news

3 Japanese VCs team up to establish new mobile gaming studio

Takeshi Hirano 2013.07.03

See the original story in Japanese. Fuji Startup Ventures [1], Gumi Ventures [2], and B Dash Ventures have jointly announced (PDF) that they have teamed up to establish a new mobile gaming studio called A-lim. It has not been disclosed how much stake each party will hold in the company. This newly formed company also released its first mobile iOS game today, titled Brave Frontier. It’s available for free over on the App Store if you’d like to try it out. The company’s CEO Eiji Takahashi tells us that they are preparing to release an Android version and an international edition as well. More games will be coming later on. We had an opportunity to hear from Hironao Kunimitsu, the company’s executive director and the CEO at Gumi. He claimed that they company will try to produce games based on top-class IP in partnership with Fuji TV. It will be interesting to see what this new company has in store for mobile gamers! The investment arm of Tokyo’s private TV station Fuji TV. ↩ The investment arm of Japanese gaming giant Gumi. ↩

See the original story in Japanese.

Fuji Startup Ventures [1], Gumi Ventures [2], and B Dash Ventures have jointly announced (PDF) that they have teamed up to establish a new mobile gaming studio called A-lim. It has not been disclosed how much stake each party will hold in the company.

This newly formed company also released its first mobile iOS game today, titled Brave Frontier. It’s available for free over on the App Store if you’d like to try it out. The company’s CEO Eiji Takahashi tells us that they are preparing to release an Android version and an international edition as well. More games will be coming later on.

We had an opportunity to hear from Hironao Kunimitsu, the company’s executive director and the CEO at Gumi. He claimed that they company will try to produce games based on top-class IP in partnership with Fuji TV.

It will be interesting to see what this new company has in store for mobile gamers!

The investment arm of Tokyo’s private TV station Fuji TV. ↩
The investment arm of Japanese gaming giant Gumi. ↩

news

Japanese MOOC startup raises $1.5 million from investors

Takeshi Hirano 2013.07.02

See the original story in Japanese. Schoo is a Tokyo-based MOOC (massive open online course) startup providing livestreamed lectures on the internet. The startup announced today that it has raised 152 million yen (approximately $1.52 million) from Itochu Technology Ventures, Incubate Fund, and Anri. This follows its previous funding from Incubate Fund and Anri back in October of 2012. Schoo was launched back in January 2012 under the mission of “ridding the world of graduations” [1]. It provides more than 130 different online courses, and to date it has more than 40,000 users, mostly office workers in their late 20s and early 30s. With these funds the startup plans to hire an engineer and content director, and develop a system for giving lectures to other schools or companies. In the last several months, we’ve seen more than a few MOOC startups raising funds in Japan, including Smart Education, Mana.bo, and Street Academy. We heard from the startup’s CEO Kenshiro Mori regarding their business model: With our service concept, we aim to earn money by making the most of livecast programming and interaction with users, and also generating revenue streams from other sources including e-commerce services. […] We’re aiming to make…

See the original story in Japanese.

Schoo is a Tokyo-based MOOC (massive open online course) startup providing livestreamed lectures on the internet. The startup announced today that it has raised 152 million yen (approximately $1.52 million) from Itochu Technology Ventures, Incubate Fund, and Anri. This follows its previous funding from Incubate Fund and Anri back in October of 2012.

Schoo was launched back in January 2012 under the mission of “ridding the world of graduations” [1]. It provides more than 130 different online courses, and to date it has more than 40,000 users, mostly office workers in their late 20s and early 30s.

With these funds the startup plans to hire an engineer and content director, and develop a system for giving lectures to other schools or companies.

In the last several months, we’ve seen more than a few MOOC startups raising funds in Japan, including Smart Education, Mana.bo, and Street Academy.

