The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Technical decision · 2020–2023
Iris Ohyama built nonwoven plants when China banned mask exports — 150M masks a month
When China stopped exporting masks in 2020, Iris Ohyama invested about ¥3bn in domestic nonwoven plants and automated lines, reaching 150 million masks a month.
Iris Ohyama (アイリスオーヤマ)
the move
Iris Ohyama entered masks in 2007 and made them at its own factories in Dalian and Suzhou, China — as did most of the industry, which imported about 80% of Japan's masks. In February 2020 China banned mask exports, and the pipeline simply stopped.
While the government's cloth-mask distribution stumbled, Iris decided to produce at home. It invested roughly ¥3 billion in cleanrooms, about 40 automated lines and — the crucial piece — Japanese production of nonwoven fabric, the raw material of masks, at its Kakuda plant near Sendai. Target capacity: 150 million masks a month by August 2020.
Having the material in-house changed the product, not just the supply chain. Because Iris controlled the nonwoven, it could engineer a summer mask that released moisture and fogged glasses less — the Nano Air mask — and ship it through the home-center channel it already owned.
why it works
- Owning the raw material meant the supply chain could not be cut twice.
- In-house nonwoven let Iris tune filter performance and comfort, not just output.
- Its own home-center stores gave the new capacity an immediate, captive channel.
- Speed mattered: production and shipping started within months of the ban.
what transfers
When a supplier cuts you off, the deepest fix is owning the bottleneck input — the raw material — because then the product itself becomes something competitors cannot copy.
what came after
Iris became one of Japan's largest domestic mask producers while keeping its Chinese plants, and the episode became the standard example of its make-it-yourself strategy. The president's stated principle: build mechanisms that earn profits in any environment rather than betting on one market.
references
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