From launching frozen cakes to redefining luxury brands and repositioning a high-end golf course, Go Mugino’s life and career have taken him from small-town Taiwan to Tokyo, Chicago and back again. While crossing borders, sectors, and linguistic and cultural barriers, the constants have been reinvention and seeking out fresh challenges.
Moving from Taiwan to Japan at age 12, when his father – a regional CEO for a French multinational – was transferred, “was like jumping into the future,” Mugino recalls. “We moved from a local city in Taiwan, with rice fields and no McDonald’s, to Tokyo, the first place where I saw buildings higher than about nine-storeys.”
Perfect Timing
But he believes it was the ideal age to undergo such an upheaval: “If you’re younger, you might lose your first language. But at 12, you can still learn a second language and culture, while keeping your original identity.”
Upon graduation, Mugino entered trading house Toyota Tsusho (then Tomen), which was keen to put his Chinese skills to work in the promising mainland market. But having previously failed to convince his father to let him study in America, he was set on finally getting there, despite being without the linguistic advantage he would have enjoyed in China. After completing an MBA, Mugino was posted to the firm’s branch in Chicago.
“I always wanted to go to the United States. It was the number one country in the world when we were growing up. But I was part of the 98% of those who go through the Japanese education system and can’t speak English well.”
Bridging Borders and Rebuilding Brands
On arrival, he took a different approach to the many expats who stayed in their language comfort zone: “They’d finish work and only go drinking with other Japanese. I was single, so I had the time to spend with Americans, make friends. That made a huge difference.”
Following more than a decade with the trading house, Mugino took on the challenge of launching Sara Lee frozen cakes in Japan. “In three years, we built 1,200 distribution points.” But shifting corporate strategy saw him oversee the disposal of the business to Toyota Tsusho.
Mugino then began a run of senior positions with storied European brands in Japan. The first, at Michelin, was rather short-lived when Mugino realised he just didn’t have the necessary passion for tyres. Montblanc was a better fit as the company was transforming itself from “just pens” to a full lifestyle brand. “Japan was the only major market that hadn’t successfully made that shift. We started by cleaning up the pen distribution, then step-by-step brought in watches and bags.”
He was then appointed to lead a transformation at watchmaker Audemars Piguet, which was struggling with an ageing Japanese customer base. “The perception was: watches for 65-year-olds. We had to change that.” Redefining the brand, he cut the long-standing local distributor loose and drastically cut the number of retail outlets.
His strategy extended to golf, personally visiting top-tier courses and placing branded clocks. “Even now, if you go to a top 40 golf course in Japan, you’ll see our clocks. That became a core part of the brand’s luxury sports positioning.”
Following this success, Mugino was invited to join Spanish porcelain brand Lladró as part of its global turnaround committee. Tasked with revitalizing the brand in Asia, he helped triple sales in Japan and turned the country into Lladró’s largest market within three years. “It had been seen as a ‘grandma’s brand.’ We repositioned it with more functional pieces like chandeliers, moving beyond figurines.”
One of a Kind
After stepping down in 2019 to found Office Mugino, he stayed on as a consultant with Lladró. Utilizing his deep and broad experience, his own consultancy supports both Japanese companies eyeing global expansion and foreign brands entering Japan.
Office Mugino now operates in Tokyo, Taiwan, Switzerland, Kuala Lumpur, and the U.S. He also represents multiple high-end watch brands, and runs multiple side ventures, including what he describes as the “World’s largest online English learning platform,” TutorABC, and a soon-to-launch startup.
Having been in Japan from a young age, with native language skills and “the same cultural references, reading the same manga from childhood…I don’t feel like an outsider.” Yet he feels that his global perspective can give him a big-picture edge and a willingness to take risks and make tough decisions.
He put many of these attributes to work in developing Tokyo Classic, new golf club opening in a struggling domestic market. “There are 2,400 golf courses in Japan, most of them losing money. Why would number 2,401 succeed?” Mugino asked himself. By redefining its concept from scratch, he helped make it one of Japan’s most sought-after memberships – with a 10-year wait list.
His approach to Tokyo Classic also embodied a tenet that Mugino has applied to many of the entities he has worked with: “You don’t always have to be number one. Just find a place where you can be the only one.”
Text: Gavin Blair for SCCIJ.
