The 10th typhoon “Lionrock” (台風10号) that passed by Japan last night, brought heavy rains, high waves and strong winds to areas devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. As most Tozando regulars know we have a factory in the Iwate prefecture, the Tozando Iwate Factory. This is where we produce many of our products, such as Kendo Bogu, Kote, Gi and Hakama, unfortunately it seems that our factory did not escape undamaged from the typhoon this time.
With heavy rains that passed a years worth in only one day, it’s not hard to imagine that many areas in Iwate were flooded and even in the area where the Tozando Iwate Factory is located, the area was flooded and according to our local craftsmen and staff, they currently have water up to their knees.
Although the extent of the damage to our facilities and materials has yet to be fully understood, we would like to communicate to our customers that none of our craftsmen or staff were hurt by the typhoon, although, because of the current status of the Factory, we are not sure when regular work can resume again. Because of this we would like to apologize to our customers in-beforehand for the inconvenience and eventual delays in their orders that might be caused by this incident. Once we know the extent of the damaged to our factory, we will supply additional information regarding any eventual delays in orders.
We thank you for your understanding.
Update 2016/09/02:
After assessing the status of the Factory the last 2 days, we have been able to determine that much of our materials have been damaged beyond rescue due to the flood caused by the Typhoon “Lionrock” (台風10号) that passed by the northern parts of Japan this week.
Fortunately, most orders from customers were saved by the fact that they were put on the workbenches of our craftsmen or on shelves, although the materials such as deerskin, fabric rolls were not so lucky. We are already preparing materials to replace the damaged materials, and will try to keep the delays at a minimum, but we estimate that it will take about 1 week to clean up the Factory from the mud, water and garbage that came with the typhoon and subsequent flood, before we can return to regular work in the factory.
In summary, we believe there will be minimal effect on any current or old orders that we had already received, but this might affect our stocks slightly for the near future, which might affect upcoming orders. We feel very lucky that the damage was just material and we would like to thank everyone of our customers for their support on Facebook, Thank you!
Lastly, We hope that the less fortunate parts of Iwate and the Tohoku area that were affected by the Typhoon can recover as soon as possible!
