A Legacy of Japanese Design and Manufacturing.
Originally operating out of a small Tokyo store front in the 1920s, we've spent over 90 years designing, manufacturing, and reinventing quality products within the outdoor recreation and sports industry. Over our long history our brand has grown to become a design and manufacturing leader in Japan, and we're now proud to bring our line of titanium cookware to our fellow outdoor adventurers in North America.
New Eras, New Materials
REPLACING STEEL AND ALUMINUM
The journey from our earlier generations of backpacking cookware to the modern titanium successors started in the early 1990s. At the time, both aluminum and stainless were being employed for cookware, but both had significant drawbacks: aluminum was light but lack durability, and stainless steel strong but heavy.
After looking at various possibilities, Toshio Shiina, our development manager, realized that titanium would address both the challenges of weight and durability. Unfortunately, titanium simply wasn't manufactured at the thicknesses that were necessary for producing lightweight cookware, and the response we kept hearing from other industry experts was that our target thickness wasn't attainable.
Titanium Innovations
WHERE THERE'S A WILL, THERE'S A WAY.
Rather than giving up, we looked north to the city of Tsubame for help. Tsubame, in Japan's snowy Niigata prefecture, had over a century of history as a source of fine metal craftsmanship. After two years of R&D in close collaboration with Tsubame's modern craftsmen, we were ready for full scale production and sales into the national market.
From that point on, we continued to improve our designs and streamline our manufacturing process, making our products more cost-effective and accessible each year. By the year 2000, we had developed the capability to manufacture titanium at the unprecedented thickness of 0.3mm. Compared with 0.4mm, the current industry standard, our new thickness cut down on weight by 20%.