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Japanese flea market app Mercari raises $500,000 from East Ventures

Takeshi Hirano 2013.07.24

See the original story in Japanese.

Mercari, a flea market app launched by Japanese serial entrepreneur Shintaro Yamada, has been showing good numbers of late. Since the release of its Android app back on July 2nd, more than 50,000 users have put over 10,000 items up for sale using the marketplace.

Kouzoh, the startup behind the app, introduced the iOS version of its app today, and also announced that it has fundraised 50 million yen (approximately $500,000) from East Ventures.

Several hundred items submitted every day

According to Yamada, they are struggling to acquire users but have started seeing good result in user activity. He explained:

So far things are as we expected. In terms of user submissions, we saw lots of ladies clothes being posted, but we’ve seen also home appliances sold on the marketplace — so item posted vary. Several hundred items are submitted every day and the market is still small, but we’re seeing sound growth in deals between buyers and sellers on the platform.

The startup itself might be best known for having a very high-profile management board. In addition to having ex-Zynga Japan GM Yamada as CEO, Hiroshi Tomishima (the founder at Bank of Innovation) and Ryo Ishizuka (COO at Rock You Asia) are serving as the heads of engineering. They are a small team but their prominent skills and experience have contributed to the services solid operations to date.

Increased competition

When I spoke with Yamada, I found it interesting that he spoke about resources that we thought were lacking on our planet. He noted:

Any kind of resource is limited. You will need energy to create something new. If you have a PSP but don’t want to keep it, you will probably not be interested in selling it for a high price. But instead you likely need way to easily hand it over to someone else. We call it a sort of frictionless society. That’s what we want to help to make.

His concept is very similar to Craiglist in a way. There will be a way to share resources easily, rather than the complicated schemes often used on auction sites.

From my perspective, a flea market app is a form of C2C that everyday people — even less tech-savvy ones — can use without hesitation.

Yamada has previously involved in launching the Rakuten auction site. Based on the history of Japanese auction sites, he is predicting a high rise in flea market apps on smartphones.

It will be interesting to see if Mercari can get to the top of this increasingly competitive arena.

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Unstoppable: Popular mobile chat app Line surpasses 200M users

Rick Martin 2013.07.23

Line Corporation has announced today that its popular mobile chat application has surpassed the 200 million registered user milestone. This comes not too long after it passed 150 million back on April 30th. For the mathematically impaired, that means an additional 50 million users in the 11 weeks since that time – a few weeks quicker than its previous 50 million. The Android version of the chat app also reached the 100 million downloads milestone on July 18th, no doubt driven by increased adoption around the Asia region. Line began its campaign for the Indian market earlier this month, the first of the major Asian chat apps to do so. The company has yet to really make a serious push for the US market, but we expect to see that sometime this year. For more information on the growth of Line, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.

line_users — Line’s journey to 200 million

For the mathematically impaired, that means an additional 50 million users in the 11 weeks since that time – a few weeks quicker than its previous 50 million.

The Android version of the chat app also reached the 100 million downloads milestone on July 18th, no doubt driven by increased adoption around the Asia region. Line began its campaign for the Indian market earlier this month, the first of the major Asian chat apps to do so.

The company has yet to really make a serious push for the US market, but we expect to see that sometime this year.

For more information on the growth of Line, please check out our interactive Line Timeline which chronicles its growth from its launch back in 2011 up until the present day.

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New Japanese collage app off to a hot start, passes 500K downloads in its first month

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.07.23

Back in June, yet another cute Japanese photo app, Cameran Collage, joined an already crowded market. And now it has just been announced that the app has reached 500,000 downloads not yet a month after its initial release. Cameran Collage is seeing users not only here in Japan, but from other Asian countries like Taiwan and Hong Kong. Nowadays collage-making is sort of a default feature in many photo apps, even on ‘purikura’ machines or physical photo booths. What differentiates Cameran Collage from other apps is that its decorative items are created in collaboration with popular fashion brands or magazines — its most recent collaboration is in partnership with Anteprima. The app also allows users to easily share photos on Line, Twitter, and Facebook. Even if you’ve never made a collage before, the app provides handy templates to make any collage look cute. The total number of decorative items exceeds 300, and there are over 44 fonts and 26 clipping patterns available too. This seems like an overwhelming number of items to choose from, but according to the app’s art director, Miki Kitazawa, there is no such thing as ‘too much’ when it comes to ways of making something more…

Nowadays collage-making is sort of a default feature in many photo apps, even on ‘purikura’ machines or physical photo booths. What differentiates Cameran Collage from other apps is that its decorative items are created in collaboration with popular fashion brands or magazines — its most recent collaboration is in partnership with Anteprima. The app also allows users to easily share photos on Line, Twitter, and Facebook.

