Osaka specialty design printing firm, 40+ years, 300 clients

What is for sale

This is a long-established Osaka printing company, founded over 40 years ago, specialising in high value-added specialty design printing that gives products a distinctive textured, premium feel. It sells through a mix of face-to-face corporate sales, its own long-running e-commerce site, and an in-store experiential retail business, serving around 300 client companies a year, including designers and creative professionals nationwide. The owner is selling because personal life circumstances mean he can no longer dedicate himself fully to running the company, and he wants to hand the business, now stable and generally profitable, to a partner who can grow it further.

Because this is a share sale, the buyer acquires the existing company itself, including its lease, licences and bank accounts, rather than having to set these up fresh.

What is included

• 100% of company shares
• Equipment and prototype/production machinery (book value approx. ¥12,400,000)
• Inventory
• Company's own e-commerce site, system and operating know-how
• Client base of about 300 active companies per year
• SNS/EC accounts, plus product planning and design rights for original products

Strengths (as the seller states them)

• Own e-commerce site has run for over 10 years and maintains top search rankings, driving organic customer inflow with low ad spend
• High level of technical skill in specialty design printing valued by design-conscious clients nationwide
• Stable base of about 300 active client companies annually with strong repeat business
• Experiential retail store and original product planning build strong customer engagement and branding

Wrinkles a careful buyer would ask about

• Transfer is conditional on the buyer assuming approx. ¥77,000,000 of interest-bearing debt; over ¥56,000,000 of this is from private financial institutions and requires switching the personal guarantee, while over ¥20,000,000 from a government-affiliated lender (Nihon Seisaku Kinyu Koko) has no guarantee needed
• Current fiscal year is forecast to run a loss of about ¥4,000,000 due to outsourcing cost timing, though cost optimisation is underway
• Detailed financials (executive pay, depreciation, cash balance, total assets, net assets) are hidden until you register as a member
• Head office factory premises are leased and would continue to be leased after transfer, so confirm lease continuation terms
• Owner is offering about one year of hands-on support for technical and client handover, so plan for this transition period

Paying for it

If you stay overseas. No Japanese bank will lend to a new company whose director lives abroad. The realistic stack is your own cash plus asking the owner to take part of the price over 2 to 3 years. That one question is in every Deal Pack.

If you move to Japan. On a visa that lets you run a business, Japan Finance Corporation lends up to ¥72M at about 1 to 2 percent for exactly this. Once you have a Japanese company, the government pays two-thirds of due diligence and registered-broker costs, up to about ¥8M (round 16 closes 6 Nov 2026). The company's existing bank relationship comes with it.

Full rundown, with the catches: japandealflow.com/money