We heard from the startup’s CEO Kenshiro Mori regarding their business model:

With our service concept, we aim to earn money by making the most of livecast programming and interaction with users, and also generating revenue streams from other sources including e-commerce services. […] We’re aiming to make our service into a platform, where we can consider possible monetization models such as charging a commission fee for item sales.

We need to adopt a progressive business model. We’ll add more attractive features for our paying users, and focus on acquiring more users, and improve our conversion and retention rates.

Schoo is expecting to surpass a million users by this December. Stay tuned to see whether the startup can disrupt the conventional concepts in this space in Japan.

That’s a translation, and obviously not really very catchy in English. ↩

news

Former Zynga Japan GM launches ambitious new flea market app

Takeshi Hirano 2013.07.02

See also the original story in Japanese. Shintaro Yamada is a Japanese entrepreneur who previously sold his startup Unoh to Zynga back in August of 2010. The company subsequently became Zynga Japan, and he was named general manager. But in January of 2012, he suddenly quit and started traveling around the world. He returned from his travels this past February, and has now founded a new startup called Kouzoh. The idea has finally been unveiled to the public, a mobile flea market app for Android called Mercari. The app allows you to take a picture of what you want to sell, and publish it to the marketplace. The buy and sell process happens entirely on your smartphone, and the successful bid is payable via credit card, bank teller, or even at a convenience store counter. An iOS app will be live in a few weeks, we’re told. The service takes a 10% commission for selling your item. And in order to prevent possible user disputes over money transfers, the startup stands in middle of every single trade between a buyer and a seller. In this space, we’ve already seen many flea market apps like Fril, Pashaoku, and Listor. Shintaro explained…

Shintaro Yamada is a Japanese entrepreneur who previously sold his startup Unoh to Zynga back in August of 2010. The company subsequently became Zynga Japan, and he was named general manager. But in January of 2012, he suddenly quit and started traveling around the world. He returned from his travels this past February, and has now founded a new startup called Kouzoh. The idea has finally been unveiled to the public, a mobile flea market app for Android called Mercari.

The app allows you to take a picture of what you want to sell, and publish it to the marketplace. The buy and sell process happens entirely on your smartphone, and the successful bid is payable via credit card, bank teller, or even at a convenience store counter. An iOS app will be live in a few weeks, we’re told.

The service takes a 10% commission for selling your item. And in order to prevent possible user disputes over money transfers, the startup stands in middle of every single trade between a buyer and a seller.

shintaro_yamada — Kouzoh’s Shintaro Yamada

In this space, we’ve already seen many flea market apps like Fril, Pashaoku, and Listor. Shintaro explained how he expects to differentiate this from existing competitors:

For now, there’s no dominant player in this space. We’d like to present our app as a place where users can buy and sell things with their smartphones safely. We still have many things to do from now, but we have an awesome team, so please stay tuned.

They have not yet set any specific target revenue volume, but the company aspires to transact a total in the range of 50 billion yen to 600 billion yen ($500 million to $6 billion).

But why would Yamada operate a mobile marketplace following his previous experience in the gaming business? He explained that nothing has been changed in terms of his strategy:

My interest is C2C (consumer-consumer) business in a broad sense. It’s one of the leaps that the internet has enabled. I really want to make something innovative in this space. Our company’s mission is to make internet services widely used in the world, and that’s the same goal as my previous company Unoh. It was mobile gaming at that time, but now we’re focusing on a flea market app.

Yamada was born in 1977, and he’s seen as a new-generation serial entrepreneur in Japan, as well as an angel investor. We will keep our eyes on how he progresses from here.

news

Trendy Japanese photo app Cameran expands to become a social network

Takeshi Hirano 2013.06.27

See the original story in Japanese. Some of our readers may have heard a little about a mobile camera app from Japan called Cameran. It has a variety of filter effects, and is available for iOS and Android in 10 different languages. To date the app has recorded an impressive 3.6 million downloads worldwide since its launch back in October, 2012. The app was created by Media Technology Lab, the research arm of Japanese human resource company Recruit. And today the group announced that it has added a photo sharing feature, effectively expanding the photo app into a brand new social network. The company feature user accounts of celebrity guest users such as Mika Ninagawa, the Japanese film director who supervised the creation of the app. According to the app’s developer lead Tetsuya Oshiro, this change is based on feedback from users. Personally, I think that the strategy of building a user base and then adding social features is a smart choice in terms of marketing. There is no shortage of quality photo apps in Japan, making the market extremely competitive right now. One source told us that the Cameran app is not yet in the money-making phase, but they’re…

See the original story in Japanese.

