Travel back in time (Finale)－21 years and counting

From launch to expansion and beyond, and our vision for society

Thanks to the know-how and strong will of its founding members, GDO had finally launched its service. Forming partnerships with golf courses throughout Japan, building its system architecture, raising funds—step by step, the company has steadily grown its business over the past 20 years. Now, as it prepares to move forward through its 21st year and beyond, GDO has taken a fresh look at its raison d’etre, the state of golf, and the kind of society it wants to help create. Golf Digest Online (GDO) CEO Mike Ishizaka tells us in his own words about the company’s beginnings and what lies ahead.

During our first not quite six months, we got rid of as many negative factors as we could in a short period of time. It was with risk hedging in mind that we set up multiple lines of business—bookings, e-commerce, media—and ran simulations of the worst things that could happen. 

The scenarios we were thinking of in terms of risk management were the stuff of nightmares for our staff. For example, we’d ask, “What if our system launches and it’s full of bugs?” Maybe it’s more normal to approach a venture business with success on your mind, but what business school and 10 years in a trading company drilled into my head is that you have to get the risk management right. I used to be in charge of hazardous materials at my company, and that forced me to consider the worst of the worst-case scenarios. I found it tiresome at the time, but imagining these scenarios helped me come up with solutions. At the very least, I learned to keep a level head. And so when our service went live, we were considering risk from a variety of different angles. 

Today, in 2021, we do business with 90 percent of the golf courses in Japan. That’s over 2000 courses. But when we started in 2000, it was extremely tough to find courses to partner with. The whole team, myself included, spent hours driving around to courses in far-flung parts of the country. Most of them wouldn’t even talk to us. The dotcom bubble of the late 90s was collapsing, and golf is an industry that’s slow to change to begin with. A lot of managers were reluctant to think about doing business on the Internet. 

Plus, we were having a hard time raising funds initially. Out of 30 firms we approached, 29 turned us down. The \80 million in capital we started with evaporated; six months later, we didn’t have enough to cover one month’s worth of salaries (I’ve still got a screenshot of our bank balance at the time). Then, in the nick of time, we scored our first investor. That put us on the road to stable profits, and from there we expanded our service, grew our subscriber base, and became Japan’s biggest golf portal site. 

In 2004, we were listed on the Mothers section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, and in May 2015 we moved to the Second Section and, after that, to the First Section. But we also faced some major crises along the way. In 2008, we had to shut down our service for a week due to a large-scale data breach. And the 2011 East Japan Earthquake damaged a lot of golf courses and dampened the mood across the whole country, which hurt our bottom line. With each new crisis, we racked our brains over what we could do about it, how we could work with our customers and partners to leverage the value the golf industry can bring. And through those experiences and those interactions with our partners, we learned what the true value of golf is. We learned that all of us need a little break and a little fun sometimes. And that the value of golf lies in how it restores our spirits and gives us the energy we need to keep going toward our next goal. 

Celebrating our 20th anniversary last May, in the midst of a global pandemic, is an event I’ll probably never forget. We never imagined life would still be like that even now, a year later. But for now, our challenge as a company—and that includes me—is to keep doing what we can. I think it’s especially important in times like these to be mindful of society as a whole and to maintain those social connections. 

How can we better define who we are as a company, and what kind of contribution can we make to the world through our business? We’ve spent a lot of time discussing that question since 2020. And with our 21st anniversary here, we’ve decided on a new vision and a new brand slogan. 

Work as hard as you can, and then play like you mean it. I think more people need to embrace that philosophy. Our ideal society is one where we tolerate each other’s diverse lifestyles, workstyles, and playstyles, and each one of us can enjoy life. I want GDO to work toward that kind of society both through golf and through how it conducts itself as a company. 

The value of golf to society is our raison d’etre. I’ve reflected on that countless times in the 21 years since GDO was founded. I firmly believe that our role as a company is to create opportunities and find ways for people to enjoy life more. There’s no single, standard way to enjoy life. In my view, there are as many ways as there are people on this earth. And that’s exactly why we need to be a company that respects diversity, and why golf needs to be diverse in the form it takes. We want to be champions of that kind of tolerance in our society. That was the thinking behind our new vision and brand slogan. 

PLAY YOUR LIFE—This is the message we want to send. It’s what we ourselves want to embody as a company through our business activities and our relationships with users and partners. And I believe that if we can do that, there’s a more tolerant society waiting for us, one where more people can enjoy their lives.