The origin of Steelstyle is Hayashi Hardware, established in Tokushima, Japan in 1872.
My father was the 7th generation of this traditional hardware store. As a child, I was always surrounded by different kinds of knives and have a lot of found memories related to them.

Hayashi Hardware is a local store in town as well as a wholesaler in the Shikoku area. In recent years, however, the trend of population flow out of the city centre is becoming prominent. As a result, businesses face tremendous difficulty making profit. Sadly, shopping streets are becoming "shuttered streets" as we say in Japanese, creating deserted commercial districts. In addition, since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the never-ending spiral of recession has been affecting the construction industry as a whole. Accordingly, demand for carpentry tools dropped, and it was definitely a serious blow for Hayashi Hardware.

I witnessed these transitions as I grew up, and came to realize an unbalanced aspect of the knife industry.

Japanese bladed objects including knives are produced by skillful techniques with no parallel in the world, and are gaining more and more appreciation. In fact, retailers in large cities such as Tokyo or Osaka are welcoming passionate fans from all over the world.
As opposed to this trend, if you look at the production side, the workforce population in the industry is steadily decreasing. The aging society is further aggravating the this pressing issue. At this rate, the Japanese knife industry may not be able to exist in the near future.

I want to connect the tradition and techniques of Japanese knife industry into the future by increasing the young working population. Japanese knives and culture should be spread across the world. I can't idly sit and watch the declining industry which has been supporting me throughout my life.

When I started wondering what I could do to achieve this mission, I realized that I could use my IT knowledge and skills that I gained through web consulting and advertising businesses. I believe that it allows us to take approach that fits in this modern age, in order to explore more possibilities of Japanese knives.
Steelstyle, Inc. was established to materialize this vision filled with new challenges. Hayashi Hardware, our family business of 150 years, will continue to contribute to the industry with its abundance of expertise and through supporting the launch of new brands with Steelstyle, Inc.

Steelstyle values flexible attitudes that are free from conventional ideas. Our role is to pursue new possibilities of Japanese knives by merging creative thinking and craftsmanship. That is why we are proactively collaborating with professionals from a variety of industries.

For example, we are organizing hands-on workshop and events with producers from meat, fishing or alcohol industries. We also develop products that are exclusively available to customers who purchased our knives. These innovative ideas share the common theme of our eating activities and food. We believe that they project a bright future of Japanese knives.