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Mobile payments startup Coiney and e-shop builder Stores.jp merged to share client base

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See the original story in Japanese. Mobile payments startup Coiney and online shop builder Stores.jp — both of Japan — announced on Wednesday that the two companies have set up a stock holding company called Hey, in order to integrate their business operations. Yusuke Sato, Director of FreakOut Holdings (TSE:6094), and Naoko Samata, co-founder and CEO of Coiney, were respectively appointed President and Executive Vice President of this holding company. Both Coiney and Stores.jp started their services back in 2012. Total volume transacted on these two platforms have grown 10 times in three years since their launch back in January of 2015. With the business merger, both companies will expand their target to small companies in rural areas of Japan and popular influencers such as merchants. We were told that the two platforms are planning to launch new services with the aim of helping merchants improve their business and service experience. Japanese mobile payments startup Coiney raises $7.1 million Japanese payments startup Coiney looks back on key metrics from its first year Japanese mobile payment startup Coiney starts selling its card reader on Amazon Japan Japanese mobile payments processor Coiney secures $8M in funding Japanese mobile payments processor Coiney raises…

L to R: Hey’s executive team – Ayana Tsukahara, Naoko Samata, Yusuke Sato, Yusuke Mitsumoto

See the original story in Japanese.

Mobile payments startup Coiney and online shop builder Stores.jp — both of Japan — announced on Wednesday that the two companies have set up a stock holding company called Hey, in order to integrate their business operations. Yusuke Sato, Director of FreakOut Holdings (TSE:6094), and Naoko Samata, co-founder and CEO of Coiney, were respectively appointed President and Executive Vice President of this holding company.

Both Coiney and Stores.jp started their services back in 2012. Total volume transacted on these two platforms have grown 10 times in three years since their launch back in January of 2015. With the business merger, both companies will expand their target to small companies in rural areas of Japan and popular influencers such as merchants. We were told that the two platforms are planning to launch new services with the aim of helping merchants improve their business and service experience.

Via PR Times

Translated by Masaru Ikeda
Edited by “Tex” Pomeroy

Japan’s Stores.jp partners with department store chain to bring its retailers online

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Bracket, the startup operating the Shopify-like e-commerce platform Stores.jp, announced today that it has partnered with Japanese department store chain Parco. Through this partnership, the e-commerce company will assist over 3,000 tenant retailers in the department stores establish their online presence. Since its launch back in 1969, Parco has rolled out 19 stores nationwide in Japan, recently reporting over $2.6 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2013. Stores.jp began its e-commerce platform service back in August of 2012, and has acquired over 90,000 merchants since then. All Parco retailers are encouraged to establish their e-commerce sites using Stores.jp, with plans to drive user traffic from the store’s blog where retailer staff can introduce merchandise and products. Retailers are to set up a pre-order button in their online storefront, where customers can buy a product online in addition to picking it up at retail stores. To date, we’ve never witnessed a high-profile shopping complex like Parco roll out such a quantity of e-commerce sites for tenant retailers. Stores.jp’s CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto elaborated on the partnership: We’ve seen that some retailers from Parco can generate as much as 25% of their entire revenue from online…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Bracket, the startup operating the Shopify-like e-commerce platform Stores.jp, announced today that it has partnered with Japanese department store chain Parco. Through this partnership, the e-commerce company will assist over 3,000 tenant retailers in the department stores establish their online presence.

Since its launch back in 1969, Parco has rolled out 19 stores nationwide in Japan, recently reporting over $2.6 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2013. Stores.jp began its e-commerce platform service back in August of 2012, and has acquired over 90,000 merchants since then.

All Parco retailers are encouraged to establish their e-commerce sites using Stores.jp, with plans to drive user traffic from the store’s blog where retailer staff can introduce merchandise and products. Retailers are to set up a pre-order button in their online storefront, where customers can buy a product online in addition to picking it up at retail stores.

