Tokyo Otaku Mode, the startup behind the Japanese subculture site of the same name, started accepting custom orders for replica Japanese samurai swords last week, where you can order your preferred design of a sword from over 580,000 combination patterns by choosing its nine components such as hilt binding and blade types. This was made possible in collaboration with Kyoto-based replica sword producer Kotoya.
According to the company, this is the first time that e-commerce retailers accept custom orders for authentic replica swords in the world. A sword is available for $279.99 including shipping fee. The product will be delivered in about three weeks after placing the order.
In our recent interview with the company, they explained that high-ticket items are selling well on their e-commerce channel because of their user demographics.
Replica swords are as expensive as nearly $300, but it will be relatively easy to sell these items to their users since they have many big fans of Japanese anime like Rurouni Kenshin and cosplay performances. The company’s co-founder Takuya Akiyama shared that they have already received many orders from outside Japan.
On a related note, he told us that these replica swords can be smoothly delivered to anywhere in the world by reporting as a ‘toy sword’ to customs. When their users receive their sword, they will be able to share a picture of themselves wearing it, which will help promoting its sales as well. It will be interesting to see how they fare from now on.
Tokyo-based Creema, the startup behind the C2C marketplace for handmade items, announced today that it has raised 100 million yen (about $1 million) from KDDI Open Innovation Fund. The company plans to use the funds for system development efforts to give users better experience. In this space, we’ve seen many startups like Etsy (US), Creatty (Japan), and Pinkoi (Taiwan). But Creema is one of the oldest companies among them. Since its launch back in June of 2010, the company has acquired 18,000 creators and they have submitted over 500,000 items on the platform. Their founder and CEO Kotaro Marubayashi explained why they have grown their platform business spending a long time: I think this kind of websites usually takes time to make users understand what’s interesting. That’s why we’ve been carefully developing this community. What makes us unique from other similar services is that most of our creators are making a living by selling their items here. Their items are completely different from what people create as their hobby in their spare time. In order to gain people’s awareness for handmade products, the company holds an exhibition called ‘HandMade in Japan Fes‘ every year as well as has a real…
Tokyo-based Creema, the startup behind the C2C marketplace for handmade items, announced today that it has raised 100 million yen (about $1 million) from KDDI Open Innovation Fund. The company plans to use the funds for system development efforts to give users better experience.
In this space, we’ve seen many startups like Etsy (US), Creatty (Japan), and Pinkoi (Taiwan). But Creema is one of the oldest companies among them. Since its launch back in June of 2010, the company has acquired 18,000 creators and they have submitted over 500,000 items on the platform.
Their founder and CEO Kotaro Marubayashi explained why they have grown their platform business spending a long time:
I think this kind of websites usually takes time to make users understand what’s interesting. That’s why we’ve been carefully developing this community. What makes us unique from other similar services is that most of our creators are making a living by selling their items here. Their items are completely different from what people create as their hobby in their spare time.
Creema’s flagship store in Shinjuku
In order to gain people’s awareness for handmade products, the company holds an exhibition called ‘HandMade in Japan Fes‘ every year as well as has a real flagship store in the Shinjuku Lumine department store. As a result of these efforts, they have surpassed 15 million monthly page views, and the amount of transactions through their platform grows at a pace of 400% every year. Some creators earn more than $10,000 a month despite the fact that most of items are one-off originals.
Coinciding the funding, the company drives user traffic from Au Smart Pass, the unlimited app download service by KDDI, planning to add several payment methods for KDDI’s smartphone subscribers. Marubayashi added:
We’ve been developing our service diligently and steadily. We have a good revenue stream but we can try out something new using the money raised this time. But we’re not interested in increasing page views using ads. We believe there’s a huge potential in the manufacturing culture. We’ll focus on improving our system infrastructure to better serve our users.
In view of the Japanese C2C market, this handmade item market can create new values while second-hand platforms are saturated with mobile apps like Mercari and Fril. Since Japanese manufactured items are favorably rated among foreign consumers, we can expect this marketplace to meet demands from outside the country as well.