Even if you’ve never made a collage before, the app provides handy templates to make any collage look cute. The total number of decorative items exceeds 300, and there are over 44 fonts and 26 clipping patterns available too. This seems like an overwhelming number of items to choose from, but according to the app’s art director, Miki Kitazawa, there is no such thing as ‘too much’ when it comes to ways of making something more ‘kawaii’. She explains:

Girls use different apps for different purposes, adding filters with Instagram, clipping with Papelook, and using Decopic for stamps. For these girls, there is no such thing as too much effort in making something kawaii. Cameran Collage has every feature they need all in one app.

The process of ‘app stacking’ is a pretty common phenomenon for smartphone photographers, and applications like this Cameran Collage that put everything in one place will likely continue to be well received as long as they save users time and trouble.

The company behind this popular collage app is Media Technology Lab, an experimental laboratory operated under Recruit. Media Technology Lab has released a series of apps in the past, which you can check out over on its official website.

Cameran Collage is available for download on the app store, and an Android version is expected to be released soon. You can check out how the app works in the video below.

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Designing for Women: 10 of the Cutest Color Palettes from Japan

Rick Martin 2013.07.22

Over the past few months, we have written about what we see as a trend coming from Japanese mobile developers: The country is exceptionally good at creating cute web services and apps that appeal to women [1]. On a visual level, a lot of these cute Japanese services possess many of the same qualities. And when it comes to choosing color schemes, that means lots of pinks, pastels, and other soft tones. I thought it would be good to collect some color palettes from Japanese services that are popular with women. For designers out there who are creating web services or apps for ladies, especially ones in Japan, do take note of the choices here when deciding your own color schemes [2]. Here they are, in no particular order: 1. Fril ¶ Fril is a flea market app for female students in high school or college. It encourages users to sell their unwanted clothes online. It was created by Fablic Inc. More on Fril in our database. Color Sample Color Code #ff899a #ffd2d2 #fef6e4 #e9f7f5 #695d53 2. iQon ¶ iQon is an online fashion coordination service. It allows users to create their favorite looks using photos of accessories and dresses…

I thought it would be good to collect some color palettes from Japanese services that are popular with women. For designers out there who are creating web services or apps for ladies, especially ones in Japan, do take note of the choices here when deciding your own color schemes [2].

Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Fril ¶

Fril is a flea market app for female students in high school or college. It encourages users to sell their unwanted clothes online. It was created by Fablic Inc.

Color Sample	Color Code
	#ff899a
	#ffd2d2
	#fef6e4
	#e9f7f5
	#695d53

2. iQon ¶

iQon is an online fashion coordination service. It allows users to create their favorite looks using photos of accessories and dresses available on the website.

Color Sample	Color Code
	#fa3599
	#fff0f4
	#f4f4f4
	#fdfdfd
	#c2b8bb

3. Papelook ¶

Papelook is a mobile photo app that allows users to create their own collages. Users can easily cut out objects by tracing it with their finger, and then rearrange it with other snippets into elaborate photo collages.

Color Sample	Color Code
	#adde6b
	#ee99aa
	#f3ede8
	#49bbcc
	#d7ccb9

4. CocoPPa ¶

CocoPPa is a cute mobile app that lets you collaboratively create cute iPhone homescreens. It offers a platform where users around the world can share and collaborate on these kind of designs.

Color Sample	Color Code
	#642E16
	#FFA7BF
	#F6EBD9
	#C79968
	#FFE8EB

5. Snapeee ¶

Snapeee is a photo decorating and sharing app for iOS and Android. It allows users to alter and decorate their pictures using over 4000 decoration themes.

Color Sample	Color Code
	#aea08d
	#d2c4b0
	#9FE0E6
	#fdd1c9
	#d9d3c9

6. @Cosme ¶

@Cosme (pronounced ‘At Cosme’) is a cosmetics and beauty products internet portal, founded back in 1999. Users can check product reviews and rankings, ask questions about skincare and makeup, and even find out where products are available offline.

Color Sample	Color Code
	#068681
	#775555
	#e8e5e0
	#f9f7f1
	#e88d9c

7. Luna Luna ¶

Luna Luna is a tool that helps women be more aware of their menstrual cycles. By recording your menstrual period and body temperature, it predicts suitable timings for pregnancy, or help with contraconception. The service was originally provided on featured phones, but now there are dedicated applications.

Color Sample	Color Code
	#ffbecc
	#C4E0EE
	#fdf4f5
	#181F55
	#FFFAF6

7. Decopic ¶

Decopic is a photo application that allows users to decorate their photos with cute stamps, frames, and filters.

Color Sample	Color Code
	#723A0E
	#FAA69C
	#6B5954
	#EEF2F0
	#B29F6C

8. Nikkei Woman ¶

Nikkei Woman Online is the internet version of a Japanese lifestyle and entertainment magazine for women in their 20s and 30s.