To date, we’ve never witnessed a high-profile shopping complex like Parco roll out such a quantity of e-commerce sites for tenant retailers. Stores.jp’s CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto elaborated on the partnership:

We’ve seen that some retailers from Parco can generate as much as 25% of their entire revenue from online sales. We’ll be more focused on coordinating blogs and syndicated e-commerce business. We want to enable all retailers in Parco successfully launch e-commerce sites.

Two young Japanese entrepreneurs discuss their recent buyouts

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See the original story in Japanese. This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Osaka 2013. Two Japanese startups that have experienced an strong growth in the last several months are Coach United, the startup behind private lesson portal Cyta.jp, and Bracket, which operates instant e-commerce platform STORES.jp. On day two of B Dash Camp Osaka last week, we had a chance to hear from Coach United CEO Nobuhiro Ariyasu and Bracket CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto. Also on the panel were Rakuten executive officer Takeshi Homma, and KDDI general manager Shigeki Matsuno. This year Ariyasu sold his startup to Japanese recipe site Cookpad, and Mitsumoto sold his startup to leading Japanese fashion commerce company Start Today. Moderator Hiroyuki Watanabe started the sessions with asking about their recent exits. When did you start preparing for buyouts? Ariyasu explained: When we launched our company back in 2007, I had no idea about funding or M&As. We couldn’t help but enjoy developing our product at that time. Two or three years later, we finally could make our business profitable, and had a chance to receive offers from some people [1]. The company kept using bank loans but were exploring funding opportunities…

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Bracket CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto and Coach United CEO Nobuhiro Ariyasu

See the original story in Japanese.

This is a part of our coverage of B Dash Camp Osaka 2013.

Two Japanese startups that have experienced an strong growth in the last several months are Coach United, the startup behind private lesson portal Cyta.jp, and Bracket, which operates instant e-commerce platform STORES.jp. On day two of B Dash Camp Osaka last week, we had a chance to hear from Coach United CEO Nobuhiro Ariyasu and Bracket CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto. Also on the panel were Rakuten executive officer Takeshi Homma, and KDDI general manager Shigeki Matsuno.

This year Ariyasu sold his startup to Japanese recipe site Cookpad, and Mitsumoto sold his startup to leading Japanese fashion commerce company Start Today. Moderator Hiroyuki Watanabe started the sessions with asking about their recent exits.

When did you start preparing for buyouts?

Ariyasu explained:

When we launched our company back in 2007, I had no idea about funding or M&As. We couldn’t help but enjoy developing our product at that time. Two or three years later, we finally could make our business profitable, and had a chance to receive offers from some people [1].

The company kept using bank loans but were exploring funding opportunities for the next stretch.

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Bracket is not an old company but has been running a number of businesses for about five years. In contrast to his past businesses, Mitsumoto was aggressively exploring funding opportunities to boost their e-commerce platform. He attributes this to the many competitors in that space [2].

What’s the most impressed in the entire session was the following interaction between the pair.

Ariyasu asked Mitsumoto,

If Base (Bracket’s main competitor) wasn’t around, would you still sell your startup to Startup Today?

Mitsumoto answered, saying:

Without them, we probably might have not achieved the revenue we have.

Why not aim for an IPO?

Since these two startups were rapidly growing but self-funded, their founders could probably consider IPOs as possible options. But they emphasized a good match with the companies that acquired them.

Ariyasu explains:

I’m not really a person who drives after an IPO. It’s all up to you to determine whether an IPO and an M&A is a better choice for you. … I actually got an offer from Murakami (Livesense CEO) but I think it was not so aggressive. I’m close with him, and we have been fishing together. The reason why we partnered with Cookpad was I thought the both companies have something common in their corporate culture.

In a explanation about how Bracket’s Mitsumoto decided to sell his startup, he unveiled it was finally decided over the phone with Start Today’s CEO Yusaku Maezawa, which surprised the audience.

