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Fluent Asia Pacific's new Shinjuku office building since
January 2003
Atsushi Habu became president of the Fluent Asia Pacific office in 1998,
after years of employment in the electronics CAD industry. He quickly
started the process of making the Fluent CFD brand more widely recognized
throughout Japan. Fluent has a long history in Japan, stretching back
to the 1980s, when Fluent products were supplied through a number of independent
distributors. In 1998, Fluent Asia Pacific was established as a wholly-owned
subsidiary of Fluent Incorporated, responsible for supplying and supporting
all of Fluent's software products in Japan. Since then, Fluent Asia Pacific
has grown by over 150% and has moved to new offices twice. It is now the
biggest and fastest growing CFD supplier in Japan. Mr. Habu attributes
Fluent Asia Pacific's success to three factors: first, a core competence
in CFD as the company's main business focus; second, the technical strengths
of the CFD software it sells; and third, a service ethos he believes is
unrivaled in Japan.
Atsushi Habu, President of Fluent Asia
"Our customers expect
top-notch technical
services and products."
To summarize his business philosophy, "Our customers know best. We have
to listen deeply; hearing and listening are very different things. By
working with our customers and helping them to benefit from using our
products, we understand their short- and long-term needs. This helps us
to develop the right kinds of products and services for Japan. We continuously
improve our services by gathering customer feedback and acting upon it.
This means that we can deliver the kinds of top-notch technical services
that our customers have come to expect from the leader in CFD technology."
He recognizes the importance that Japanese companies put on trust and
openness with their software suppliers. "We provide a full range
of CFD products and services to meet the needs of all industry sectors
– from novice CFD users to seasoned analysts. Our sales account managers
develop close relationships with our customers and our technical engineers
provide support services to meet the diverse needs of the wide range of
industrial CFD applications going on in Japan."
Rick Sam, Vice President
Special Operations, Fluent Inc.
Fluent Asia Pacific has
many strong links to Fluent’s
headquarters in America,
one of which is through
Fluent’s Vice President for
Special Operations, Rick
Sam. Rick joined Creare Inc.,
where Fluent Inc. started,
in 1978. He worked as a
consulting engineer at
Creare before moving to
Fluent in 1991. At Creare,
he was involved in many
projects ranging from
nuclear reactor safety
research to ocean thermal
energy conversion to twophase
flow in spacecraft
microgravity applications.
Since joining Fluent, he has
worked in technical and
business development in
multiple industries. In his current
role, he oversees Fluent
Asia Pacific and other Asian operations, and functions
globally within Fluent in the
automotive, chemicals and
electronics markets. Summarizing
his involvement
with the Japanese market
since 1999 he says, “When
I come to Japan, I always
try to visit our customers.
They know that I will represent
their needs in our
New Hampshire headquarters.
Indeed, because
of my technical background,
I have been able
to suggest solutions on-site
and feed Japanese concerns
directly to Fluent’s development
team.” He adds,
“Our Japanese operation has
been growing at twice
the rate of any other major
region in the world for a
number of years. This
growth demonstrates how much Japanese companies
value our products and
technical services, which are
of the same high quality irrespective
of the size of the
client company.”
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