Color Sample	Color Code
	#cd4a81
	#C97F89
	#A7A098
	#FBFBFB
	#CED7E8

9. Benesse Women’s Park ¶

Women’s Park is a review portal for mothers that launched back in 2000. The public company behind the site is Benesse, whose primary business is education.

Color Sample	Color Code
	#E85369
	#FF7B7B
	#FFFFE8
	#FFECEC
	#016DBF

10. Nailbook ¶

Nailbook is Japanese photo sharing service for nail art. User can save photos by pushing “Kawaii” button.

Color Sample	Color Code
	#F7342E
	#FFC4D0
	#FFD674
	#F7F7F7
	#FEE5EB

Big thanks to Yukari Mitsuhashi who has written about the vast majority of all these services almost single-handedly. ↩
Another big thanks to Ricky Elrod for his clever little Color Palette Generator Ruby script which I used as a starting point for creating the color palette tables above. ↩

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This Japanese Facebook app finds you last-minute drinking dates

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.07.22

After a long day at work on a hot summer day, perhaps you feel like grabbing a beer — but it can be hard to get a hold of friends at the last minute. Now there is an app that helps you find drinking buddies of the opposite sex in your neighborhood. It’s called Kanpai Match (Kanpai meaning ‘cheers’ in Japanese). Kanpai Match is presented as a Facebook app where users can enter information such as their initials, location, topics of interest, and profiles. The app then makes a recommendation everyday at 5pm, suggesting a possible drinking buddy in a nearby place. The app only recommends people of the opposite sex, so this may be more of a dating app than a casual drinking app. After seeing their suggested match of the day, users can push the ‘Let’s Drink’ button to confirm the meet. When a match is completed, the app can be used to send each other messages and discuss the details of the outing. The company behind Kanpai Match is SVC, a company that provides a series of networking apps. Its Tomokore app lets you to discover new friends on popular chat applications like Line, Skype, or KakaoTalk….

Kanpai Match is presented as a Facebook app where users can enter information such as their initials, location, topics of interest, and profiles. The app then makes a recommendation everyday at 5pm, suggesting a possible drinking buddy in a nearby place. The app only recommends people of the opposite sex, so this may be more of a dating app than a casual drinking app.

After seeing their suggested match of the day, users can push the ‘Let’s Drink’ button to confirm the meet. When a match is completed, the app can be used to send each other messages and discuss the details of the outing.

The company behind Kanpai Match is SVC, a company that provides a series of networking apps. Its Tomokore app lets you to discover new friends on popular chat applications like Line, Skype, or KakaoTalk. Another one of its apps is Keijiban for Pazudora (‘Pazudora’ is a sort of Japanese portmanteau of Puzzle and Dragons) which is a dedicated bulletin board where users can find partners to assist them in the game.

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Japan’s Cybozu to try the US market again, planning global launch of business cloud suite

Masaru Ikeda 2013.07.22

The Nikkei reported today that Japanese group-ware developer Cybozu is planning to launch an office in California next year, with the goal of globally launching its Kintone cloud service [1]. The service is a corporate communication tool comprising of multiple business applications, helping you share information smoothly with your colleagues. In terms of differentiation from conventional tools, this service lets you use a custom set of applications on the suite or even develop an application for it by yourself. There is also a marketplace where users can buy and add various apps from third-party developers, so you can create a knowledge-sharing environment that fits your business. According to the company’s CEO Yoshihisa Aono, the service has already acquired about 700 corporate users — ranging from big companies to SMEs — since its launch in the fall of 2011. The company was founded back in 1997 by Japanese software entrepreneur Toru Takasuka. It was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange within three years of its launch, which at the time was one of the fastest company in history to IPO. With the company’s product dominating the Japanese group-ware market, it set up a US subsidiary back in San Francisco in 2002…

In terms of differentiation from conventional tools, this service lets you use a custom set of applications on the suite or even develop an application for it by yourself. There is also a marketplace where users can buy and add various apps from third-party developers, so you can create a knowledge-sharing environment that fits your business.

According to the company’s CEO Yoshihisa Aono, the service has already acquired about 700 corporate users — ranging from big companies to SMEs — since its launch in the fall of 2011.

The company was founded back in 1997 by Japanese software entrepreneur Toru Takasuka. It was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange within three years of its launch, which at the time was one of the fastest company in history to IPO. With the company’s product dominating the Japanese group-ware market, it set up a US subsidiary back in San Francisco in 2002 to intensify its global marketing efforts. But the office was subsequently shut down in 2005 due to somewhat sluggish performance.

Back in 2010, the company set up a subsidiary focused on accelerating startups, and more than a few web services have been born out of that initiative.

Note that the Nikkei article is paywalled. ↩

Japanese flea market app Mercari raises $500,000 from East Ventures