Prince

"Yoshiaki’s companies owned one-sixth of all the land in Japan; and their land holdings increased every year. They owned the largest luxury hotel chain in the country with more than sixty hotels. You could live in a Seibu apartment, travel to work on Seibu Railways, stay at a Seibu-owned Prince hotel and go on holiday to one of Seibu’s resorts, which dominated all the country’s best ski slopes."

"As Knox recalls it, he and Stokes worked on diluting the costly problem of making golf clubs (in a market swamped with cheap imports) by buying into other businesses that distributed Adidas sports gear and Prince tennis racquets. Bundled together, the three businesses made one strong one, a combination that eventually snagged the attention of the Singapore Government, which backed a local firm (the makers of Tiger Balm) to invest in the dominant sporting goods distributor in Asia."