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Bracket CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto

The decision was surprisingly smooth. I’ve been in touch with Maezawa for almost three years since he sent us an inquiry via our website. I’ve handled four different businesses in the past, and I finally managed to find success in my fifth. The recent announcement that Yahoo Japan made of making its e-commerce platform free this year will be a big turning point in the Japanese e-commerce industry, where more players will make more bold decisions to defeat competitors.

Buyer’s perspective, seller’s perspective

KDDI’s Matsuno was involved in Mediba’s [3] acquisitions of startups such as Nobot and Scaleout. In a response to moderator Watanabe’s question about criteria around M&As, he says:

You probably need the perspectives of both a buyer and a seller. When your company is acquired by 100%, you will totally lose your ownership. In an extreme case, you might lose your position as the CEO. When you think of a company that you could sell your business to, you will need to build a good relationship of mutual trust (not to be asked to step down).

Rakuten’s Homma concluded the session with saying that:

Both for a seller and a buyer, the more experience you have, the better you can understand how you should proceed.


  1. We previously featured Ariyasu and Cyta in this article.
  2. Our readers may recall that we visited the Bracket office just last month, and had a chance to speak more with Mitsumoto about Stores.jp.)
  3. Mediba is a mobile advertising-focused subsidiary of KDDI.

Tokyo Office Tour: Bracket, Before and After Acquisition

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Read this article in Japanese In Japan, we have seen a lot of hype around the e-commerce sector, and one of the startups getting a lot of attention is Stores.jp. Launched almost a year ago, the service recently made headlines when it was acquired by Start Today, the company behind the mega fashion e-commerce Zozotown. We visited the very cool Shibuya office of Bracket, the company behind Stores.jp, and talked to the CEO, Yusuke Mitsumoto, about their journey to this point, and where they go from here. The Bridge: Why did you choose Shibuya as the location to set up the Bracket office? Yusuke: I graduated from Aoyama Gakuin University which is located in Shibuya, so I’m very familiar and comfortable here. I really can’t think of any other place. We moved here about three weeks ago, but it’s only a five-minute walk from our previous office. We only had five people before, but the team has grown to be more than 20. The Bridge: How did you end up starting your own company? Yusuke: I use to work for a foreign advertising agency. The ad industry was so much fun, in fact too fun that I even felt a…

Read this article in Japanese

In Japan, we have seen a lot of hype around the e-commerce sector, and one of the startups getting a lot of attention is Stores.jp. Launched almost a year ago, the service recently made headlines when it was acquired by Start Today, the company behind the mega fashion e-commerce Zozotown. We visited the very cool Shibuya office of Bracket, the company behind Stores.jp, and talked to the CEO, Yusuke Mitsumoto, about their journey to this point, and where they go from here.

The Bridge: Why did you choose Shibuya as the location to set up the Bracket office?

Yusuke: I graduated from Aoyama Gakuin University which is located in Shibuya, so I’m very familiar and comfortable here. I really can’t think of any other place. We moved here about three weeks ago, but it’s only a five-minute walk from our previous office. We only had five people before, but the team has grown to be more than 20.

Bracket-office-meetingspaceThe Bridge: How did you end up starting your own company?

Yusuke: I use to work for a foreign advertising agency. The ad industry was so much fun, in fact too fun that I even felt a little scared. In Japan, the job of an ad agency is to sell media space sort of similar to a realtor, but outside Japan, you are more of a partner where you charge your fee by the hour. It was interesting to be able to work for different companies in various industries, from airlines to car manufacturers to even mineral water. But at the end of the day, the final decisions are always made by the client. I wanted to drive my own business and that’s why I started my own company.

The Bridge: Can you tell us about Bracket and its current business?

Yusuke: I founded Bracket as an internet business company back in October of 2008. Five years have since passed and it feels like the blink of an eye. The first service we released was CaFoRe, a C2C car-sharing service, and we now operate five web services in total. The others are Shoes of Prey, Privaterobe, Stores.jp, and ModelTown.

The Bridge: How did you end up making those five products?

