Japanese fashion commerce service Magaseek today unveiled a new Magaseek Kids service today. The company found that among a surveyed sample of their customers in their 30s and 40s, most had kids. And this new portal aims to serve that demographic by offering brands and fashions for kids of various ages, as well as an assortment of goods for mothers too.
Magaseek is one of many successful fashion services that have done well serving the female demographic here in Japan.
Via CNet Japan
See the original story in Japanese. Moff launched its Kickstarter campaign for its wearable wristbank smart-toy almost a month ago. The project nearly reached $80,000, four times its initial goal of $20,000. According to the product’s creator, Akinori Takahagi, they have even surpassed smart toy Ubooly (backed by TechStars) in funds raised on Kickstarter. Ubooly secured seed funding of about $2.5 million from several investors back in November, and recently started sales at Softbank stores in Japan. So the Moff team considers Ubooly the benchmark in their growth strategy. The team is working on many business opportunities. This includes developing content for the device and partnering with content holders with popular characters or mascots, and delivering the product as soon as possible. Moff was initially launched at a hackathon in Osaka last year, and we understand that they attracted much attention at SXSW in Austin. It will be interesting to see how their product is received by consumers beyond the Japanese market.
Moff launched its Kickstarter campaign for its wearable wristbank smart-toy almost a month ago. The project nearly reached $80,000, four times its initial goal of $20,000.
According to the product’s creator, Akinori Takahagi, they have even surpassed smart toy Ubooly (backed by TechStars) in funds raised on Kickstarter. Ubooly secured seed funding of about $2.5 million from several investors back in November, and recently started sales at Softbank stores in Japan. So the Moff team considers Ubooly the benchmark in their growth strategy.
The team is working on many business opportunities. This includes developing content for the device and partnering with content holders with popular characters or mascots, and delivering the product as soon as possible.
Moff was initially launched at a hackathon in Osaka last year, and we understand that they attracted much attention at SXSW in Austin. It will be interesting to see how their product is received by consumers beyond the Japanese market.
Japanese mobile payments startup Coiney has just begun selling Coiney Reader smartphone/tablet attachment over on Amazon Japan. The credit card reader device (pictured above, not dissimilar to that of Square) can be purchased as of today for 2580 yen (or about $25). The company is expanding its business, and just moved into a new office in Ebisu, Tokyo this week (also pictured below).
Japanese mobile payments startup Coiney has just begun selling Coiney Reader smartphone/tablet attachment over on Amazon Japan. The credit card reader device (pictured above, not dissimilar to that of Square) can be purchased as of today for 2580 yen (or about $25).
The company is expanding its business, and just moved into a new office in Ebisu, Tokyo this week (also pictured below).
From Nikkei Asian Review, there’s news that Yahoo Japan will support the use of popular Chinese electronic money solution Alipay, starting in June: To make a purchase on Yahoo Shopping from China, a buyer must use the Tenso.com brokerage service. Tenso.com ships products bought on the e-commerce site once buyers have completed purchase procedures on the broker’s site. Until now, payment options were limited to credit cards and U.S. electronic payment service PayPal. By adding Alipay, which is widely used in China, Yahoo hopes to expand sales through Yahoo Shopping by making it easier for Chinese consumers to buy merchandise. Alipay claims 550 million registered users, and about 8.5 million daily transactions.
From Nikkei Asian Review, there’s news that Yahoo Japan will support the use of popular Chinese electronic money solution Alipay, starting in June:
To make a purchase on Yahoo Shopping from China, a buyer must use the Tenso.com brokerage service. Tenso.com ships products bought on the e-commerce site once buyers have completed purchase procedures on the broker’s site. Until now, payment options were limited to credit cards and U.S. electronic payment service PayPal. By adding Alipay, which is widely used in China, Yahoo hopes to expand sales through Yahoo Shopping by making it easier for Chinese consumers to buy merchandise.
Alipay claims 550 million registered users, and about 8.5 million daily transactions.
This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e. Day two of the New Economy Summit in Tokyo included a panel about how governments in the Middle East and European regions motivate local entrepreneurs. Speakers included: David Heller, managing partner of Vertex Venture Capital Talmon Marco, CEO of Viber Peter Vesterbacka, Mighty Eagle at Rovio Entertainment Chris Wade, venture capital advisor of UK Trade and Investment Heller kicked off the panel describing how his company has evolved the local startup scene in Israel. Since its launch back in 1997, Vertex has invested in 108 companies, and over 30 went on to an exit. The most recent was Waze, a community-based, real-time traffic and navigation app, acquired by Google last year. He emphasized that one of the most interesting things about the Israeli startup ecosystem is the amount of VC investment per person is much higher than that of any other developed country. Marco then introduced himself by encouraging the audience to call Viber a Japanese company, since they were acquired by Japan’s Rakuten earlier this year. Despite the fact that they started business in…
This is a part of our coverage of the Japan New Economy Summit 2014. You can follow our updates on Twitter as well at @thebridge_e.
Day two of the New Economy Summit in Tokyo included a panel about how governments in the Middle East and European regions motivate local entrepreneurs. Speakers included:
Heller kicked off the panel describing how his company has evolved the local startup scene in Israel. Since its launch back in 1997, Vertex has invested in 108 companies, and over 30 went on to an exit. The most recent was Waze, a community-based, real-time traffic and navigation app, acquired by Google last year. He emphasized that one of the most interesting things about the Israeli startup ecosystem is the amount of VC investment per person is much higher than that of any other developed country.
Marco then introduced himself by encouraging the audience to call Viber a Japanese company, since they were acquired by Japan’s Rakuten earlier this year. Despite the fact that they started business in Belarus and then moved on to London, they have an especially large user base in South East Asia, especially in Myanmar and the Philippines. His advice for Japanese entrepreneurs? You need to encourage your employees to respect individualism and think out of box.
Rovio’s Peter Vesterbacka explained that his company initially started out as a gaming company, but is now focused on three Es: entertainment, education, and entrepreneurship. As part of these efforts, they have been involved in organizing Finland’s largest tech conference Slush [1]. He encouraged Japanese entrepreneurs in the audience to create global success stories, pointing out that Tokyo alone has a larger population than all of Finland. He says startups have to stand out and differentiate from others, and that his company respects the diversity of employees. After launching an office here in Tokyo, they hope to be more Japanese than Japanese people, he says.
UKTI’s Chris Wade explained that his organization has been helping to grow the local startup community in East London by eliminating obstacles for entrepreneurs who are launching a company, providing them with the necessary mentorship. He says the UK government has also deployed several measures to accelerate entrepreneurship, including tax incentives for seed investments and issuing an entrepreneur visa to helps startups more easily hire talented people from outside the country.
He noted that every entrepreneur has to fail fast and keep trying. That’s the must-have mindset not only for Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, but for people all over the world who are keen to launch a business.
Update: We’re told the largest tech conference in Eurasia, in fact. ↩
Cookpad, the operator of Japan’s leading recipe sharing website, announced today that downloads of its mobile apps (for iOS and Android) have surpassed 20 million. In addition, the service now boasts 40 million monthly users, of which six percent engage using smartphones. You can see the chart above for a more detailed breakdown of Cookpad user access across devices. Cookpad
Cookpad, the operator of Japan’s leading recipe sharing website, announced today that downloads of its mobile apps (for iOS and Android) have surpassed 20 million.
In addition, the service now boasts 40 million monthly users, of which six percent engage using smartphones. You can see the chart above for a more detailed breakdown of Cookpad user access across devices.
Rick Martin
Takeshi Hirano
Masaru Ikeda