Tokyo-based startup incubator Movida Japan held a Demo Day event on Tuesday, showcasing 13 startups from the 5th batch of its incubation program. This is the part 2 of our quick rundown (See this article for part 1). Let’s have a look at the last six presenters and how they have cultivated as well as executed their ideas over the past several months. Movie Lovie There are many events like public viewing or group jogging where you can share your fun time with other participants. But Movie Lovie founder Keisuke Nakamura wondered how we can share an experience with others when we watch a movie at a cinema theater. There are difficulties in “sharing” because the experience is heavily dependent on the content of the movie. Movie Lovie is an online platform and allows you to create a bulletin board for a movie you like, where you can enjoy interactions with other users before watching the movie. Movie distributors or theater owners can also create their boards online for encouraging consumers to come and watch their movies. The service will go live next month. Combinator Combinator is an online job site for startups which allows them to find their potential employees…
Tokyo-based startup incubator Movida Japan held a Demo Day event on Tuesday, showcasing 13 startups from the 5th batch of its incubation program.
This is the part 2 of our quick rundown (See this article for part 1). Let’s have a look at the last six presenters and how they have cultivated as well as executed their ideas over the past several months.
Movie Lovie
Keisuke Nakamura
There are many events like public viewing or group jogging where you can share your fun time with other participants. But Movie Lovie founder Keisuke Nakamura wondered how we can share an experience with others when we watch a movie at a cinema theater. There are difficulties in “sharing” because the experience is heavily dependent on the content of the movie.
Movie Lovie is an online platform and allows you to create a bulletin board for a movie you like, where you can enjoy interactions with other users before watching the movie. Movie distributors or theater owners can also create their boards online for encouraging consumers to come and watch their movies. The service will go live next month.
Combinator
Takumi Shimizu
Combinator is an online job site for startups which allows them to find their potential employees from a pool of people who have their current jobs and are not aggressively finding their next jobs. For engineers, you can sign up for the service and tag yourself with your skill sets so that other users can easily touch base with you.
Since the launch of its alpha version back in late March, notable startups such as Vinclu and Wizpra have succeeded in hiring eleven workers in total. The hiring platform has currently 72 projects and 2,000 users registered.
What differentiates it from other similar platforms is that it encourages users to switch to work for a new company by attracting such users to one of the company’s projects rather than the company itself.
Tabi no Tatsujin
Tabi no Tausjin (literally meaning ‘travel experts’ in Japanese) is an online marketplace for international travel, aiming to connect Japanese travelers with Japanese locals living in foreign travel destinations.
In terms of startups giving users similar experience, we’ve seen many startups including Meetrip, but most of these services require you to communicate with locals in English or their languages. So it will be difficult to use for Japanese users who are not good at speaking in unfamiliar languages.
With the service, their guides can help keep the traveler from being nervous while better enjoying their travel, even for those less familiar with local culture at the destination or worried about safety conditions there. The company has 150 select guides in 12 cities worldwide based on qualification checks via online interviews.
4meee!
Arisa Sakanashi
Women are always looking for tips regarding clothing dress-up or make-up. They used to get information from magazines but now they depend on online media. There are many curation sites offering useful tips for them, but these typically require much time to finish reading. That’s why Arisa Sakanashi and her team invented 4meee!, a user-generated content site in a four-panel comic strip style, specifically targeting teenage girls and women in their 20s.
They plan to monetize it by advertising, publishing advertorial posts, and embedding affiliate links to e-commerce sites. As of this writing, they have published 1,000 articles and surpassed 1 million monthly pageviews. They are currently planning to translate all articles into Chinese and start serving the Chinese markets.
Aorb
Jumpei Ikeda
Aorb is a mobile app that allows users to present two pictures and ask others to choose the best one. For example, when you can’t decided between two outfits, you can take pictures and upload them using the app. Subsequently, you will be able to see a list of responses from other users.