Yusuke: The first two years we focused on CaFoRe, and in the third year we released everything except Stores.jp. We launched Stores.jp almost a year ago. We’ve been bootstrapped all this time, so we had to produce more sources of income and each product made contributions to our revenue.

The Bridge: In terms of revenue, which is the biggest contributor?

Yusuke: It’s more like a little from all products, but Shoes of Prey had more impact than we had expected. E-commerce is a simple business: you sell, you get cash. C2C services on the other hand requires a lot of time to grow. Currently, we have about 30,000 registered users on Shoes of Prey.

bracket_BThe Bridge: So would you say that you’ve been the only captain on the boat until now?

Yusuke: Yes, I’ve been the only executive until now. However, one of the team members Aya Tukahara, joined me on the board this year. All of the business decisions have been made by me. There are a few entrepreneurs outside the company that I can talk to, but many people choose to get funded or they already have enough funds at hand, so it’s hard to find someone in the same shoes as me.

The Bridge: Tell me a little about your current team.

Yusuke: There are roughly 20 members on our team including part-timers. Of those, about half are designers and engineers, and a quarter consists of managers and business development. The rest belong to customer support. There are no divisions within these teams, designers work on designs for all five products. But this year, we’ve pretty much focused on Stores.jp and Shoes of Prey.

The Bridge: How do you recruit people?

Yusuke: That’s the hardest part, but many are through introductions. We do put out recruiting ads but it’s been difficult to find qualified people. We don’t want to rush to hire people, because it just means more work when it doesn’t work out. Recruiting takes patience.
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The Bridge: Can you tell us the current status of Stores.jp?

Yusuke: Since its launch almost a year ago, we have about 50,000 stores on the platform. About half of those are individuals, and the other half are small businesses with physical stores. Many stores owned by individuals sell design products like t-shirts and handmade items.

The Bridge: Your direct competitor is BASE. Why do your users chose Stores.jp over them?

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Yusuke: We make many opportunities to speak directly with our users, and many chose us for our design and usability. They feel that the Stores.jp brand is cool. I think our simple domain Stores.jp helps with that branding.

The Bridge: What do you have planned for Stores.jp in the future?

Yusuke: We’re trying to enhance the ability to sell. At the end of July we released a feature called Promotional Switch. By turning this switch on, items within your store are promoted via partner e-commerce and media sites. We want to increase the number these partners to boost Stores.jp selling power.

The Bridge: Can people sell their items abroad?

Yusuke: Yes, there is a feature to translate stores into English. Not many stores use this feature, but we want this total to increase.

The Bridge: What’s your next big goal?

Yusuke: By the end of the year, we want to double the number of stores on Stores.jp.

Working with Start Today

The Bridge: Has anything changed since you joined Start Today, the company behind Zozotown?

Yusuke: Not really. Generally, when a company is acquired by another, you start your job the next day at the new office, you’re given new business cards, and even a new team. But for us, nothing has changed. The decision to move to our current office was decided before we began talking to Start Today, and I’m still the CEO with the same team working together. But by partnering up with Start Today, we now have access to the many powerful resources that they own.

Bracket-YusukeMitsumoto

The Bridge: We heard that the acquisitions talks only took two phone calls.

Yusuke: That’s correct. I have known Mr. Maezawa, the CEO of Start Today, for a few years. Before we launched Stores.jp or Shoes of Prey, he somehow found us and contacted us through our website. Ever since then, I’ve occasionally had dinner with him. Bracket had always been bootstrapped, so it was a big decision and a scary one to get funding from outside. But it was time, and we were looking for two hundred million yen.

The Bridge: So you were already in talks with potential investors.

Yusuke: Yes. At first we were talking about a business alliance with Start Today because Zozotown and Stores.jp had the potential to work together to boost each other’s service. But if we’re doing business together, I suggested it might be best for them to invest in us so that we can really work together.

The Bridge: How do you plan to work with them?

Yusuke: This is unintentional, but almost 70% of store owners on Stores.jp are in the apparel sector. There is obviously a huge demand in the apparel industry, and to cultivate this opportunity, it is crucial that we work with Zozotown which has a big influence in that industry.

