Abbey Road: He Sold His Own Assets to Take Over a 20-Year Rakuten Watchband Store

An employee individually taking over a business with no successor. It’s a structure seen often these days. What makes this case stand out, though, is that the buyer came back to a listing he had once dropped from consideration, and that after his Japan Finance Corporation loan was rejected, he sold off his own assets to buy it.

The seller was TM Planet Co., Ltd. (Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture), which manufactures and sells watchbands and has run “Abbey Road, Watches & Bands” on Rakuten Market for over 20 years, a storefront that has won the Monthly Excellent Shop award numerous times. Representative Mr. Taguchi decided on the transfer due to no successor.

The buyer was Katsuhito Saiki of Achieve LLC, a registered management consultant who had been exploring independence while working at a Tokyo-based seafood trading firm. Negotiations lasted about 1 year and 8 months. The amount is undisclosed.

What happened leading up to closing

Why watchbands

Saiki’s criteria for selecting the listing are clear-cut. It had to be “a low-risk, already-proven business with minimal geographic constraints.” And it had to be “in a niche market with little competition and reliably stable sales.” A watchband as a product category satisfied both conditions at once.

Watchbands make up a much smaller market than watches themselves. A small market also means capital-rich new entrants don’t come flocking. Saiki’s positive read on the lack of new entrants comes from reading this structure. On top of that, since it’s an e-commerce business, the Morioka-based operation could be run from Tokyo. For someone continuing to work as an employee while preparing for independence, this geographic freedom was a decisive requirement.

And one more thing: Saiki treated the sheer fact of having continued for 20+ years as creditworthiness in itself. Rather than relying on financial statements or monthly sales figures, he anchored his trust in the years of continuity. Surviving 20 years in the fiercely competitive space of Rakuten Market, and repeatedly winning the Monthly Excellent Shop award. He judged this track record alone was sufficient reason to buy it on his own.

The tide turned when he went to Morioka

The moment the trajectory changed in this deal can be pinpointed. It was the day Saiki actually traveled to Morioka and met Taguchi in person.

The sequence matters. Saiki had initially excluded the listing from candidates because the listed price didn’t fit his budget. Renegotiation began after subsequent terms changed, and he traveled to Morioka for the meeting. There, bonding over their shared Tohoku roots, he ended up securing even further concessions beyond the already-revised price.

In other words, it wasn’t “the price dropped, so he went to meet them”. It was “he went to meet them, and the price dropped further.” This is a textbook example showing that small-scale M&A pricing moves not just on financial metrics but on the seller’s psychology. The message Taguchi sent right before closing, “Please carry the business I started properly into the future”, and the fact that he took on a one-year advisory role after the transfer, both underscore that for Taguchi, this deal wasn’t a cash-out transaction but a succession. It reads as though whether Taguchi could believe the buyer was “a person who would carry the business forward” was reflected in the price.

The real wall of a rejected loan

At the same time, this case has a part that doesn’t end in a success story alone. His loan consultation with the Japan Finance Corporation was rejected. The buyer’s lack of e-commerce experience, and the fact that the funds were for an acquisition, are said to have been hurdles in the screening.

This gets at a structural problem in individual M&A. “Buying a business with a proven track record” is, for the buyer, a low-risk choice, but from a financial institution’s perspective, the buyer himself has no operating track record in that line of business, and that single point sends the risk assessment climbing. The business’s track record and the buyer’s track record are screened as separate things.

Saiki secured funds here by selling off his own assets. It was a decision made under the judgment that “this is absolutely worth investing in,” but flip it around, and this deal would not have been possible without assets he could sell. Having heavily depleted his liquid assets to make the purchase, his resilience against unexpected working-capital needs after taking over is thin. The article doesn’t touch on this, but it remains an open structural issue.

What can be replicated, and what can’t

What’s easy to replicate is the way of thinking about listing selection. Target a niche business with high entry barriers and no geographic constraints. Read years of continuity as creditworthiness. Even if the budget doesn’t fit once, leave room to come back after terms change. And always go in person and meet the seller face-to-face. None of these depend on the scale of one’s capital.

Three things are hard to replicate. Having assets on hand that could be liquidated for cash. His management-consultant qualification and practical experience at a trading company, which likely served as grounds for trust with the seller. Plus his Tohoku origin overlapping, by coincidence, with the seller’s. This last factor can’t be engineered on purpose.

Also, the roughly 1 year and 8 months of negotiation time is itself a barrier to entry. Not everyone has the time and psychological capacity to keep pursuing a single listing for over a year and a half while continuing their main job.

After taking over, Saiki has set growth in the EC market as the core focus while preserving Abbey Road’s trust and history, and says he’s also considering synergies with physical stores and expansion into similar categories. How he handles dependence on a single channel, Rakuten Market, will likely be the next issue. The 20 years of track record accumulated as reputation within the marketplace, and that asset can’t simply be carried wholesale over to an owned e-commerce site. A condition where the acquired trust exists only on a specific platform is one that dogs any takeover of a marketplace-based e-commerce business.

Another business, and how he lets it go

Achieve has another face besides the EC business. Saiki operates a sales office in Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, but its founding reason wasn’t discovering a business opportunity. It came from employees of a nearly 60-year-old textile wholesale business run by his family saying they wanted to keep working. He opened the office to create employment opportunities for seniors. That was the sequence.

Interestingly, Saiki says he is also considering a transfer as one option for this Hachinohe business. His reasons are his own lack of specialized knowledge in the work-uniform and towel field, and consolidation progressing within the wholesale industry. “Continuing the business under a company with a stronger foundation is likely a better outcome for the region,” is his judgment.

The same person holds both the logic of the buyer and the logic of the one letting go. At Abbey Road, he judged, “I will take on a business that’s continued for 20 years myself.” At Hachinohe, he judges, “there may be someone more suited than me to take this on.” What’s consistent across both is that his criterion isn’t “do I want to hold this,” but “will the business continue.” He’s leveraging his management-consultant qualification and envisions supporting business succession for elderly owners across the three northern Tohoku prefectures, as well as an M&A support business involving experts such as administrative scriveners and labor and social security attorneys. It’s a flow of moving from being the one who receives a succession, to being the one who supports succession.

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