Every question posted gets 70 answers on average. Almost a half of their users are teenagers, and about 60% of them are females. So their primary users are high school girls. They have acquired users from 20 countries around the world because the app uses pictures, requiring no verbal communication. In view of a huge user base from the Asian regions, they are planning to add an English interface by the end of this month.
Hima Switch
Takuya Moriguchi
When you have spare time, this app helps you interact with other users who are also free. Takuya Moriguchi, the inventor of this app, had difficulty in finding someone who has time to spare via Facebook. The app allows you to chat using as short as 10 Japanese characters, while storing as little as past five sets of interactions.
They are planning to add a new feature of simple games this coming weekend (June 7-8). In order to improve their 7-day user retention rate to over 80%, they also plan to roll out a new gamification feature – the more you enjoy chatting with other users using the app, the more characters you are allowed to use in the chat feature – as well as proposing topics to discuss so as to keep them using the app.
See the original story in Japanese. Our readers may recall we told you that Tokyo-based startup Okan has launched delivery service for Japanese deli foods for corporate customers. [1] The company announced today that it has raised an undisclosed sum from Japanese investment firm CyberAgent Ventures and food delivery company Oisix (TSE:3182). With the service Office Okan, corporate customers will receive Japanese deli once a month, since the deli lasts about a month. These can be refrigerated, and users can buy it by dropping coins to the collection box on the fridge and prepare it in about minutes. The service was launched in close beta back in November and subsequently officially launched back in March. The company plans to use the funds to strengthen their operating foundations including improving service operations as well as intensifying system development and marketing efforts. They also plan to explore sharing logistics and sales channels with Oisix for more efficient operations. Okan was previously known as Chisan. ↩
Our readers may recall we told you that Tokyo-based startup Okan has launched delivery service for Japanese deli foods for corporate customers. [1] The company announced today that it has raised an undisclosed sum from Japanese investment firm CyberAgent Ventures and food delivery company Oisix (TSE:3182).
With the service Office Okan, corporate customers will receive Japanese deli once a month, since the deli lasts about a month. These can be refrigerated, and users can buy it by dropping coins to the collection box on the fridge and prepare it in about minutes. The service was launched in close beta back in November and subsequently officially launched back in March.
The company plans to use the funds to strengthen their operating foundations including improving service operations as well as intensifying system development and marketing efforts. They also plan to explore sharing logistics and sales channels with Oisix for more efficient operations.
Tokyo-based startup incubator Movida Japan held a Demo Day event on Tuesday, showcasing 13 startups from the 5th batch of its incubation program. This is the part 1 of our quick rundown. Let’s have a look at the first six presenters and how they have cultivated as well as executed their ideas over the past several months. Eigooo! Eigooo is an online chat-based English learning service. When they initially launched its mobile app back in February, it initially marked a conversion rate of 1.85%. But we understand that they succeeded in improving it to 2.627% after its interface and function adjustment. In similar services using Skype or other teleconferencing tools, a learning course is typically provided on a person-to-person basis, but is likely to require advance booking and charge users per hour. But Eigooo uses a text-based chat, so its teachers can interact with up ten students simultaneously, which requires no advance booking from students but pay a higher compensation to the teachers. They are also planning to expand to mainland China and Korea in the future, aiming to hit an annual revenue of $60 million and go IPO in five years. BrainWars BrainWars is a social quiz app and…
Tokyo-based startup incubator Movida Japan held a Demo Day event on Tuesday, showcasing 13 startups from the 5th batch of its incubation program.
This is the part 1 of our quick rundown. Let’s have a look at the first six presenters and how they have cultivated as well as executed their ideas over the past several months.
Eigooo!
From the left: Eigooo co-founders Peter Rothenberg, Mizuno Nozue
Eigooo is an online chat-based English learning service. When they initially launched its mobile app back in February, it initially marked a conversion rate of 1.85%. But we understand that they succeeded in improving it to 2.627% after its interface and function adjustment.
In similar services using Skype or other teleconferencing tools, a learning course is typically provided on a person-to-person basis, but is likely to require advance booking and charge users per hour. But Eigooo uses a text-based chat, so its teachers can interact with up ten students simultaneously, which requires no advance booking from students but pay a higher compensation to the teachers.
