Alexander himself? "I don't know what I'd do if I ever sold the
theatres."