Rick Martin is a Canadian living in Japan, and is a writer and editor for The Bridge. For feedback or story pitches, feel free to contact him here.
With its new 4.2.0 Android update today, Japanese messaging app Line rolled out something that it’s calling ‘Sticons’. The company says that these can be used like emoticons inline in text messages, and also as the sort of larger stickers that current users of the service are already familiar with. You can read more about this new feature over on the Line blog.
With its new 4.2.0 Android update today, Japanese messaging app Line rolled out something that it’s calling ‘Sticons’. The company says that these can be used like emoticons inline in text messages, and also as the sort of larger stickers that current users of the service are already familiar with.
You can read more about this new feature over on the Line blog.
Rick Martin
The Korean dating app ‘Noon Date’, which has over 700,000 downloads in its home country thus far, is now launching in the Japanese market through a partnership with Tokyo-based Waku+. It will be called OhiruDate, and it requires Facebook authorization for a more reliable identity verification. OhiruDate delivers two profile cards to you each day at noon, and if you and that person mutually like each other, you can become friends and chat. The idea is similar to MatchAlarm (backed by CyberAgent Ventures), which recommends a new person every morning at 8am. Ohirudate is available for iOS and Google Play.
The Korean dating app ‘Noon Date’, which has over 700,000 downloads in its home country thus far, is now launching in the Japanese market through a partnership with Tokyo-based Waku+. It will be called OhiruDate, and it requires Facebook authorization for a more reliable identity verification.
OhiruDate delivers two profile cards to you each day at noon, and if you and that person mutually like each other, you can become friends and chat. The idea is similar to MatchAlarm (backed by CyberAgent Ventures), which recommends a new person every morning at 8am.
Ohirudate is available for iOS and Google Play.
Last week Original Stitch, a service that lets you order customized shirts online using a sort of 3D preview (see how here), opened to the Japanese market. This week we had a chance to speak with CEO and founder Jin Koh (of Bleu Flamme, the San Francisco company that runs the service) here in Tokyo to find out a little more about how its doing. I was curious to hear from him that the the shirts are actually made in a factory here in Japan. Koh didn’t give me too many details, but emphasized that their focus on a quality product and beautiful packaging – even at a higher production cost – was key if they were going to deliver quality to customers. But even so, the price is more than competitive as he explains: This shirt is a $160 shirt if you get it off the shelf, and you can get it off the shelf with this experience because we have no retail stores. And everything is made on demand – there’s no inventory, no warehouse, therefore we can pass on a lot of savings to the customer. The packaging is indeed very sharp looking (pictured above), and it’s…
Last week Original Stitch, a service that lets you order customized shirts online using a sort of 3D preview (see how here), opened to the Japanese market. This week we had a chance to speak with CEO and founder Jin Koh (of Bleu Flamme, the San Francisco company that runs the service) here in Tokyo to find out a little more about how its doing.
I was curious to hear from him that the the shirts are actually made in a factory here in Japan. Koh didn’t give me too many details, but emphasized that their focus on a quality product and beautiful packaging – even at a higher production cost – was key if they were going to deliver quality to customers. But even so, the price is more than competitive as he explains:
This shirt is a $160 shirt if you get it off the shelf, and you can get it off the shelf with this experience because we have no retail stores. And everything is made on demand – there’s no inventory, no warehouse, therefore we can pass on a lot of savings to the customer.
The packaging is indeed very sharp looking (pictured above), and it’s certainly something I wouldn’t mind getting in the mail if I wasn’t a blogger who only wears pajamas [1]. In the US their main competitors are IndoChino (suits, but they also sell shirts) and Blank Label. Koh is very encouraged by the exposure they’ve gotten here in Japan over the last week since announcing the service here, and he figures they are already the number one player after their closed beta. They’ve had assistance from Tokyo-based InSprout in localization, and they’re pleased with the initial traction that they’ve gotten here as a result.
