We've begun to regrow the company and gain market share." The bottom line is when the venerable Japanese corporation named Robert Black Jr. as the 10th executive operating officer of Juki Operations Japan on July 1, 2011, it also made him the first foreign executive officer in Juki's 73-year history. Black celebrated his 60th birthday at the recent Apex Expo IPC, where he expected to "have dinner with some eight people when about a hundred people showed up."