Japan’s Kakaku.com recently announced overseas users of its price comparison site can now purchase products through a new partner website called BuySmartJapan. This new site is provided by Veritrans.
When users click on the BuySmartJapan banner on the products page, they’re taken to the new website where they can purchase that product [1]. BuySmartJapan will purchase the product from Japanese stores on behalf of the consumer and then ship it overseas.
Kakaku.com is a comprehensive review portal strong in electronics, but it covers other things including insurance and travel plans. Its monthly pageviews exceed nine hundred million with over 45 million monthly users. Of this number, over one million are users residing outside of Japan. Many stores posted on the site do not ship to outside of Japan, and the new business was started to solve this inconvenience.
In addition to credit card and Paypal, other accepted payment methods for this new site will be AliPay (offered by China’s Alibaba) and China-UnionPay. This is perhaps a good indication that this initiative is, in part, directed at serving Chinese consumers.
In addition to international shipping, the site has also added shopping carts in English, Chinese, and Korean. Kakaku.com now ships to Japan as well as 120 countries outside of Japan.
Besides its price comparison site, Kakaku operates a range of internet services, including Cena, a Japanese equivalent to OpenTable. Readers may recall back in September when we wrote about its restaurant review site Tabelog and how its premium business model is skyrocketing.
Editor’s note: We’re in Japan and we’re not certain that this process is yet in place. Surfing Kakaku using a US IP address does not yet show BuySmartJapan banners in our initial test. ↩
See the original Japanese version of this article here The competition among news technology startups is heating up. Yesterday, we brought you the first part of our interview with Shinji Kimura, who just joined a leading news technology startup, Gunosy. In this second part, he talks about the company’s competitors, as well as his own goals as an entrepreneur. The Bridge: There are several competitors in this field. How will you stand apart from them all? Kimura: Gunosy made it possible for users to get useful information without having to search for it for it on the internet. News was the first step. But the next step could be other content like books, music, or great images. E-commerce is now more personalized as well. We could help bring content from any field to users. The Bridge: You are expanding beyond news? Kimura: We have a chance to access to all kinds of content. We could develop an efficient matching system that spans the world, by building a great team with the necessary expertise. If we can do this, we could see a form of consumption nobody has ever imagined before. Connecting dots, as Steve Jobs said, will be realized in…
The competition among news technology startups is heating up. Yesterday, we brought you the first part of our interview with Shinji Kimura, who just joined a leading news technology startup, Gunosy. In this second part, he talks about the company’s competitors, as well as his own goals as an entrepreneur.
The Bridge: There are several competitors in this field. How will you stand apart from them all?
Kimura: Gunosy made it possible for users to get useful information without having to search for it for it on the internet. News was the first step. But the next step could be other content like books, music, or great images. E-commerce is now more personalized as well. We could help bring content from any field to users.
The Bridge: You are expanding beyond news?
Kimura: We have a chance to access to all kinds of content. We could develop an efficient matching system that spans the world, by building a great team with the necessary expertise. If we can do this, we could see a form of consumption nobody has ever imagined before. Connecting dots, as Steve Jobs said, will be realized in the field of recommendation technology. Ultimately this sort of thing has potential to make people happier.
The Bridge: Amazon recommends users items based on what they previously bought. And Gunosy recommends based on users’ interests, right?
Kimura: People often misunderstand this, but we don’t recommend articles based on what users’ friends have shared. We don’t do that. What we want to do is to try to copy the users’ mind based on interests. That’s why sometimes articles the user has already read the previous day are recommended.
The Bridge: Gunosy is growing rapidly. But I have the impression that there is still room to add entertainment value. Is there any possibility for such an entertainment feature in the future? Perhaps implementing a real-time function?
Kimura: Basically user interests are not updated real-time, so that’d be a difficult feature to implement. I hear that a lot of users use a variety of services, each for a different purpose. So naturally it’d be more convenient if they could be integrated into just one service.
The morning edition and the evening edition of newspapers is a good representation of readers’ daily activities. [Giving consideration to time], it could be interesting to provide recipes from Cookpad before lunch time. I think that this kind of feature can add an entertainment value to the service.
The Bridge: To what extent are you planning to scale up this business?
Kimura: We have to carefully look at the actions of competitors and major companies, and try to take action at the right time. There will be a lot of things young members in their 20s cannot imagine. I have business experiences both in startups and big companies. So I think my role here in Gunosy is to help young members think beyond their existing frames of view.
The Bridge: The executive team will be built based on your network as well?
Kimura: I am talking to some people who have startup experiences. Possibly some people who are well known in the startup field will join our team. […] Considering that existing competitors are already big, we need to pump human and capital resources at this stage. I had difficulty doing that in my past starup experience, so this time I will take advantage of my experiences and execute rather boldly. Japan needs big technology companies like Google and Facebook, a place where young talents can work. Our generation needs to establish a 1 trillion-yen company which can be passed to the next generation.