The Bridge: How many users does Zozotown have?

Yusuke: They have over five million users, and we can certainly leverage these members, maybe providing stores to these people. They also have an impressive inventory, so its possible for us to provide these services to stores owners on Stores.jp. There are so many possibilities and opportunities that come from us working together, and we want to do that to boost the power of Stores.jp by every possible way.

Check out the video below where Yusuke gives us an intro to Bracket as well as some photos from their new office.

Yusuke Mitsumoto, the CEO of Bracket
Yusuke Mitsumoto, the CEO of Bracket

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Japan’s Stores.jp partners with major e-commerce portals to help merchants find traffic

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See the original story in Japanese. Recently we’ve seen fierce competition among two Japanese e-commerce platform builders, Stores.jp and Base. Now it seems both are moving past simple merchants acquisition, looking beyond to see what value they can add to their respective services. Bracket, the startup behind Stores.jp, yesterday unveiled a new feature that will help merchants promote their e-store on the platform, using partner e-commerce portals such as EC Navi, Kakaku.com, and Value Commerce. For merchants, if you use this promotion feature you will be asked to pay a 10% commission for a purchase made via this affiliated traffic. For merchants, products will be featured in search results on partnering portal sites, such as MSN Japan which is pictured below. The startup is exploring partnerships with many other e-commerce portal sites based on a revenue share model. The advent of these simple e-commerce platforms allows merchants to put up an online store far more easily than with conventional ASP-based shopping cart services. It has spurred an abundance of merchants to start e-businesses, but subsequently they have no way to attract new customers. The startup is trying to solve this problem, recently partnering with fashion giant Zozotown, which could be…

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See the original story in Japanese.

Recently we’ve seen fierce competition among two Japanese e-commerce platform builders, Stores.jp and Base. Now it seems both are moving past simple merchants acquisition, looking beyond to see what value they can add to their respective services.

Bracket, the startup behind Stores.jp, yesterday unveiled a new feature that will help merchants promote their e-store on the platform, using partner e-commerce portals such as EC Navi, Kakaku.com, and Value Commerce. For merchants, if you use this promotion feature you will be asked to pay a 10% commission for a purchase made via this affiliated traffic.

For merchants, products will be featured in search results on partnering portal sites, such as MSN Japan which is pictured below. The startup is exploring partnerships with many other e-commerce portal sites based on a revenue share model.

myfave_screenshot

The advent of these simple e-commerce platforms allows merchants to put up an online store far more easily than with conventional ASP-based shopping cart services. It has spurred an abundance of merchants to start e-businesses, but subsequently they have no way to attract new customers. The startup is trying to solve this problem, recently partnering with fashion giant Zozotown, which could be new partner site for them in the future, in terms of helping merchants drive traffic.

Bracket’s CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto explains how they plan to evolve their e-commerce platform.

As well as keeping the image of a simple-to-launch platform, we plan to give merchants many solutions to acquire customers. We have partnered with Zozotown, but we will not change into to a fashion commerce site — we will keep going beyond what we have been doing.

Some of our readers may be familiar with the startup’s competitor Base. Base recently launched an iOS app and an interface that curates featured shops. In contrast with Base, which has not yet partnered with other sites, Stores.jp unveiled a partnership with GMO Makeshop, an e-commerce platform from GMO, one of Japan’s leading internet companies. This could be an indication that the startup might be exploring a partnership-based business.

We’ll try to keep you updated about how these two companies’ business strategies compare in the future.