Some of our readers may have heard a little about a mobile camera app from Japan called Cameran. It has a variety of filter effects, and is available for iOS and Android in 10 different languages. To date the app has recorded an impressive 3.6 million downloads worldwide since its launch back in October, 2012.

The app was created by Media Technology Lab, the research arm of Japanese human resource company Recruit. And today the group announced that it has added a photo sharing feature, effectively expanding the photo app into a brand new social network. The company feature user accounts of celebrity guest users such as Mika Ninagawa, the Japanese film director who supervised the creation of the app.

According to the app’s developer lead Tetsuya Oshiro, this change is based on feedback from users. Personally, I think that the strategy of building a user base and then adding social features is a smart choice in terms of marketing. There is no shortage of quality photo apps in Japan, making the market extremely competitive right now.

One source told us that the Cameran app is not yet in the money-making phase, but they’re still pushing to increase the user base.

Even in such a saturated space, there’s still some rooms for unqiue apps like this one to win over users. We’ve never seen photo apps using celebrities for marketing efforts, so it will be interesting to see how this tactic affects user acquisition.

news

In Japan, some seniors turn to crowdsourcing job platforms for work

Takeshi Hirano 2013.06.26

See the original story in Japanese. How many years can a human adult keep working? The concept of a lifetime employment system or retirement at 60 is no longer what it used to be in Japan. So finding work on online marketplaces is fast becoming an option for many older citizens in the country. Japanese crowdsoucing marketplace Crowdworks released an interesting report on Monday, showing how seniors (specifically workers over 50) use the crowdsourced platform for work. Some people are using it to make a living, and others do it to find a sense of fulfillment. We’d like to share some portions of the report and explore how a platform like Crowdworks can provide alternative working options. Please note that this report is based on 129 responses from 2,649 users aged over 50, just a fraction of Crowdworks 40,000 users. For convenience, currencies in this post are converted at a rate of 100 yen for one US dollar. More than 30% of the users over 50 earn $2,000 monthly from projects on CrowdWorks 73% receive $100 a month, and 34% earn more than $2,000 a month. 12% earn an annual income worth $50,000. Crowdsourcing gives people more ways to work…

See the original story in Japanese.

How many years can a human adult keep working? The concept of a lifetime employment system or retirement at 60 is no longer what it used to be in Japan. So finding work on online marketplaces is fast becoming an option for many older citizens in the country.

Japanese crowdsoucing marketplace Crowdworks released an interesting report on Monday, showing how seniors (specifically workers over 50) use the crowdsourced platform for work. Some people are using it to make a living, and others do it to find a sense of fulfillment. We’d like to share some portions of the report and explore how a platform like Crowdworks can provide alternative working options.

Please note that this report is based on 129 responses from 2,649 users aged over 50, just a fraction of Crowdworks 40,000 users. For convenience, currencies in this post are converted at a rate of 100 yen for one US dollar.

More than 30% of the users over 50 earn $2,000 monthly from projects on CrowdWorks

73% receive $100 a month, and 34% earn more than $2,000 a month. 12% earn an annual income worth $50,000.

Crowdsourcing gives people more ways to work

It’s really interesting to see how users integrate crowdsourcing work into their lifestyle. The report shows us that almost half of the users are working on crowdsourced projects as freelancers, and the rest are working on projects as a supplement to their primary jobs.

