夏普的自救：呼吁员工购买自家产品

夏普的自救：呼吁员工购买自家产品

夏普呼吁，自本月20日起至明年1月29日为止，董事与高阶主管每人向公司购买价值20万日圆的液晶电视机、冰箱、洗衣机及其他家电，中阶主管每人负责10万日圆，而一般员工每人5万日圆。

测试中可能遇到的词汇和知识：

electronics 数码产品

tactics 战术

epitomises 缩影

subsidy 补贴

Sharp tells workers to buy company goods（411words）

By Robin Harding in Tokyo

First it cut wages but Sharp has a new demand for long-suffering employees: the struggling electronics group has set them targets to buy company goods.

By the end of January,executives are to buy Y200,000（$1,622）of Sharp products,middle management Y100,000（$811）and front line staff Y50,000（$405）worth of televisions,washing machines or other gadgets.

The unusual tactics testify to the extent of Sharp's troubles as it tries to restructure fast enough to overcome the losses of its liquid crystal display business and stay afloat.

Other Japanese electronics companies have sometimes resorted to paying staff bonuses in kind,or pushing them to buy company goods,but usually only in the depths of an economic downturn.

The scheme was first reported by the Yomiuri newspaper. Sharp confirmed the purchase goals but insisted they were voluntary and said it often ran internal sales promotions.Yoshisuke Hasegawa,head of the electronics division,wrote a message to staff asking them to help “weather this extreme difficulty” by participating in a special staff sale. After years of struggle,Sharp has fallen into a renewed crisis with a net loss of Y83.6bn in the first half of this year,due to the plunging price of LCD panels for smartphones.

In many ways,Sharp epitomises the fate of Japan's consumer electronics industry. It helped invent LCDs and solar panels but both products have become commodities dominated by low-cost Chinese and Taiwanese rivals.

The company is cutting thousands of jobs. It has pulled out of the North American television market and sold Y225bn of preference shares to its lending banks in June to shore up the balance sheet.

But the losses mean Sharp is still in a fragile position,with just Y181bn of equity supporting a Y1,787bn balance sheet.

Staff are meant to place orders via a special internal website and will get a subsidy of 2 per cent towards the purchase price.

The average pre-tax income for Sharp's 17,500 employees is Y600,000 a month so it is asking them for a large chunk of December's pay. Sharp's union declined to comment.

Sharp sells a wide range of electronics and white goods in Japan,but the purchase targets will still be a tall order for staff whose homes are already full of company products.

Rank and file employees might get away with a new refrigerator but to meet their quotas,executives would need to buy a top-of-the-line 80-inch LCD television and supplement it with a washing machine.