Over the past few years we are seeing more Japanese startups than ever before looking beyond domestic borders to markets abroad. This is undeniably awesome. But this development is not without growing pains and awkwardness. What works in Japan doesn’t always work elsewhere, and this is particularly true of company names. From the point of view a non-Japanese person, there seems to me to be a very disproportionate number of companies in Japan that have crazy names. This problem has a number of symptoms, including: the triple-letter epidemic (see Niiice, Freee, Snapeee, and Calll) strange/random capitalization (see DoCoMo, DeNA CocoPPA, MiCHi) [1] names that sound just plain wrong (see Cunpic, Askiss) I’m a little reluctant to point this out, but when I read how Takafumi Horie named his latest app, Teriyaki, it really made me think about the problem a little more. With hopes of global expansion potential, we decided to name the app ‘Teriyaki’ — something familiar to non-Japanese people too. Too few Japanese startups do this. In fact, our own team here fallen into this trap as well, although having rebranded as The Bridge recently, I’m glad we’re out of it! [2] Evasive maneuvers So if you are…
Over the past few years we are seeing more Japanese startups than ever before looking beyond domestic borders to markets abroad. This is undeniably awesome. But this development is not without growing pains and awkwardness. What works in Japan doesn’t always work elsewhere, and this is particularly true of company names.
From the point of view a non-Japanese person, there seems to me to be a very disproportionate number of companies in Japan that have crazy names. This problem has a number of symptoms, including:
names that sound just plain wrong (see Cunpic, Askiss)
I’m a little reluctant to point this out, but when I read how Takafumi Horie named his latest app, Teriyaki, it really made me think about the problem a little more.
With hopes of global expansion potential, we decided to name the app ‘Teriyaki’ — something familiar to non-Japanese people too.
Too few Japanese startups do this. In fact, our own team here fallen into this trap as well, although having rebranded as The Bridgerecently, I’m glad we’re out of it! [2]
Evasive maneuvers
So if you are a Japanese company, how can you avoid this sort of problem? I’d like to share a few points that I think should be considered when choosing a name for your company or service. Keep in mind, I don’t claim to be any sort of naming expert. But I’ll try to offer a few points that I think can help.
Ask the crowd you know – Make use of the poll features in Google Drive or Facebook to gather feedback from as many of your friends as possible, and from a diverse range of people if you can.
Ask the crowd you don’t know – If you don’t know any English-speaking people who can offer suggestions, consider using a service like PickyDomains, where you can crowdsource some domain name ideas for a reasonable price [3]. If you can’t manage to get feedback from English-speaking people using modern day internet tools, you should probably reconsider doing business abroad.
The telephone test – A really great name is one that you can tell someone over the phone without any big problem.
The t-shirt test – Is your name and logo something that your employees would wear on a t-shirt? If not, maybe reconsider.
Don’t be afraid to use a Japanese name, even if you are targeting global markets. Some names can be just fine for global use. Rakuten, Origami, Gengo, and Niconico are all easy to say and remember. Some Western companies even choose names that sound Japanese because they sound sort of cool (see tech blog Kotaku).
Let’s face it, choosing a good name for your company or service is really hard. And if you have to do it for two markets, then it’s twice as difficult. Given that limitation, the best strategy might be simply choose a name that doesn’t suck in either market.
Of course if you have no plans on expanding beyond Japan, feel free to disregard everything I’ve just said. But if you think there is even a chance you might expand your business abroad in the future, it doesn’t hurt to factor that possibility into your naming decision.
CocoPPa is actually doing quite well overseas, which is good to see. As an editor though, I really despise those double Ps. For the record, I wrote about unusual capitalization a long time ago, so I’m not going to bother going into that mess again. ↩
I think that actual domain names are not quite as important as they used to be in this mobile age. Our choice of ‘The Bridge’ was a tough one, because it’s not so SEO friendly. But SEO isn’t what it used to be, thankfully! ↩
See the original Japanese version of this article. The competition news technology startups is heating up in Japan. Each company is adjusting its business strategy in an attempt to differentiate from competitors. Two startups are leading this competition: Smartnews and Gunosy. The latter recently surpassed 1 million downloads and launched an ad network as well. Gunosy recently added a very notable new member to its team in Shinji Kimura, who previously founded an ad-tech startup (Adlantis) and also has experience as an investor. We spoke with him to learn more about Gunosy, particularly about their recently launched ad service, and about his own goals as an entrepreneur. The Bridge: You are back on the frontlines! Kimura: It is getting busier here everyday. The experience I had before in Adlantis, expanding the business and the team, helps me a lot now. As soon as I started using Gunosy, I realized that this is something different from other recommendation technology. I was referred to Mr. Fukushima, the CEO of Gunosy, and met him at a restaurant. The Bridge: The performance of Gunosy Ads (recently launched) turned out to be surprisingly high, right? It is a way better than I expected. CTR and…
The competition news technology startups is heating up in Japan. Each company is adjusting its business strategy in an attempt to differentiate from competitors. Two startups are leading this competition: Smartnews and Gunosy. The latter recently surpassed 1 million downloads and launched an ad network as well. Gunosy recently added a very notable new member to its team in Shinji Kimura, who previously founded an ad-tech startup (Adlantis) and also has experience as an investor. We spoke with him to learn more about Gunosy, particularly about their recently launched ad service, and about his own goals as an entrepreneur.