More than a few people in Tokyo are keen to settle in countryside some day, but if they move, there are less opportunities to meet new people on business than urban areas.

The report shows that 70% of users are using the platform outside the Tokyo region. This is made possible by the high penetration of broadband internet in the country. Some users explained that the platform gives them a chance to find work, competing with the younger generation in urban areas.

In my view, crowdsourcing must be more accepted in Japanese society, and as quickly as possible. We’ve heard from Crowdworks’ CEO Koichiro Yoshita that many local governments are looking to the potential of crowdsourcing as a means of generating a new revenue stream for the elderly. I expect this kind of civic movement could be led by more assertively by governmental entities.

For the elderly generation, they can be reliable workers offering much experience. And for them, such platforms are a great opportunity to find a more enjoyable lifestyle, or to explore interesting work options.

news

DeNA may have cut back operations on its Comm messaging app [Report]

Takeshi Hirano 2013.06.26

See the original story in Japanese. Nikkei Business reported today that DeNA has cut back operations for its Comm messaging app, and is planning to cease further user acquisition efforts. The report says: The Comm app was introduced by DeNA to compete against Line. We recently learned the company has cut back operations for this messaging app. At its peak, the team for the app had almost 70 engineers, but this seems to have decreased to just several team members earlier this month. The company intends to cease promotional activities for acquiring new users. We also heard from a source that they might have cut back operations earlier this month. Some of our readers may have read Serkan Toto’s report that Comm integrated casino games into the messaging app. But it looks to have made no impact in terms of user acquisition. We have reached out to DeNA this morning for comment on the report, but have not yet received a reply. Update: The company says that the size of the Comm team is always changing, and will continue to do so. A representative notes that they “naturally needed to operate in a big group at launch” but has been…

See the original story in Japanese.

Nikkei Business reported today that DeNA has cut back operations for its Comm messaging app, and is planning to cease further user acquisition efforts. The report says:

The Comm app was introduced by DeNA to compete against Line. We recently learned the company has cut back operations for this messaging app. At its peak, the team for the app had almost 70 engineers, but this seems to have decreased to just several team members earlier this month. The company intends to cease promotional activities for acquiring new users.

We also heard from a source that they might have cut back operations earlier this month. Some of our readers may have read Serkan Toto’s report that Comm integrated casino games into the messaging app. But it looks to have made no impact in terms of user acquisition. We have reached out to DeNA this morning for comment on the report, ~~but have not yet received a reply.~~ Update: The company says that the size of the Comm team is always changing, and will continue to do so. A representative notes that they “naturally needed to operate in a big group at launch” but has been “flexibly changing the team structure.” (RM)

Nikkei Business points to Kakao Talk and CyberAgent’s Decolink as competitors to Line in Japan. GREE has also launched a messaging app back in December of 2012, but it is still not promoted much and is only available in Australia and some other countries. It was rebranded as Tellit back in March.

When we look at messaging apps in the Asian region, WeChat (from Tencent) has been showing good numbers. They have acquired more than 50 million users outside China, in addition to its existing 300 million users in its home market of China.

In contrast with the success of Line and WeChat, some players in the Asia region may be in for tough times ahead.

news

Japanese business card app ‘Eight’ surpasses 200,000 users

Takeshi Hirano 2013.06.25

See the original story in Japanese. The most popular professional social network in the world is most likely LinkedIn. It came to the Japanese market in late 2011, and while several other business networking services were launched in the country, they are all still having a relatively tough time. But there’s another service turning some heads by building a business-oriented social network here in Japan. It’s called Eight. Sansan, the startup behind the service, announced on Monday that it has deployed a major update to its application. The app is available for the iOS and Android, and it has surpassed the 200,000 users milestone, not an insignificant feat. The Eight app was launched back in February of 2012, allowing users to manage their contact lists by taking pictures of business cards with their smartphone. In terms of differentiation from other services, the Eight app does not use OCR (optical character recognition) but actually hires operators who enter your business contacts into the system for you. They will enter not only information like names, e-mail addresses, and company names, etc, but all the information shown on a business card. The app is not just for managing your business cards, but it…

See the original story in Japanese.

