When Fumiko Hayashi, 59, was given the top job at debt-ridden retailer Daiei last year, the general public reaction was 'Hayashi who?' Less than a year later, her efforts have won her national recognition and the nickname 'Oshin' - after a fictitious heroine from a popular Japanese TV drama series of the 1980s.
Oshin is a poor little girl who grows up and overcomes all obstacles to become the owner of a big supermarket chain in Japan. Mrs Hayashi, too, started from scratch. She is the daughter of a vegetable market broker; with neither MBA nor powerful family connections, she rose to the top through her own efforts.
In contrast to the traditional stodgy pattern of Japan's 'salaryman' workers, Mrs Hayashi has a colourful history of job hopping. Out of high school, she worked as a secretary at a few companies before landing a sales job at a Honda car dealer in 1977, at the age of 31. In the chauvinistic, male system of selling cars, she quickly stood out for her enthusiastic, friendly and creative approach to customers - and broke the dealer's one-month sales record.
Mrs Hayashi was headhunted by BMW Japan and later Volkswagen Tokyo. At both companies, she set sales records and transformed laggard offices into the most profitable outlets. Quick promotions followed, to manager and branch director. Little wonder that BMW begged her to return in 2003 as president of sales for Japan - the title she held before moving to troubled Daiei. By then she had become an icon to aspiring Japanese businesswomen.
Daiei was Japan's leading supermarket operator until the mid-1990s, when debt and poor management turned it into one of the so-called 'zombie' companies that symbolised Japan's long recession. The first woman to run a major Japanese company, Mrs Hayashi wasted no time implementing a restructuring programme aided by the Industrial Revitalisation Corp of Japan, a semi-government body.
She closed more than 50 stores and shut down all overseas operations. The chairman pushed customer-friendly strategies, sometimes rolling up her elegant sleeves to help hawk fresh vegetables during special promotions.