A 30-year appointment-only eyewear shop changes hands: across the sudden death of the intermediary, 3 years and 8 months from first inquiry to closing

Succession cases with an undisclosed transfer price tend to get skipped over, since they’re thin on numbers. But what’s disclosed in this deal is information more practically weighty than the price, 3 years and 8 months from the initial inquiry to closing, and the fact that the search route for a counterpart switched three times over that span. Let’s break down, in chronological order, the record of “Tajimi Eyewear,” an appointment-only eyewear shop that ran for 30 years in Tajimi City, Gifu Prefecture, being handed over to Mimoto Co., Ltd. of Ueda City, Nagano Prefecture.

What happened before the succession

The store where customers didn’t decline even after a major chain moved in

Tajimi Eyewear’s strength is consistently distilled in the article into “eye examinations” and “appointment-only service.” Taira placed the core of his management on taking time with each individual customer to conduct eye exams and make glasses suited to them. The location is central Tajimi City, in a room in a building owned by a ceramics dealer landlord, with families aged late-40s and up who stop by after shopping as the main customer base.

One more thing: customers didn’t leave even after major eyewear chains entered the trading area. Eyewear retail is a business where, if you compete on price and speed, the side with more capital tends to win. Tajimi Eyewear didn’t step onto that field. It chose the opposite design of having customers book an appointment and then taking time. As a result, its high average spend per customer remained its strength. The condition for an independent shop to survive for 30 years in the same trading area as major chains is concentrated in this one point.

The decision to retire, and 3 years without finding a match

Taira began considering retirement around when he entered his 50s. Looking back on the two decades of his 30s and 40s, he says he “worked really quite hard, from morning to night,” and describes how “once I reached my 50s, I gradually reduced my workload, and started to feel it was about time to retire.” The reason he didn’t simply choose to close the shop was concern for the impact on longtime customers and employees.

The problem was that things dragged on once he’d decided. He consulted the Gifu Prefecture Business Succession and M&A Support Center in November 2020, but none of the negotiations with the three companies sourced through the NNDB closed. Taira himself clearly states the reason. “In this line of work, whether doing an eye exam or adjusting glasses, you inevitably end up close to the customer. So business during the COVID pandemic was extremely difficult. Every eyewear shop was fully occupied just managing their own business, and it wasn’t an atmosphere where anyone wanted to newly take over a shop via M&A, so it took time to find a match.”

It wasn’t that the seller’s offering was bad. It was that it went on sale during a period when same-industry buyers had no capacity to buy. This was the first factor that made it take three years. Market timing isn’t something the seller can choose.

The tide turned in 2022, the year they lost the intermediary

Ironically, the moment things turned was an accident-like event. The deal, which had been handed off to an individual intermediary firm, was left in limbo when that staffer suddenly passed away in 2022. Shinichiro Furukawa, the general manager overseeing the Gifu Prefecture Business Succession and M&A Support Center, says the approach up to that point “had to be significantly changed.” Batonz was hastily brought in.

And it was through Batonz that Mimoto Co., Ltd. of Ueda City, Nagano Prefecture, was introduced. Takashi Miyamoto had already registered on Batonz to search for a business to acquire, and the match between the two was realized. According to Furukawa, things then “proceeded smoothly.”

The structure at play here is clear. The NNDB held by the prefectural center is a matching process against a limited, regional pool of candidates. Batonz, by contrast, is a nationwide pool where buyers actively register and search. The buyer of Tajimi Eyewear was a company in Ueda City, Nagano Prefecture, not a same-industry player from Gifu. Without the unavoidable event of the intermediary’s sudden passing, this switch wouldn’t have happened, and closing likely wouldn’t have either. Rather than “persistent negotiation”, the substance of the turning point was replacing the candidate pool itself, from regional to national.

The buyer wanted not the shop but the “appointment-system know-how”

Miyamoto’s motive wasn’t simply adding to a store count. “What appealed to us most about Tajimi Eyewear was that they had sustained an appointment-only system for 30 years. We had tried an appointment system at our own company too, but it hadn’t gone well. Wondering, ‘How do you make it work?’ was the original spark of interest.”

The acquisition target, in other words, went beyond the store and customers in Tajimi City, Gifu Prefecture: what Miyamoto was buying was a real, working example of an operating method his own company had tried and failed at, still running after 30 years. Miyamoto himself worked at a homebuilder for four years after university, then, on his father’s recommendation, moved to Mimoto at age 27, becoming president at age 32 in December 2020. Upon becoming president he decided to “try one new thing every year,” and after opening a new store in Ueda City in 2023, M&A was his next move. Regarding what comes after taking over, he says, “while applying what Mr. Taira built up as Tajimi Eyewear’s know-how to our other stores as well,” making clear that the aim is lateral expansion.

The seller’s selection criteria meshed too. Taira says, “I thought it would be good to have a company that runs eyewear shops buy it, so that stable management could continue,” and after the meeting he said, “I sincerely hoped things would move forward just as they were.” Not an individual leaving a corporate job, but a same-industry operating company. That’s what the seller wanted, and the buyer wanted know-how, not a “cheaply obtained store.” The fact that the buyer was seeking “an operating method they wanted to learn,” not “a cheap storefront,” is what made this combination work.

Limits that shouldn’t be overlooked

Miyamoto acknowledges a challenge, even in the previous generation there had been an attempt at multi-store expansion, and “it was a challenge because employees often didn’t follow along.” Even after obtaining appointment-system know-how, if the people to execute it don’t develop, lateral expansion won’t progress. The acquisition is only half the answer.

Also, the accumulation Taira built to reach independence (deciding at age 20, raising funds through part-time jobs during vocational school, and acquiring technique through employment before opening at age 30) isn’t something the successor can copy. A substantial part of Tajimi Eyewear’s value is tied to Taira’s individual eye-exam skill and personality. Miyamoto himself assessed, “He’s genuinely a person of good character, and it made sense that so many customers became fans.” When a business’s core asset is personality, that asset partially diminishes the moment of handover.

What can be imitated, what can’t

What can be imitated is the idea of switching search channels when a match can’t be found. A listing where three companies fell through via a regional support center and NNDB got decided the moment it moved to a nationwide matching platform. Even the same listing produces different results depending on where the candidates are gathered. A succession consultation isn’t “over once you’ve put it out somewhere once.”

What can’t be imitated is the 30 years of customer relationships built up, and the coincidence of timing with the pandemic. Timing especially is uncontrollable. What Taira’s testimony shows is the simple but easily overlooked fact that selling to a same-industry buyer is subject to that industry’s economic conditions. If you’re considering a succession, it’s more advantageous to move while your pool of potential buyers still has the financial strength to act.

Taira now says, “From here it’s my dream retirement life. I have acquaintances in Canada and New Zealand, so I’d like to slowly go visit them.” 3 years and 8 months is long, but compared to the alternative of closing the shop, the difference spans everything, customers, employees, and the landscape of the owner’s own retirement.

Related reading

• A graduate student who transferred a programming school upon taking a job — also via Batonz; a case where the depth of the buyer pool mattered, going from about 20 inquiries to 4 meetings
• A rental space business grown to 7.5 million yen in monthly sales — for those wanting to compare how the numbers were built in a small offline business