The most popular professional social network in the world is most likely LinkedIn. It came to the Japanese market in late 2011, and while several other business networking services were launched in the country, they are all still having a relatively tough time. But there’s another service turning some heads by building a business-oriented social network here in Japan. It’s called Eight.

Sansan, the startup behind the service, announced on Monday that it has deployed a major update to its application. The app is available for the iOS and Android, and it has surpassed the 200,000 users milestone, not an insignificant feat.

The Eight app was launched back in February of 2012, allowing users to manage their contact lists by taking pictures of business cards with their smartphone. In terms of differentiation from other services, the Eight app does not use OCR (optical character recognition) but actually hires operators who enter your business contacts into the system for you. They will enter not only information like names, e-mail addresses, and company names, etc, but all the information shown on a business card.

The app is not just for managing your business cards, but it is also seen as a business social network that allows you to exchange business information over the internet. Based on several criteria, the system will find someone you might be connected with in real life and encourage you to exchange your business card with them. On Linkedin, you might have a contact request from someone that you’ve never seen before. But the Eight app works by referring to just business cards you’ve exchanged in the past, so you would receive contact requests only from those you’ve already met.

We had an opportunity to hear from Naotake Hibiya and Hiroshi Edward Senju of Sansan. Senju explains:

I think a social network based on business cards is new. 200,000 people are using it, and we’ve seen rapid user growth especially in March and April. For future upgrades, we intend to create a business culture that encourages people to connect with each other based on their backgrounds or their existing contacts.

They are currently working on a new feature to let users virtually exchange cards on the app simply by entering a contact’s phone number. However, if the contact has no account on the Eight app or has signed up with an e-mail address different from the one shown on his business cards, the system may unintentionally send a connection request e-mail.

While other online professional networks are exploring another ways to survive, it is interesting to see how the Eight app has proposed this unique answer in a country where business cards are so important.

news

Consumer rewards startup Kanmu partners with Credit Saison, raises $440,000 from investors

Takeshi Hirano 2013.06.25

See the original story in Japanese. Some of our readers may recall that we featured Kanmu in our previous article about finance apps. It’s a Tokyo-based startup that provides card-linked offers (CLO), a new marketing/loyalty technique for brands and merchants. Kanmu announced on Monday that it would launch the first CLO service in Japan in partnership with Credit Saison, one of the country’s largest credit card issuers/acquirers. The startup has raised about 43 million yen (about $440,000) from East Ventures, Anri, and other Japanese investors. CLO has been implemented by major credit card companies in the US since early 2010. It connects offers or discounts directly to a consumer’s credit or debit card, which can then be redeemed at the point of sale. How does it work? Credit card holders receive online discount coupons on the dashboard showing your credit card balance. The type of virtual coupons you see will be decided according to what you have bought in the past, by drawing from your purchase history. If you’re interested in using one of these coupons, you simply need to click the banner. Subsequently, when you visit a retailer and use a credit card registered with the program, you will…

See the original story in Japanese.

Some of our readers may recall that we featured Kanmu in our previous article about finance apps. It’s a Tokyo-based startup that provides card-linked offers (CLO), a new marketing/loyalty technique for brands and merchants.

Kanmu announced on Monday that it would launch the first CLO service in Japan in partnership with Credit Saison, one of the country’s largest credit card issuers/acquirers. The startup has raised about 43 million yen (about $440,000) from East Ventures, Anri, and other Japanese investors.

CLO has been implemented by major credit card companies in the US since early 2010. It connects offers or discounts directly to a consumer’s credit or debit card, which can then be redeemed at the point of sale.

How does it work?

