The Rise of the Casio Corporation

The Casio Corporation has been around since April 1946 and has grown significantly since its founding. The global conglomerate has an estimated $4.54 billion (about $14 per person in the US) as of 2021. Casio currently is an electronics company, developing watches, mobile phones, cameras, musical instruments, and calculators. As for the company’s earlier years, it made completely different products. 

The founder of Casio, Tadao Kashio, established the company as Kashio Seisakujo. The first product the company sold was the yubiwa pipe, a pipe on the ring finger that holds cigarettes and allows one to smoke the whole cigarette at a time when tobacco was expensive. The money made from the yubiwa pipe allowed the company to branch out into the electronics industry with the world’s first compact, all electronic calculator, the “Casio 14-A”. After their innovative invention, their products have become ubiquitous household items.