Original Stitch is comprised of 12 people right now, and Koh is looking ahead to a future for the company that could go far beyond just shirts:
I see us as a technology company and not an e-commerce company, because what you see on our site today – shirts are just the first product. And I think if you ask me the plan for the next two years, soon you will see a website and pick out a product, and instead of seeing a product picture and a buy button, you’ll see a picture and a customize button. […] If users take the time to create something, then it means they’re more likely to buy it. That shows in our conversion rate which is three times that of regular e-commerce. This is not just a product off the shelf. This is a product you have customized.
They’re taking a very data-driven approach to growth, trying to build as many users as possible and then converting them into paying users. It will be interesting to watch how the company evolves from here, and we look forward to watching how their business unfolds (pun intended). Check out their promotional video below, which features Inoko Toshiyuki, president of TeamLab.
Sorry that’s not true. I don’t wear pajamas. ↩
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
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
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.
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.
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. At the New Economy Summit in Tokyo this afternoon, we had a chance to hear a panel on technology innovation in the area of education. Three speakers participated, moderated by Swimmy Minami of Bizreach: Youngme Moon, the dean of Harvard Business School’s MBA program Dennis Yang, president and CEO COO of Udemy [1] Jun Murai, dean/professor, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University Youngme opened by discussing what pointing out that most areas in our lives have been vastly changed by technology, but yet education remains relatively the same. If you compare learning years ago, and learning today, it continues to be very tedious and very uninspiring. When it comes to education, the audience is essentially captive and the teacher has little incentive to be very engaging. It is remarkably easy to get away with being a boring teacher. You just need to be an information delivery system […] and the student’s their job to absorb it. Does the system work? Sort of. But it is deeply flawed. ¶ She points to the example…
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.
At the New Economy Summit in Tokyo this afternoon, we had a chance to hear a panel on technology innovation in the area of education. Three speakers participated, moderated by Swimmy Minami of Bizreach:
Youngme opened by discussing what pointing out that most areas in our lives have been vastly changed by technology, but yet education remains relatively the same.
If you compare learning years ago, and learning today, it continues to be very tedious and very uninspiring. When it comes to education, the audience is essentially captive and the teacher has little incentive to be very engaging. It is remarkably easy to get away with being a boring teacher. You just need to be an information delivery system […] and the student’s their job to absorb it. Does the system work? Sort of. But it is deeply flawed. ¶
She points to the example of MIT’s electrical circuits course, which is free online. Last year 150,000 signed up, and a year later only 5% remained. That dropout rate for online courses is typical, she said. Most of them are simple imformation delivery systems, very much like what we have offline. And for that reason, they aren’t very innovative at all. But yet she is optimistic.
These courses which are the exception to the rule are somehow managing to figure out how to make education more engaging and more immersive than ever. So I believe the real breakthough in online learning is yet to come. ¶
Dennis Yang gave a brief introduction to his Udemy service, pointing out that in addition to delivering education to students, there is also the capability to enable more potential teachers, as opposed to just existing teachers:
At Udemy we believe that there are great teachers outside the walls of academic institutions. It could be a boss, a mentor, or a coach, and we’d like to give them a platform to teach students all around the world. I think most people identify with themselves as a student, but I encourage people to try to think of themselves as a potential teacher. ¶
Dennis admitted that while many of the courses on Udemy skew heavily towards technological skills, that’s a reflection of the interests of the early adopters. But the platform has many new niche topics that they didn’t expect to see, such as how to pass the written exam for being a fire fighter. He says that he expects online education to continue to broaden in this way.