Credit card holders receive online discount coupons on the dashboard showing your credit card balance. The type of virtual coupons you see will be decided according to what you have bought in the past, by drawing from your purchase history. If you’re interested in using one of these coupons, you simply need to click the banner.

Subsequently, when you visit a retailer and use a credit card registered with the program, you will receive rewards automatically, such as cash-back. For users of partner company Credit Saison, you will be able to earn reward points via the CLO program.

For retailers, you can better target customers and need not worry about any elaborate setup to deploy the program. Retailers will be charged based on a performance-basis, so it’s much easier for them to begin using the program for as part of their marketing efforts.

But what about security? Kanmu’s CEO Wataru Yamaki addressed that point:

Our users’ personal information stays with credit card companies, which guarantees your information is as secure as it was before. We’re also currently working on getting certification for information security as well. […] What we do is managing which user has clicked on which coupon. So personal information never leaves the credit card company. Using this type of purchase analysis, card companies have been sending direct mail to their customers. But now it becoming web-based. For retailers and card companies, it lets you to see how aggressively consumers react to each promotional activity, as soon as that activity is deployed.

Yamaki is a young entrepreneur in his 20s, and has so far been involved in many projects using distributed services and natural language processing. Prior to the launch of the CLO service, he has been exploring financial information services and managing a market cap ranking site called MarketGeek. With these new funds, he hopes to acquire more sales and analysis personnel.

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Tokyo’s Giftee launches new service, lets you mail a gift without any address

SCORE 1,495

Takeshi Hirano 2013.06.24

See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based startup Giftee is a service that allows you to send a gift voucher over the internet. For instance, when you receive such a voucher from someone, you could use it to redeem a complimentary cup of coffee at a partnering coffee shop, for example. For gift givers, the service gives you a great way to send a small token of thanks or appreciation to someone lives far away from you. However for the gift receiver, the process of redeeming the coupon is not always easy. But the startup has just taken a step to remedy this. Giftee announced the launch of a new service today which delivers your gift straight to your friend on your behalf. For gift givers, you can choose a present from among 60 products across 20 brands, such as Japanese teas, sweets, flower arrangements, and accessories. When you complete the purchase, you will receive a specific URL from the service. Subsequently, you can send that URL to the recipient over e-mail, by a Facebook private message, or via the Line messaging app. You never need to know the receiver’s mailing address because they will be prompted to enter it…

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based startup Giftee is a service that allows you to send a gift voucher over the internet. For instance, when you receive such a voucher from someone, you could use it to redeem a complimentary cup of coffee at a partnering coffee shop, for example. For gift givers, the service gives you a great way to send a small token of thanks or appreciation to someone lives far away from you.

However for the gift receiver, the process of redeeming the coupon is not always easy. But the startup has just taken a step to remedy this.

Giftee announced the launch of a new service today which delivers your gift straight to your friend on your behalf. For gift givers, you can choose a present from among 60 products across 20 brands, such as Japanese teas, sweets, flower arrangements, and accessories. When you complete the purchase, you will receive a specific URL from the service. Subsequently, you can send that URL to the recipient over e-mail, by a Facebook private message, or via the Line messaging app. You never need to know the receiver’s mailing address because they will be prompted to enter it after receiving the URL from you.

181b499d69fb98c8b886dbe3994b91be — For recipients, you can choose your preferred color or type.

For those receiving gifts, when you click the URL in a message from a sender, you’ll be requested to accept the gift and enter your own address. Using his dashboard, the sender can see if you have already read the notification e-mail.

605eee4d41ff3c05e9f15b195a0809a7 — For senders, you can choose a gift card and attach a message.

Giftee’s co-founder/CEO Mutsumi Ohta explained what prompted him to launch this new service.

I learned one of our partnered merchants was selling very cute cookies. But the confectionery shop is located [relatively] far from any railway stations, so the coupon redemption rate was pretty bad. But the startup has an e-commerce channel and can ship their products from online orders. This means they are capable of delivering their products upon getting gift order requests. We started testing it last fall, and learned many people have repeatedly used the new service.

