Why change the name of Adamant Namiki, a name that has signified manufacturing excellence for more than 80 years?

On January 1, 2023, we changed the name of our company, Adamant Namiki Precision Jewel Co., Ltd. We have long cherished the Namiki name as a tribute to and reminder of the hard work of the company’s founder and his successor. Even so, when I joined the corporation in 2020, I began to think of changing the company name as a way of signaling our intention toward transformation.

While I will miss the Namiki name as a symbol of our company, I would like to affirm that a new corporate name will be a crucial step forward for us.

Now, we need a name that reflects both our long-nurtured strengths and the brighter future we envision.

The new name of our company will be “Orbray.” The word “orb” means “sphere” and connotes a celestial body, while the word “ray” implies light. The new name thus embodies two concepts: the Earth, which is the foundation of our lives, and the light that is emitted when polishing materials on our planet.
The technology of cutting, grinding, and polishing represents the most important element of our company’s competitiveness, and the two words integrated into our new name – orb and ray – evoke how foundational these skills are to our company, now and for the future.

In 1939, our company started in the Kamiya district of Tokyo’s Kita Ward as a small factory specializing in the manufacture of jewel bearings for watt-hour meters. Over more than eight decades, we have become a world-class company with innovative technologies for products in a variety of fields.
Kazu Namiki, our company’s founder and my grandfather, and Shoji, his successor and my father, worked continuously to improve the company’s proprietary skills of cutting, grinding, and polishing to explore the new frontiers of technology. They succeeded in developing cutting-edge products that meet the demand for increasingly high quality as technology continues to advance.
Those who have only recently become familiar with our company may wonder how our major businesses – precision jewel parts, ferrules and other optical communications parts, micromotors, and medical equipment – are related. All of our products derive from the industrial jewel-polishing skills that my grandfather Kazu diligently acquired to support his family after entering the industry at the age of 12.

Parting with the “Namiki” name is bittersweet, given its long, significant history.

Reflecting on this history, perhaps even outsiders may understand my dilemma in wanting to signal a move forward for the company yet not wanting to erase my family name from the corporate name.
However, while I am personally attached to the Namiki name, which embodies the strong leadership of Kazu and Shoji, even more important is my commitment to the company they founded and nurtured. I believe that we as a company are already metamorphosing into an even more technologically advanced and forward-looking company, which deserves a new name.
One of the important changes we are making is from leadership by a single individual to a corporation with decision-making power invested in the board of directors, to better enable our company to achieve sustainable, global growth. As the president and a member of the founding family, I take ultimate responsibility for the company, with a focus on realizing the well-being of employees and all other stakeholders. For business management in general, we have appointed Osamu Wada as our exective vice president, as he has proven his ability to initiate and manage our company’s organizational change process as a business consultant.

In 2018, we reintegrated two companies that started out under the Namiki name but later separated, now creating a united, stronger firm. Although four years have passed since the unification, we are still facing some challenges.

Our most pressing issue is to ensure that the unified firm can achieve performance exceeding the combined potentiality of the two separate firms; i.e., we are aiming for 1+ 1 > 2. We also need to assure that our company will be able to accelerate its growth into the future under the new management system.

Our new name crystalizes all we have achieved so far and our further pursuit of excellence.

Amid an environment that is changing incessantly, our company is committed not only to the well-being of its stakeholders, but also to the realization of sustainable development goals specified by the United Nations, as well as to the affirmation of certain values.

At the same time, we realize that our major businesses are encountering fierce competition. I do not think we would be able to navigate the troubled waters with our idealistic goals alone.

In such circumstances, I believe that this is the right time to rechristen our company as Orbray – evoking our planet and light amid the infinite universe – both to honor the path our company has followed for more than 80 years, and to crystallize a future of new possibilities, inspiring our employees and other stakeholders to reaffirm their commitment to our company.