Story of WDB Group

Since then, revenue continued to grow, creating a base in the Kansai region. In December of 1996, the company established a branch in the biggest market in the country, Tokyo. However, despite being called a branch, there was only one employee working there. In the crowded Tokyo market, a no-name company like Work Data Bank struggled hard. The person assigned at this Tokyo branch the next spring was Kazushi Sasaura, current director of WDB Business Succession Partners Co., Ltd. Despite this, the branch continued to have zero revenue. Since the company could not compete in the field of clerical work, they aimed for systems engineer temp staffing in an attempt at redemption, but this too ended poorly. The first entry into Tokyo was a disaster that produced no results whatsoever. There were whispers of the company’s retreat.

Five months after Sasaura joined the company, Nakano came to him with a proposal. "Why don’t we try research staffing?" This was because, through relaxation of regulations during the previous year, bans on temporary staffing in the research profession, which had not been accepted up until that point, were lifted. The condition was that, if this didn’t work, the Tokyo branch would be closed, meaning this was the last chance for Sasaura. Their target was the research and university town, Tsukuba. Every morning Sasaura would go from his home in Nakano to Tokyo Station, from where he would then take an express bus to Tsukuba. The area where the research facilities are concentrated was about an hour’s walk from the bus stop. There he would go from place to place, listening to what people there had to say and telling them the advantages of using temp staffing for research professionals. When the day was over, he would take the same route home. After three months passed, he received five requests in a row. After that he continued to receive requests, building Work Data Bank’s position in the research temp staff market.

Revenue from research temp staffing was still less than that of clerical workers, but the effects of a recession left revenues from clerical temp staffing sluggish. Nakano decided to shift towards research temp staffing. In 1999, to expand the research temp staffing business, Sasaura was assigned three newcomers who had worked for the new business development office, which was unable to create results and was forced to dissolve. The three newcomers were Yoshihiro Suhara, current director of WDB Co., Ltd; Haruhiko Taniguchi, current director and president of WDB coco; and Takenori Kuzuhara, current manager of WDB Co., Ltd branch office. Sasaura, who had up until that point been short of hands, could now leave sales toward private enterprises to these three. They spent the days visiting companies with stacks of materials, redemption in their hearts. If someone got an order, everyone was as delighted as if they themselves had gotten it. In spring of the following year, they received several orders from major chemical and pharmaceutical companies. The momentum didn’t stop there, and results of temp staffing for research professionals continued to soar. In 2002, Work Data Bank changed its name to WDB. In the same year, revenue from research temp staffing reached that of clerical worker temp staffing.