Like you don’t see Gibson branded cars.
In: Economics
In a more generic sense, businesses can either operate in a “vertical market”, where they make one thing and if they are very good at it, they will be successful. They don’t necessarily feel they need to do other things. Other businesses on the other hand like to do multiple things. If one segment has an economic downturn, the other segments can help keep the business going.
You professionally play guitar. Your brother is a renowned engineer. You are both a part of one family but occupy different fields. Same is about Yamaha, they started with one father, who paid for everything, and expanded their family to other fields.
There were no anti-monopoly laws in Japan until the late 40’s and the laws that do now exist on the subject are very weak and aren’t usually enforced.
Because of this, monopolies were allowed to form. Prior to WWII, there were only 4 companies in Japan – Sumitomo, Mitsui, Mitsubishi, and Yamada. These 4 companies divided up the Japanese economy and just didn’t compete with one another. So if you were living in Imperial Japan and wanted to buy a car, your only option was to buy it from Mazda, which was owned by Sumitomo. If you wanted to buy any kind of insurance you had to go through one of Yasuda’s insurance companies. The same was true of every industry in the country.
During the US occupation of Japan following WWII, the US introduced some laws regarding monopolies and broke up those 4 companies. This resulted in a large number of smaller companies buying up assets from those big 4 to compete in the newly liberalized economy. What assets those smaller companies bought up were kind of random, which led to companies like Yamaha, which was a small musical instrument company, to acquire the machinery to produce marine engines from Mitsubishi.
After the US occupation ended, the Japanese government stopped enforcing the occupation era laws on monopolies. This led the remnants of the big 4 to buy back a lot of their former assets, but again, what they were able to buy back was kind of random. This led to some weird Japanese conglomerates that owned a hodgepodge of factories producing equipment for wildly different industries.
The result in the modern day is that you still have the big 4, which produces stuff in a large number of unrelated industries, and then a bunch of smaller companies like Yamaha that produce stuff in a small number of unrelated industries.
Many large Japanese companies have grown by acquisition of various businesses. Yamaha music and Yamaha boats etc pretty much only have in common the Yamaha brand and are operated as independent businesses, each with its own manufacturing etc. Mitshubishi makes cars, is one of the largest banks in Japan, has oil and gas division, makes food, etc etc etc. Just like Koch industries subsidiaries make high tech fibers, trade commodities and distribute oil….
For the same reason the company that owns Pepsi owns plastic manufacturing and aerospace parts manufacturing.
They used their money and investments to buy into other similar fields, they have the knowledge and ability to manufacture these parts, so they buy up companies that do, putting them under their brand
[A quick internet search](https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Yamaha-make-so-many-things) can help:
“Because diversification guarantees long term stability and growth to an organization. If one product goes down in sales, others cover up for it.
Yamaha is a large conglomerate with two major subsidiaries; Yamaha Corporation, makers of musical instruments, audio equipment, and electronics, and Yamaha Motor Company, makers of motorcycles, ATV’s, watercraft, and other accessories. The company started as a musical instrument manufacturer over 120 years ago and is the largest piano manufacturer in the world. In 1955 the established the motors subsidiary by building their first motorcycle, eventually growing into a separate, quite successful business.”
That’s just an amateur’s answer, but [here](https://www.spoon-tamago.com/2015/03/28/yamaha-musical-instrument-motorcycles/) is another, more official one:
“Japanese company Yamaha was founded in 1887 as a piano manufacturer. But after WWII the company leveraged its expertise in metallurgy to branch into motorcycles as well, creating a most diverse product range. Today, the company not only makes musical instruments, bikes and motorcycles, but sporting goods and robots as well. But motorcycles and musical instruments remains their bread and butter and Yamaha’s origins are still reflected today in their logo—a trio of interlocking tuning forks.”
Well, they don’t. 🙂
They are two different companies. Though closely related, and at one time joined.
Yamaha Corporation is a Japanese multinational corporation and conglomerate with a very wide range of products and services. It is one of the constituents of Nikkei 225 and is the world’s largest piano manufacturing company. The former motorcycle division was established in 1955 as Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., which started as an affiliated company but later became independent, although Yamaha Corporation is still a major shareholder.
But to answer your bigger question, how is they invest the money to do so, why is in the hopes of making a profit. Sometimes its due to an interest that a family member had or something.
Take Howard Hughes for example. He started by operating his father’s tool and die business. But he was really into airplanes. So he started investing in airplanes. Ultimately that’s where it led him and he sold off the tool and die company I think.
It’s a conglomerate, a “chaebol” in Korean (where corporations like Samsung are like this); a big company composed of many subsidiaries. Sony is another example: they make TVs and other electronics (like PlayStations), but they also make movies and TV (like Ghostbusters and “Breaking Bad”) and even sell insurance in Japan.
Latest Answers