The Bridge: You are back on the frontlines!
Kimura: It is getting busier here everyday. The experience I had before in Adlantis, expanding the business and the team, helps me a lot now. As soon as I started using Gunosy, I realized that this is something different from other recommendation technology. I was referred to Mr. Fukushima, the CEO of Gunosy, and met him at a restaurant.
The Bridge: The performance of Gunosy Ads (recently launched) turned out to be surprisingly high, right?
It is a way better than I expected. CTR and CVR figures are both around 10 times more than average ad networks. Facebook might reach a similar figure in the future. I will keep improving the ad technology.
The Bridge: What is the vision of Gunosy Ads you have in mind?
Kimura: A lot of users get annoyed by ads on smartphones. I want Gunosy Ads to be a solution to this issue. Ads should be part of the content. So, we need to identify how users find content. The question is, how do they find contents they want when everything like music, books and information are digitized? We need to provide technology to help users find contents efficiently.
The Bridge: You worked on advertising technology at Adlantis. How is it different at Gunosy?
Kimura: Gunosy stands right between advertisers and media. We analyze user information and provide that to advertisers. DSP and SSP have room for improvement. Current advertising systems made it possible for advertisers to put ads more efficiently at lower prices. But media has not succeeded in getting enough data on clusters of users, and that keeps them from upping their advertising rate.
The high performance of Gunosy Ads proves that as long as media can grab solid data about users based on SSP and DSP, they don’t need to sell ads at unreasonably low prices. Since we have technology to understand user interests, it could be possible in the future to utilize it and help other websites display optimized ads.
While Adlantis provided optimized ad serving as a third party, Gunosy realized optimal ad serving by changing the scheme and reconstructing information.
The Bridge: It’s not possible without communication with users, is it?
This scheme is possible only when there is solid trust between us and our users. Our users have to be convinced that we are working for them. If we just put random ads, users will not trust us. We have to make sure that our ad program serves our users as a sort of concierge and provide useful information for users’ daily lives.
The Bridge: So how do you describe Gunosy?
Kimura: Gunosy is a response to the changing times. When internet devices were only PCs, the internet was available only at home or in the office. But now, people can connect to the internet with smartphones anytime anywhere. When the places we could use the internet was limited, we connected to the internet with specific purposes. We used search engines to reach information. But when the internet became accessible anytime, we started using the internet without purpose.
The Bridge: I see.
Kimura: Then social network sites expanded. But they are not efficient. Users get redundant information. Users were looking for something that matches their interests. A kind of unknown information was needed.
Social network users seem to spend endless amounts of time looking at their timelines, but actually they are looking for something that interests them. People want a more efficient search engine. That’s Gunosy.
Gunosy is different from a news aggregator. It’s a system that connects users and information when users don’t have any particular purpose.
I understand that the concept of Gunosy is closer to Yahoo than Google. However, on portal sites organized as a directory, users still have trouble finding what they want. So, the question is how to provide a timeline of information optimized for each user. We need to calculate, optimize and control data in order to do that.
The Bridge: The optimization of Yahoo sounds like a key idea for the future.
Kimura: I think Yahoo Japan is going to execute it. They have not yet done it possibly because of other business issues, but Yahoo USA has already implemented a timeline system. The volume of user data is the key to making a solid recommendation system. Things like a social graph makes a difference as well.
Kimura also talked about their competitors, as well as his own goals as an entrepreneur. We’ll cover that in the next article!
Today Line Corporation disclosed its sales figures for the months of July to September 2013. Total sales were 19.1 billion yen, up 48% from the previous quarter. The sale figures for its Line business totaled 9.9 billion, up 58.3% from previous quarter. (15.6 billion in gross sales) 60% of sales are from games, 20% from stamps, and official Line accounts and sponsored stamps make up the rest. The company also announced provided some updated statistics. Its chat application is used by over 280 million users worldwide, and attaining number one share among messaging app in Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan. The app is seeing encouraging growth in India with more than ten million users to date. Latin America, Turkey, and Italy are among regions where Line is growing well. The company also announced today that France’s Bouygues Telecom will promote Line on its mobile portal [1]. That will certainly help its efforts in Europe after its initial successes in Spain. Line now has 39 game titles including the popular Line Pop, and over 300 well-known characters are being used as stamps. Company CEO Akira Morikawa elaborated on the company’s strategy, saying that the company’s priority is set on enhancing user satisfaction…
Today Line Corporation disclosed its sales figures for the months of July to September 2013. Total sales were 19.1 billion yen, up 48% from the previous quarter. The sale figures for its Line business totaled 9.9 billion, up 58.3% from previous quarter. (15.6 billion in gross sales) 60% of sales are from games, 20% from stamps, and official Line accounts and sponsored stamps make up the rest.