Japanese fashion commerce giant Zozotown acquires DIY shop startup Stores.jp

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Today Bracket, the company behind Stores.jp, announced that it has been acquired by Start Today. Start Today is, of course, the operator of Japanese fashion commerce giant Zozotown. Since news of the acquisition was released a few hours ago, it has dominated social feeds here in Japan. Bracket was founded back in October of 2008, and the company operates serveral online services including a C2C car sharing site Cafore and custom made ladies shoes service, Shoes of Prey. Stores.jp lets users to make their own online shop in matter of minutes for a monthly fee of 980 yen (about $10). Since it launched back in September of 2012, it has been used to create more than 40,000 online stores to date, and that is projected to surpass 100,000 by the end of this year. Considering that 70% of stores on Stores.jp are fashion related, it makes sense for the company to choose Start Today as a partner. The two companies will work together to enhance each other’s services. Zozotown and Stores.jp will be heavily integrated, allowing brands on Stores.jp to set up shop on Zozotown without the hassle of registering product and inventory information, since all data is seemlessly integrated…

Stores.jp

Today Bracket, the company behind Stores.jp, announced that it has been acquired by Start Today. Start Today is, of course, the operator of Japanese fashion commerce giant Zozotown. Since news of the acquisition was released a few hours ago, it has dominated social feeds here in Japan.

Bracket was founded back in October of 2008, and the company operates serveral online services including a C2C car sharing site Cafore and custom made ladies shoes service, Shoes of Prey.

Stores.jp lets users to make their own online shop in matter of minutes for a monthly fee of 980 yen (about $10). Since it launched back in September of 2012, it has been used to create more than 40,000 online stores to date, and that is projected to surpass 100,000 by the end of this year. Considering that 70% of stores on Stores.jp are fashion related, it makes sense for the company to choose Start Today as a partner.

The two companies will work together to enhance each other’s services. Zozotown and Stores.jp will be heavily integrated, allowing brands on Stores.jp to set up shop on Zozotown without the hassle of registering product and inventory information, since all data is seemlessly integrated on the backend.

The startup’s direct competitor is Base, which has likely pushed Stores.jp to hustle by adding many additional services, including professional product photography, original business cards for shops, and most recently, making virtual 3D stores through a partnership with Panoplaza.

You can see in our previously published interactive acquisition timeline that buyouts often take place in the online gaming sector. We hope that this news will serve as encouragement for more up-and-coming startups, especially in the e-commerce space. Similarly, it would be great if we can see more larger internet companies seeking young startups who are making true innovations in the mobile and internet space.

If you’d like to learn more about how Stores.jp works, check out the video below.

Japanese shop builder Stores.jp partners with Panoplaza for 360-degree e-commerce

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We have previously written about Panoplaza, a slick photography solution that can be used to create virtual online stores using panoramic photos of real stores. The company’s founder Soko Aoki tells us today that it has now partnered with up-and-coming Tokyo-based, e-commerce startup Stores.jp, a service that lets anyone easily create their own online shop. As of this past April, Stores.jp hosted over 30,000 online stores. It already offers professional photography services for items users wish to sell. So for any small retailers who already have an offline presence, the capability to bring that online with this new Panoplaza’s unique 360-degree store view is a very attractive offering. Stores.jp users can now apply for the service, which costs 25,000 yen, or about $250. The idea, of course, being that once viewers see the store online, that it would induce them to visit the store in person. In Japan, we’re seeing a number of intriguing e-commerce startups providing alternatives to the perennial market leader Rakuten, which still has an abundance of painfully ugly online store fronts harkening back to the days of GeoCities and Altavista. Stores’ competitor Base recently launched a new iOS app that allows users to build their store…

storesjp-panoplaza

We have previously written about Panoplaza, a slick photography solution that can be used to create virtual online stores using panoramic photos of real stores. The company’s founder Soko Aoki tells us today that it has now partnered with up-and-coming Tokyo-based, e-commerce startup Stores.jp, a service that lets anyone easily create their own online shop.

As of this past April, Stores.jp hosted over 30,000 online stores. It already offers professional photography services for items users wish to sell. So for any small retailers who already have an offline presence, the capability to bring that online with this new Panoplaza’s unique 360-degree store view is a very attractive offering.

Stores.jp users can now apply for the service, which costs 25,000 yen, or about $250. The idea, of course, being that once viewers see the store online, that it would induce them to visit the store in person.

