G-SHOCK
The item shown below is an early Casio calculator.
Clearly, technology has advanced, and sizes have
shrunk significantly. In addition, today’s Casio also
makes electronic keyboards, e-dictionaries, and is an
industry leader in projectors.
By James Henderson
G-SHOCKING
WITH CASIO
IN JAPAN
This is where Casio hammers, prods, pokes,
rattles, drags, dunks and even zaps all
G-Shock watches before they make it to
your wrist.
A FEW MONTHS AGO, I WAS INVITED TO VISIT CASIO’S FACILITIES IN
JAPAN WITH A GROUP OF WRITERS AND RETAIL PARTNERS. THE FIRST
DAY OF OUR VISIT STARTED OFF AT COMPANY HEADQUARTERS IN
SHIBUYA-KU, TOKYO.
Shibuya is one of Tokyo’s more well known “cities within a city”
and a short bus ride from our hotel in Shinjuku. And within HQ there
is a well laid out area that tells the story of Casio.
As this exhibit describes, Casio is more than just a company that
makes watches, and in fact it started quite differently. In fact, the
proper name for the company is Casio Computer Co., Ltd. and in its
first incarnation in 1946 it was known as Kashio Seisakujo.
But this was just a starting point. Casio Computer Co., Ltd.
launched in 1957, the result of an idea to design and manufacture
calculators.
Casio today is not known, by and large, as a “classical”
watchmaker. By that I mean a maker of watches with mechanical
movements. And to be just as clear, it is evident that Casio has no
desire to enter that area. The Casiotron marked Casio’s entry into
the watch business in the early 1970s.
And from that moment, Casio indelibly marked the evolution of
watches not just in Japan, but the world at large.
44 | AboutTime Magazine
Calculator watches are seemingly trivial items now, but in the
1980s they were a cause for panic in high school math classes. It is
rumored that during one SAT exam in 1986, a young aspirant (who is
now a certain writer and watch enthusiast) was forced to hand over
his watch to the proctor mid-test, or face having his scores voided.
MOVING AHEAD
But Casio was constantly moving forward, with innovations in
functionality and durability.
While I personally am loathe to speak of ‘company DNA,’ it is
safe to say that what runs constant through the story of Casio’s
development as a watch brand is constant evolution, despite what
some would deem radical, sudden, revolution.
The Casio of today embodies a group of brands, with G-Shock as
the best known. Today’s G-Shock was big step ahead of the times
when it began, but it was in many ways a logical next step in the
constant evolution of Casio’s watch product development.
FIRST DAY
Our first day continued with visits to several specialized Casio
G-Shock retail outlets. We have all seen shop-within-shop concepts,
particularly with the big dogs from Swatch, LVMH and Richemont.
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