News
News Categories

How the founder of G-Shock nearly quit in failure and how a little girl saved him

By Alvin Soon - on 10 Apr 2016, 6:30am

How the founder of G-Shock nearly quit in failure and how a little girl saved him

The first G-Shock, the DW-5000C.

For all the awesome stuff that gets made, not a lot is told about how they were made. 

Ignition has a great story on the birth of Casio’s G-Shock watches, and Kikuo Ibe, the inventor and lead developer of the first G-Shock watch. Here are some great tidbits from the article:

  • Ibe wanted to “make watch that won’t break if you drop it,” because Ibe’s wristwatch - a gift from his parents - had dropped and broke
  • Even though he submitted a weak proposal, his bosses deliberated over it seriously and fully supported him
  • Ibe couldn’t make the concept work for nearly two years, and he came to accept that he was going to fail and have to quit
  • A little girl playing in the park gave him an idea that saved him and made G-Shock possible
  • Even after G-Shock was successfully released, it languished in Japan for nearly ten years before becoming popular there

Casio’s G-Shock has become such a staple of watch shops that it’s hard to imagine a time without it. G-Shocks are worn not just by fashionista, but by police officers, firefighters, soldiers, people who need a watch that can go anywhere and survive anything. The entire origin article is worth reading in its entirety, check it out on Ignition.

P.S. Did you know that Casio just dropped the hammer? Its latest G-Shock is the limited edition Hammer Tone MR-G, which is going for a cool US$6,200. Not only is this thing tough - water-resistant, shock-resistant, powered by solar, has a built-in GPS to automatically update time across time zones - the Hammer Tone is decorated with the traditional Japanese technique known as tsuiki, in which a pattern is created on a metal surface by hammering. It’s pretty damned gorgeous.

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.