Mr. Ota thinks the service’s original concept to deliver small ‘thank yous’ over social media has been well understood among its users since the initial launch back in 2011. The only problem with this new delivery service is that it’s bit expensive to ship. But the startup is now trying to overcome this using a reasonably priced mail delivery service.

If you have some products that might be suitable for such a gifts, the startup welcomes your application to be a partner merchant. But they are careful about partner selection selection and there are a range of reasons why a product might not make the cut.

news

Japan-based design site Creatty launches e-commerce channels

Takeshi Hirano 2013.06.18

See the original story in Japanese. Creatty is a website that allows creators to show off their work online. Connehito, the Japan-based startup that operates the service, recently announced an e-commerce channel called Creatty Store, where creators can sell their works online without inventory. Since its launch back in April of 2012, the website has acquired more than 20,000 fine arts and crafts items from creators. The service is available to access for free on PC, iOS, and Android platforms. On this new e-commerce channel, the startup plans to feature standout designs posted on the platform and help creators to manufacture them for sale. At the time of launch, items available include skins for smartphone handsets and t-shirts only. The startup will take care of manufacturing and shipping, and pay a commission (upon sale) to those who have designed the products. This is a somewhat unusual approach to its business scheme. For many C2C market sites dealing in handmade crafts (such as Etsy), users sell their works online and the platform will take a commission afterwards. The startup originally considered a concept similar to what other C2C services are doing, but instead they stand in the middle between creators and…

See the original story in Japanese.

Creatty is a website that allows creators to show off their work online. Connehito, the Japan-based startup that operates the service, recently announced an e-commerce channel called Creatty Store, where creators can sell their works online without inventory.

Since its launch back in April of 2012, the website has acquired more than 20,000 fine arts and crafts items from creators. The service is available to access for free on PC, iOS, and Android platforms. On this new e-commerce channel, the startup plans to feature standout designs posted on the platform and help creators to manufacture them for sale. At the time of launch, items available include skins for smartphone handsets and t-shirts only.

The startup will take care of manufacturing and shipping, and pay a commission (upon sale) to those who have designed the products. This is a somewhat unusual approach to its business scheme. For many C2C market sites dealing in handmade crafts (such as Etsy), users sell their works online and the platform will take a commission afterwards. The startup originally considered a concept similar to what other C2C services are doing, but instead they stand in the middle between creators and buyers. We asked CEO Shunsuke Oyu about why he chose this scheme. He explained:

For craft creators, we thought it would be very simple to photograph the works they produce and simply sell them online. That was our original concept. We developed a web app for selling them online, but very few people used it. We learned the market was not quite mature [enough]. And it was probably hard for them to make goods by themselves.

Typical creators using the service are generally folks into fine arts. And it’s likely difficult for them to manage an inventory of products like experienced e-commerce merchandisers.

Mr. Oyu explains that the startup will add more creators on e-commerce channels with plans to have up to 50 creators in the coming months. They are expecting to start dealing with canvas prints and fashion items as well.

Takeshi Hirano

Articles

3 Japanese VCs team up to establish new mobile gaming studio

Japanese MOOC startup raises $1.5 million from investors

Former Zynga Japan GM launches ambitious new flea market app

Trendy Japanese photo app Cameran expands to become a social network

In Japan, some seniors turn to crowdsourcing job platforms for work

More than 30% of the users over 50 earn $2,000 monthly from projects on CrowdWorks

Crowdsourcing gives people more ways to work

DeNA may have cut back operations on its Comm messaging app [Report]

Japanese business card app ‘Eight’ surpasses 200,000 users

Consumer rewards startup Kanmu partners with Credit Saison, raises $440,000 from investors

How does it work?

Japan-based design site Creatty launches e-commerce channels

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