Tanita

“Whenever you look for a service, go to the place where professionals gather and where knowledge is shared to find the best offer. The Netherlands is that place”, says Marc Kastermans, Chief Commercial Officer of Tanita Europe B.V.

Tanita is the world leader in precision electronic scales. With almost 50% of its domestic market share, the name of Tanita is now a household word in Japan. The company's success and expanding global presence is the result of superior technology, unique design, and high manufacturing standards that have earned ISO 9001 certification, CE marking, membership in the JQA (Japanese Quality Association), FDA clearance and the Good Housekeeping Seal.

For the last 40 years of its 63-year history, Tanita's core business has been the manufacturing of precision scales. Today, Tanita is looking beyond scales to products that enable consumers to monitor their own health. Based on medical evidence linking excess body fat to heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers, Tanita introduced the world's first integrated body composition analyzer/scale to the professional markets in 1992. Using the same technology used in their professional analyzers Tanita developed the world's first scale plus body fat monitor for home use in 1994. Tanita's accuracy innovation and durability are trusted worldwide. This pioneering work has led to the creation of an entirely new category of consumer products that could make the conventional weight scale obsolete. 

In addition to the parent company headquarters in Tokyo, Tanita maintains sister companies strategically located in a.o. the United States, the Netherlands, Hong Kong and China. The major production facilities are located in the Far East. 

Until recently Tanita’s European distribution was carried out via two warehousing operations; one in the UK and a second one in Belgium. With this optimization project Tanita decided to merge both into one central operation in the Netherlands close to its European offices. Marc Kastermans, Chief Commercial Officer of Tanita Europe B.V. adds, “whenever you look for a service, go to the place where professionals gather and where knowledge is shared to find the best offer. The Netherlands is that place; many logistics solution providers and a state of the art infrastructure all geared towards helping companies to find the best way to solve their individual logistics issues.  

We chose the Netherlands as the logistics hub for Tanita because of its central location in Europe, the experience of the Dutch when it comes to smart and efficient logistics solutions and the ability to deal with shipments cost efficiently to all outposts of Tanita Europe’s region which actually includes Russia, Eastern Europe, Africa and part of the Middle East”. 

NDL/HIDC was introduced to Tanita by the NFIA and was able to help them look at their company’s specific factors involved when comparing an outsourced versus an in-house solution. After having visited a number of logistics service providers on a fact finding trip with NDL/HIDC, Tanita chose to outsource their European logistics to IJS Global Netherlands, as the preferred logistics service provider for the EMEA markets.  

“The flexibility of IJS Global to arrange shipments ranging from containers to French retailers to small cartons to Poland, their web based solutions to compare costs and delivery time and track our shipments and perhaps most importantly, the confidence they gave us to be a reliable partner made our choice easy”, Marc Kastermans comments. In addition to warehousing and distribution services, IJs Global supplies Tanita with a software platform for inventory management, stock control, tracking & tracing and help in setting up a vat deferment administration. IJS Global carries out various Value Added Logistics activities; this includes adding labels, kitting, repacking etc. Moreover, in the near future IJS Global will even have one of its employees certified to calibrate the Tanita scales.   

Tanita did not need an introduction into Europe, as it is already running a business here for a number of years. But, as Marc Kastermans states, “For us working with a logistics provider is a long term commitment, so we wanted to get it right from the start. Therefore we asked the Amsterdam Foreign Investment Office if they could point us in the right direction, which they did as NDL/HIDC was great in helping us understand the full scale of possibilities the logistics sector in the Netherlands has to offer”.