They are also planning to expand to mainland China and Korea in the future, aiming to hit an annual revenue of $60 million and go IPO in five years.
BrainWars
BrainWars is a social quiz app and pits players against one another in three sets of mental exercise games (15 seconds each) to see which player performs better. See these articles to learn how it works.
Categorific
Categorific is a data-mining service using the image recognition technology. Ikkyo Technology, the startup behind the service, initially started their business with providing a content monitoring service for web service companies, helping them eliminating pirated content from their web services using the same technology.
They have been consulted by their clients about the possibilities of a new business using an enormous collection of images stored for the aforementioned countermeasure application. As a result of that, their team has invented Categorific.
They explained that the new service can be adopted for many purposes. For example, if you sell a sticker for a messaging app like Line, you can help users choose other stickers that they may like, by giving them a recommendation based on the service.
Graph
Shunsuke Takahashi
In Japan, people are trying to find statics over 100 million times an year. Even if you could successfully find the one you wanted, you would need more than an hour to edit or visualize it to be used in your presentation deck.
Graph allows you to find the statistics you want easily and embed it on your blog post. They understand that there are several competitors in this space but most of their platforms have difficulties in search accuracy or usability. So the company plans to focus on increasing the variety of statistics and easy-to-understand infographics. They expect to acquire 1 billion annual page views and monetize it by launching a premium service.
Pedal Forge
Takakazu Nakamura
Pedal Forge aims to allow users to test out a musical instrument before they but it. They will launch a web service enabling users to play the guitar virtually, with aiming to help them choose at home before visiting a guitar shop.
The service will be available in Japanese, English, and French this month. Since musical instrument makers learn that this will help them promote better their products, they are seen willing to provide sampling tone data to the platform.
Sttir
Ryo Tsukahara
When you think about how to compose a song, some people create it from scratch but others would remix songs created by someone else. Sttir wants to focus on serving the latter users and help them easily obtain songs and remix them in a way, as in sharing open source codes in the programmer community. They want to be called a GitHub for musicians.
Live3
Kyohei Tejima
When you have no plan to hang out after hours, it’s likely hard to find an event you may like using conventional ways like typical search engines. Live3 is a mobile app and allows you to match with your nearby events whose organizers still have many tickets unsold.
The service gives you 10 choices of live performances happening nearby every day, and you can buy it on the Live3 website or app if you like it. They plan to monetize it by charging 10% of the ticket price as a commission fee to event organizers. Their average conversion rate is as high as 7.39%.
See the original story in Japanese. Japanese startup-focused VC firm CyberAgent Ventures announced on Monday that it has started accepting applications to pitch at Rising Expo 2014 in Japan, the company’s annual startup conference which will take place in Tokyo on August 8th. Some of our readers may recall that the company held Rising Expo 2013 last September, where mobile live-broadcasting app TwitCasting won the top prize. Unlike the event’s past editions, CyberAgent Ventures is hosting local preliminary rounds in four Asian cities (Jakarta, Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo) prior to the main event. If you want to apply, your business should be already live and you should be exploring funding worth more than 100 million yen ($1 million). Startups passing the preliminary screening process will be invited to pitch to major Japanese VC firms and business executives.
Japanese startup-focused VC firm CyberAgent Ventures announced on Monday that it has started accepting applications to pitch at Rising Expo 2014 in Japan, the company’s annual startup conference which will take place in Tokyo on August 8th.
Some of our readers may recall that the company held Rising Expo 2013 last September, where mobile live-broadcasting app TwitCasting won the top prize. Unlike the event’s past editions, CyberAgent Ventures is hosting local preliminary rounds in four Asian cities (Jakarta, Seoul, Beijing, and Tokyo) prior to the main event.
If you want to apply, your business should be already live and you should be exploring funding worth more than 100 million yen ($1 million). Startups passing the preliminary screening process will be invited to pitch to major Japanese VC firms and business executives.
Takeshi Hirano
Masaru Ikeda
Junya Mori