Jun Mirai added that there was an opportunity to make classes fit better through the use of the internet:
We all know about MOOCs these days. But one characteristic of the internet is personalization. So a matching mechanism could be [an interesting development in this space]. ¶
He also discussed the possibility of using online courses as a supplement to offline classes, noting that he is actually doing this at Keio University in his own class:
[For certain information] I tell my students, go check out the MOOC. I’m going to talk about different things in class. I think in this way I can then use the classroom in a more exciting way. ¶
I initially, and mistakenly, had Dennis as the president and CEO of Udemy. That’s incorrect of course, as he is the president and COO. Thanks to one of our readers for pointing this out! ↩
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. Ben Silbermann, the CEO and founder of Pinterest, appeared at the New Economy Summit for the second year in a row (see his comments from last year here). He noted that this was his third trip to Tokyo, which surprised me, because the company – in which Rakuten has invested – recently rolled out a localized version of its service. He noted that among Pinterest’s billions of pins and millions of collections, that there are a number of people now using their service in interesting ways in Japan Food creator and blogger Masaki Higuchi gets inspiration from Pinterest, and that helps him be creative in his work. Paris Wakana collects ideas for outfit, uses it to plan ideas for travel. Rakuten using Rakuten recipes to share. Silbermann said that each time he comes to Japan, he’s amazed at the culture of art, food, architecture and more. He hopes that people here can continue to use his service to introduce all these cultural elements to the world. Welcoming women During the panel discussion, Ben was asked…
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.
Ben Silbermann, the CEO and founder of Pinterest, appeared at the New Economy Summit for the second year in a row (see his comments from last year here). He noted that this was his third trip to Tokyo, which surprised me, because the company – in which Rakuten has invested – recently rolled out a localized version of its service.
He noted that among Pinterest’s billions of pins and millions of collections, that there are a number of people now using their service in interesting ways in Japan
Silbermann said that each time he comes to Japan, he’s amazed at the culture of art, food, architecture and more. He hopes that people here can continue to use his service to introduce all these cultural elements to the world.
During the panel discussion, Ben was asked how many executives at his company are women, given how popular Pinterest is among females. He answered:
Many of our senior positions are women. Across the board there are many strong women, and that needs to trickle down the organization. Many women are underrepresented in tech fields. We try to create an environment where gender is a non issue, and that takes some work.
He added that since half of the world are women, they want to create a friendly environment that would welcome anyone from that talent pool.
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. Yelp CEO and founder Jeremy Stoppelman spoke at the Japan New Economy Summit today, giving a brief introduction to his service and how it works. Somewhat surprisingly, he announced that Yelp is now available in Japan, and you can find its service online right now at yelp.co.jp as of this morning. During his talk, Jeremy explained that Yelp has about 120 million monthly users, with over 53 million reviews logged. He explained that with over 59% of Yelp searches coming from mobile, that they have truly become a mobile company. Stoppelman says that Yelp wants to be in every country (they are now available in 26 markets), and it has a big challenge ahead in Japan, with services like Tabelog and Cookpad being so dominant already. It will be interesting to see how they fare. He explains: We’ve always taken a one city at a time approach. […] You need high quality local data. You need locals to participate, not just tourists. He said that this process really takes time, but that’s the nature of…
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.
Yelp CEO and founder Jeremy Stoppelman spoke at the Japan New Economy Summit today, giving a brief introduction to his service and how it works. Somewhat surprisingly, he announced that Yelp is now available in Japan, and you can find its service online right now at yelp.co.jp as of this morning.
During his talk, Jeremy explained that Yelp has about 120 million monthly users, with over 53 million reviews logged. He explained that with over 59% of Yelp searches coming from mobile, that they have truly become a mobile company.
Stoppelman says that Yelp wants to be in every country (they are now available in 26 markets), and it has a big challenge ahead in Japan, with services like Tabelog and Cookpad being so dominant already. It will be interesting to see how they fare. He explains:
We’ve always taken a one city at a time approach. […] You need high quality local data. You need locals to participate, not just tourists.
He said that this process really takes time, but that’s the nature of local. Singapore was their first exploration in Asia, but Jeremy said that they have long known that Japan is a very attractive market.
He cited some friendly nagging from SalesForce CEO Marc Benioff who always asked him “Why aren’t you in Japan?” But he says that on his last few trips it became apparent to him that it would work. He still thinks it will take time, but hopes that by the time the Olympics roll around they can be a household name.
