What exactly is J. Hewitt?

Stem cell; cell based hair therapy
1

I did a lot of research about this company and it seems it’s very small and barely has a presence on the internet. The corporate website is here:

http://www.jhewitt.co.jp/

I ran the site through Google translate and it does not look good.

Who runs J. Hewitt? J. Hewitt’s CEO is Jon Knight. It seems to be a company founded by a non-Japanese (American, Canadian or British citizen, judging by the company’s non Japanese name) and some time after its founding, Jon Knight became the CEO.

How big is J. Hewitt? As you can see the website is pretty bare bones. The capitalization of the company is only about US $87,000. It’s a VERY small company - number of employees seems to fluctuate, I’ve found some employment ads for them on the web, including copies of ads they ran looking for “only Japanese” employees. Essentially it seems to be largely a "one man operation" led by Jon Knight, who hires people on an as needed basis to do marketing, sales, etc. If this were a really solid company with a well-known product line, strong capitalization, lots of customers, etc. the website wouldn’t look like that.

What does J. Hewitt do? It seems they’re mainly involved in the import and export of medical equipment to and from Japan. Mostly it looks like they have clients in Japan who want to develop medical devices and they network to get the devices manufactured in Japan and then export them. They also do a little export of cosmetics. However, I should emphasize that this seems to be a VERY small operation, with only a few clients, and their client base fluctuating a lot depending on if they can even find clients.

Do they have any products? Apparently, at the moment, NO. I can find no mention of TissUse on their website. The website also says that all their products were removed from the site and you can no longer register on the site, whatever that means.

Analysis: It appears that in order to get into the Japanese market and do clinical trials there, a foreign company MUST have a Japanese partner company. That’s what Replicel did when they signed their now defunct deal with Shiseido. Foreign biotech entrepreneurs wanting to do clinical trials in Japan must find a Japanese partner company which must do a certain amount of the work, create a certain amount of the jobs (mainly for Japanese people), and bring a certain amount of profit and tax revenues to Japan.

This is just my guess - TissUse was not able to find a Japanese partner company more credible than this tiny firm, J. Hewitt, which isn’t a large well-established biotech or pharma company, but instead a tiny, apparently one man entrepreneurial operation, which seems to dabble in import/export opportunities, mainly in medical devices and equipment, wherever they can find them. In fact hheir website makes it look like J. Hewitt’s more active and successful days are behind it - they specifically mention they took their list of products off the site, which suggests they have no products currently. I am not sure what J. Hewitt would actually be able to offer TissUse, apart from the fact that the firm is officially registered in Japan and has legal status there, which probably fulfills a requirement of the Japanese government for foreign companies wanting to conduct clinical trials in Japan. Essentially they fill a legal requirement and nothing more. Other than a few scattered announcements on the web and one on TissUse’s website, there is almost no information anywhere on the web about J. Hewitt’s reputation or relationship with TissUse.

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That is not the same as “market capitalization” as in a publicly traded company on the stock market. The $87K was the initial capital the shareholders put into the company at the time when it was incorporated. Vast majority of the companies in the US are incorporated with as little as $100 captial.

I wouldn’t read too much into that, it means very little.

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@helpmeout Yes I know the difference. It looks like maybe there is some requirement for them to report their capitalization to the public (not market capitalization as it’s not traded on the stock market). I’m not sure if this is an annual reporting requirement or if that figure dates back decades to when they were first incorporated. If so, you’re right it’s irrelevant now. Still, if this were a thriving company that would be able to support human clinical trials on a major new product, I would expect them to have reported a higher figure than this. If the number is no longer imporatant, why put that small amount on their website, what is its relevance?

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@roger_that I hope that this is not the company that handles human trials otherwise we would be in deep trouble, their website is downright unprofessional, it is so bad that even my browser flagged the site as unsafe to access because it is unsecure.

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@Myhair1 I trusted Dr Lauster’s work was serious but this suggests that TissUse is having difficulty finding serious partners or investors.