SmartEquip announced the commercial launch of its services in the Japan market, operated in partnership with Tokyo-based Diamond Construction Equipment Corp. The SmartEquip Network is now fully operational in Japan, with a growing number of Japanese suppliers having gone live, and with the first major Japanese rental company having entered pilot phase.
The two companies quietly finalized the terms of their partnership in March of 2020, and since then have fully internationalized and commercially launched the platform in the Japanese market. Several Japanese suppliers have joined the Network alongside manufacturers who were already active in North America and in Europe, and who are seeking to expand their reach and support of the Japanese market.
"SmartEquip has long sensed tremendous opportunity in Japan," said Alexander Schuessler, SmartEquip's founder and president of its International Group. "Rental penetration rates are very high, equipment ownership runs long, and operational efficiency and equipment lifecycle management improvement have a monumental impact on profitability – both for rental companies, as well as the manufacturers who supply and support them. These factors together represent the perfect setting for our value propositions.
"Prior to entering into definitive partnership agreement in Q1, 2020, we worked with Diamond Construction Equipment for three years to forge a strategy for the Japanese market. It is extremely gratifying to witness the SmartEquip Network commercially operating in Japan and to see a daily increase in the number of orders running through our platform. We thank the Diamond team for the close partnership we were able to build together, for the vision we jointly formed for this industry, and for the learning our two companies experienced, both together and from one another."
"We are very pleased to bring SmartEquip technology to the Japanese rental industry," said Tatsuo Miyazawa, CEO of Diamond Construction Equipment. "Rental companies in Japan have long known that technology can improve profitability by reducing labor costs and by increasing the financial utilization of equipment. It is exciting to be able to launch these opportunities for profitability in our market, and to do so with an elegant technology solution that is both easy to implement and very user friendly. We thank SmartEquip for our partnership and look forward to expanding this footprint very quickly together over the next couple of years."
Diamond Construction Equipment Corp. was founded in 2013 and is co-owned by the four largest Japanese equipment rental companies and Mitsubishi Corp. (https://www.mitsubishicorp.com/jp/en/). The company provides a variety of new services and functions to address common challenges in the equipment rental industry in Japan. These include providing "long term re-rent" solutions as an alternative procurement strategy to minimize fleet owners' capital risks; logistics solutions to optimize rental equipment delivery; and SmartEquip technology to improve equipment utilization and reduce lifecycle costs for fleet owners.
The SmartEquip Network (https://www.smartequip.com/our-network/supplier-manufacturer-network/) currently supports more than 600 OEM brands, with more than 95,000 users across more than 42,000 equipment locations globally. The Network supports over $1 billion in parts transactions annually and the company is led by veterans of construction, technology, and data sciences.
