Inter-Domain Corporation has two employees, including the president.

Inter-Domain Corporation has two employees, including the president.
It is the smallest company we have featured in our "Venture Visit" series so far.
However, the company has been steadily growing, despite its niche market, as it accounts for more than half of the domestic market share for independent power source wind power generation, which is in demand on remote islands, and its estimated sales for 1997 exceeded 1 billion yen for the first time.
Recently, the company attracted attention when it installed a total of 20 kW wind turbines on Hachijojima Island as part of the island's Clean Island Initiative.
We interviewed the company's president, Shinsuke Sugimoto.
President Sugimoto quit his job at a trading company and founded Interdomain Corporation in 1989.
He says that the impetus for establishing the company came from a dream he had as a student to work in marine development.
However, he was not able to get the job he wanted immediately after the company was established, and for a while he was involved in importing yachts.
While continuing to work on yachts, he learned about wind power generators in 1992.
An overseas yacht trading company asked me if I would be interested in handling large wind turbine blades in Japan, since they were selling well in Europe," he said.
So I investigated the market in Japan and found that there was no demand for large wind turbine generators costing tens or hundreds of millions of yen in Japan at that time.
However, there was definitely a segment of the population that was interested in them, so we thought that small wind turbines might be a good idea.
Thus, the company began to deal in wind turbine generators and is now a wind power generation specialist.
There are two types of wind power generation systems: independent power generation systems that generate their own power for self-consumption, and systems that sell the power they produce to electric power companies.
The former is in demand mainly on remote islands and mountaintops where infrastructure is underdeveloped, while the latter has been attracting attention over the past 23 years as a device for the power sales business.
All of the wind power generators handled by Inter-Domain are independently powered, and range from small, hobbyist-type systems priced at 12.3 million yen for home use to full-scale systems priced at tens of millions of yen.
We provide total coordination, starting with wind condition surveys upon receiving a request for installation, followed by equipment selection, importation, and installation.
Most of our actual customers are municipalities.
We are responsible for more than half of all independent power generation systems in Japan.
Past achievements in system sales include auxiliary power supply for electric vehicles at the "Windmill Village" in Yamagata Prefecture, multipurpose power supply for the "Wind Museum" in Ehime Prefecture, power supply for a fountain at a theme park in Aichi Prefecture, and power supply for indoor lighting at a sluice hut in Hokkaido.
Most of the equipment they handle is imported from overseas due to cost considerations.
●In June 1997, four 5-kilowatt wind turbines were installed on Hachijo-jima Island under the Clean Island Island Initiative (see photo).
The island has launched the "Clean Island Hachijo Initiative," and in addition to wind power generation, is working on geothermal power generation and the introduction of a deposit system for empty cans and PET bottles.
The wind turbine, storage batteries, and diesel generator were made in France, and the automatic controller was made in Australia.
The order price was 45 million yen, including construction costs.
In this business, you need a certain amount of know-how based on experience.
For example, in the case of Hachijojima, it would actually be more efficient to install one 20-kilowatt unit, but building height restrictions make it impossible to install a unit over 10 meters, so we decided to install four 9-meter units.
In this way, the skill is in how the equipment is combined, taking into account not only wind conditions, but also geographical conditions and cost.
It is not high-tech, but rather handmade low-tech energy.
Although the deregulation of the electricity sales system and other regulations has increased awareness of wind power generation compared to the early days of the industry in 1992, the complexity of the paperwork and other procedures involved in actually installing wind power generation equipment has not changed, he says.
He went to Hachijojima dozens of times from the wind condition survey stage to the complete start of the project.
And even in the case of smaller generator installations, the procedures required to get up and running are the same.
The process is too time-consuming for a large company to undertake.
I think this is a niche market for small, nimble ventures," he says.
Since his first encounter with wind power generation in 1992, the company's business performance has steadily increased over the past five years.
Wind power generation is now attracting attention as an environmentally friendly energy source, but it is not a field where a reliable market can be expected in the future.
It is also true that when you start doing big jobs like the one in Hachijo-jima, you sometimes find small jobs dealing with individuals to be troublesome.
However, I believe that expanding the base of wind power generation will lead to the company's growth, and I intend to work steadily even on small jobs.
If we don't follow up from the base of the pyramid, the wind power generation market as a whole will not grow," he said.
In the same vein, the company is currently exploring ways to utilize wind power generation for monuments and environmental education.