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Hosco Inc. - Manufacture/distributor brings Japanese quality to market

Since 1983 Hosco Inc. has been helping manufactures, distributors, retailers, and luthiers look good to their customers. Headquartered in Nagoya, Japan, Hosco is one of the industry's premier suppliers of high-quality instruments, parts, accessories, and tools from Japan and China. Founded as Hosokawa & Co., Ltd., the company was renamed Hosco Inc. in 2007 but remains under the leadership of Tom Hosokawa, CEO, and his son, Shinji Hosokawa, president.

(Hosco office & warehouses)

(Hosco booth at NAMM show in Anaheim)

In its most recent fiscal year Hosco earned revenues of $7 million from its manufacturing and export/distribution operations. As an export agent Hosco provides quality Japan-made parts including well-known Gotoh machine heads and hardware; a wide selection of electric and acoustic guitar parts and accessories; steel-string acoustic and nylon-string guitars; Suzuki violins, ukuleles, guitar bags, and cases; guitar and other stands, and Hosco build-it-yourself kits for acoustic and electric guitar, violin, ukulele, banjo, mandolin, etc. Recently the company began developing fine luthier's tools for guitars and violins with Japanese traditional toolmakers.

In 1990 Hosco opened a guitar factory in China using Japanese expertise and advanced technology to further its aims of low prices include Wood Land brand steel-string guitars and Andalusia brand nylon-string guitars. Despite the challenging U.S. -dollar-to-Japanese-yen exchange rate, Hosco's overall sales have been slowly increasing.

Several new developments have generated encouraging market interest. Hosco's S.O.S. (Sound Offset Spacer) for acoustic guitars, electric guitars, classic guitar, and ukulele is a small, easily installed part that significantly improves a fretted instrument's intonation. The development of this product, which is made in Japan, is based on MTS theory (patent pending), a new method of offsetting the string pitch for fretted instruments. According to Hosco, "MTS derives the accurate offset value from the instrument's string height, scale, and the stress of each string."

In 2006 Hosco introduced a range of luthier's knives for violin and arched top guitar builders. Designed by Hosco, these Japanese traditional knives (kogatana) feather a unique adjustable handle.

For more than 15 years Hosco has supplied packaged parts to most Japanese music stores. This year the company began supplying its parts to music stores globally.

(from The Music Trades, APRIL 2009)