In Japan, we’re seeing a number of intriguing e-commerce startups providing alternatives to the perennial market leader Rakuten, which still has an abundance of painfully ugly online store fronts harkening back to the days of GeoCities and Altavista.

Stores’ competitor Base recently launched a new iOS app that allows users to build their store completely on their mobile. Base is a hot startup in the Japanese space these days, and when I asked Soko about them he says that he would welcome a conversation with them as well, but notes that he hasn’t spoken with the company yet.

How Stores.jp is helping small businesses in Japan come online

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While it is unlikely that we’ll see an ecommerce competitor as huge as Rakuten in the near future, there is still much room to grow in the online commerce sector, especially for small businesses. According to research by Japanese Ministry of Economy, the portion of of the country’s retail industry who are online is only 2.8%. That means that 97.2% of all retail businesses in Japan limit themselves to selling things offline. Of this 97.2%, the overwhelming majority are very small business run by only a few people with presumably limited internet skills. Stores.jp is aimed at these small businesses, allowing them to create online stores in a matter of minutes. It’s the equivalent of services like Yokaboo or Flying Cart. The company behind Stores.jp, Bracket, also runs other services such as Shoes of Prey, an online custom shoes service (headquartered in Australia), and a C2C car sharing site called Cafore. Shoes of Prey promises satisfaction guaranteed, allowing users to return their custom designed shoes if they are not 100% happy with them. To sell off these returned shoes, the company tried using services like Stores.jp, but found them too confusing to use with too many features. So they decided…

stores.jp-logo

While it is unlikely that we’ll see an ecommerce competitor as huge as Rakuten in the near future, there is still much room to grow in the online commerce sector, especially for small businesses. According to research by Japanese Ministry of Economy, the portion of of the country’s retail industry who are online is only 2.8%. That means that 97.2% of all retail businesses in Japan limit themselves to selling things offline. Of this 97.2%, the overwhelming majority are very small business run by only a few people with presumably limited internet skills.

Stores.jp is aimed at these small businesses, allowing them to create online stores in a matter of minutes. It’s the equivalent of services like Yokaboo or Flying Cart. The company behind Stores.jp, Bracket, also runs other services such as Shoes of Prey, an online custom shoes service (headquartered in Australia), and a C2C car sharing site called Cafore. Shoes of Prey promises satisfaction guaranteed, allowing users to return their custom designed shoes if they are not 100% happy with them. To sell off these returned shoes, the company tried using services like Stores.jp, but found them too confusing to use with too many features. So they decided to build a more simplified version, and that resulted in Stores.jp.

To use the site, no coding or HTML skills are required. To create your store, all you need is your email and password. After registration, just upload photos, names, and descriptions of your products and your online store is completed. When orders come in, you send out the product and the money will be paid to your designated bank account. Stores.jp follows a freemium model where up to five items per month can be sold with zero cost. For sellers with more items to sell, the monthly cost is 980 yen (about $10) with an additional payment system usage fee of 5%. For premium accounts, the site offers marketing and log analysis features as well.

stores.jp-capture

Stores.jp was released in August of last year, and so far over 25,000 stores have been opened on the site. According to Bracket CEO Yusuke Mitsumoto, the total number of stores on Rakuten is 40,000. The number of items registered exceeds 70,000 and it currently has more than 500,000 monthly users.

But Stores.jp is not without competitors. Three months after its release, an almost identical site called Base was released and had over 7,000 stores within three weeks. In an effort to stay ahead of the competition, Stores.jp offers additional services including professional photography and the creation of store business cards. Both options are provided free, with photography available for maximum of twenty items.

Merchants on the site are mainly small businesses but there are also well-known chains like Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and a famous magazine called Tokyo Calendar. These bigger companies use the site to create online shops dedicated for a particular campaign or content. For example, Tokyo Calendar opened a Japanese sake shop for its sake issue.

To find out more about how the Stores.jp works, check out the video below.