The company also announced provided some updated statistics. Its chat application is used by over 280 million users worldwide, and attaining number one share among messaging app in Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan. The app is seeing encouraging growth in India with more than ten million users to date. Latin America, Turkey, and Italy are among regions where Line is growing well. The company also announced today that France’s Bouygues Telecom will promote Line on its mobile portal [1]. That will certainly help its efforts in Europe after its initial successes in Spain.
Line now has 39 game titles including the popular Line Pop, and over 300 well-known characters are being used as stamps. Company CEO Akira Morikawa elaborated on the company’s strategy, saying that the company’s priority is set on enhancing user satisfaction rather than increasing sales.
Line recently launched its Line Collaboration Account designed specifically for vendors of daily consumer goods. The company has already partnered with a nation-wide convenience store chain Lawson and drug store Matsumoto-Kiyoshi. Line’s existing official accounts have proven effective with over 99 corporate accounts opened to date with the number of subscribing users exceeding 200 million. Of those, a whopping 37.6% have gone to offline stores to use coupons distributed through the app. With the new Collaboration Account, brands can distribute coupons and product promotions to their users.
On a bit of a sidenote, it was (mildly) interesting to hear the phrase ‘Born in Japan’ used to refer to Line in this announcement. It came from a Bouygues Telecom rep, but clearly Line is ok with that terminology. I’ve heard some questions in the past as to whether or not Line is truly a made-in-Japan service. To me, this is further validation that it is – not that there was really that much doubt to begin with. ↩
See the original story in Japanese. The Japanese economy appears to be getting better recently. In the startup scene in particular, we’ve seen more than a few acquisitions and fundings. This improved economic situation may have precipitated an interesting new mobile app too. Japanese entrepreneur Takafumi Horie (a.k.a. Horiemon) recently unveiled Teriyaki, an app that provides users with recommendations of the best restaurants in Japan. The app is available for free on both iOS and Android, but users have to pay a monthly subscription of 400 yen (about $4) via an in-app purchase. The app provides recommendations of restaurants and dishes based on curation by celebrity foodies called “Teriyakists”. They include high-profile restaurant guide editors, food-focused TV producers, and even Horiemon himself. At the recent launch party at a restaurant in Shibuya, Horie explained how his team plans to evolve our dining experiences: Even while I was in jail, I was thinking to develop this kind of app. There is still little information available in the app at the moment, but its volume will eventually be ten times larger than now. We’ll be launching an English and Chinese version in the upcoming few months using crowdsourced translation services, and also…
From the left: Takafumi Horie and Makie Sonoyama (cooking specialist)
The Japanese economy appears to be getting better recently. In the startup scene in particular, we’ve seen more than a few acquisitions and fundings. This improved economic situation may have precipitated an interesting new mobile app too. Japanese entrepreneur Takafumi Horie (a.k.a. Horiemon) recently unveiled Teriyaki, an app that provides users with recommendations of the best restaurants in Japan.
The app is available for free on both iOS and Android, but users have to pay a monthly subscription of 400 yen (about $4) via an in-app purchase.
The app provides recommendations of restaurants and dishes based on curation by celebrity foodies called “Teriyakists”. They include high-profile restaurant guide editors, food-focused TV producers, and even Horiemon himself.
At the recent launch party at a restaurant in Shibuya, Horie explained how his team plans to evolve our dining experiences:
Even while I was in jail, I was thinking to develop this kind of app. There is still little information available in the app at the moment, but its volume will eventually be ten times larger than now. We’ll be launching an English and Chinese version in the upcoming few months using crowdsourced translation services, and also a version featuring restaurants in east coast US cities. With hopes of global expansion potential, we decided to name the app ‘Teriyaki’ — something familiar to non-Japanese people too.
By the end of this month, the app will cover 700 restaurants profiles across the country. Through a partnership with Pocket Concierge, it will give you opportunities to dine at restaurants introduced on the app, where it is likely difficult to book a reservation.
By next spring, the app is expected to add e-commerce functions, with the ability to order local specialties from any part of the country online, in an effort to monetize the app.
Teriyakists – foodies curating restaurants for the app
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Takeshi Hirano
Rick Martin
Masaru Ikeda
