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See how one Japanese fashion company has mastered digital marketing

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.03.08

As far as digital efforts in the fashion industry goes, there is an unfortunate lack of innovation in Japan. Even the more enthusiastic brands have only gone as far as releasing dedicated mobile apps for customer loyalty. But I recently stumbled upon a Tokyo-based company called Ceno which might be an exception to the digitally challenged status quo in the fashion industry. Ceno operates seven different lines of clothing, with one of the most famous brand being Vanquish. Its main customers are men in their early twenties, but the brand has managed to even attract teenagers and men in their forties. Vanquish received a lot of attention recently for an in-store collaborative project called Vanquish Venus, created in cooperation with Team Lab, a local organization famous for their digital creativity. Vanquish installed something called ‘TeamLabHanger’ at their stores, and when an item on a hanger is removed from the rack, it triggers video and audio on a screen overhead. The idea here was to bring in customers who would normally just walk past the Vanquish store, and for those already inside it would show them different ways to coordinating clothes. The project recruited famous female artists and celebrities to model…

As far as digital efforts in the fashion industry goes, there is an unfortunate lack of innovation in Japan. Even the more enthusiastic brands have only gone as far as releasing dedicated mobile apps for customer loyalty. But I recently stumbled upon a Tokyo-based company called Ceno which might be an exception to the digitally challenged status quo in the fashion industry.

Ceno operates seven different lines of clothing, with one of the most famous brand being Vanquish. Its main customers are men in their early twenties, but the brand has managed to even attract teenagers and men in their forties. Vanquish received a lot of attention recently for an in-store collaborative project called Vanquish Venus, created in cooperation with Team Lab, a local organization famous for their digital creativity. Vanquish installed something called ‘TeamLabHanger’ at their stores, and when an item on a hanger is removed from the rack, it triggers video and audio on a screen overhead.

The idea here was to bring in customers who would normally just walk past the Vanquish store, and for those already inside it would show them different ways to coordinating clothes. The project recruited famous female artists and celebrities to model in the videos, and it currently features Chiaki Ito from the popular pop group AAA. To keep things fresh, videos are renewed every two months with different models.

But perhaps the most notable model of all was virtual star Hatsune Miku (see video below), who attracted not-so-fashion-savvy netizens to the Vanquish brand, thus expanding its fan base a little beyond who the audience they normally sell to. Ceno even ended up creating an orginal Vanquish song by Hatsune Miku under the supervision of music label Karent.

There are also manga camera machines installed at three Vanquish stores (pictured above), including the Shibuya and Ikebukuro locations. These original purikura machines convert photos into unique manga-like images, which are then uploaded to the Vanquish Facebook page. The customers are then brought to the Facebook page where the company hopes they will click the ‘Like’ button [1].

Ceno has already expanded to Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, China, and even Australia. Its next project is the launch of a Vanquish ecommerce site for BangKok, scheduled for this April. The brand is pretty well received by consumers around Asia, as the pricing is not too expensive. After going through different vendors to reach overseas markets, many Japanese brands end up being high-priced luxury brands (whether they want to or not). Ceno has partnered directly with different vendors in locals market to ensure this doesn’t happen.

The company has also started another brand called Gonoturn which sells unique hats and facial masks that mimic cute animals. It looks like a fun company too, as you can see below. Here the employees are pulling off another Harlem Shake video while wearing their own products.

In case you were wondering, Ceno began this manga camera project before the popular Manga Camera app appeared on the app store. ↩

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Japanese curation site Naver Matome boasts 41 million users, cures information overload

SCORE 1,553

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.03.07

This is part of our ‘Japanese internet in-depth’ series (RSS). Stay tuned for more features that aim to explain what makes the internet unique in Japan. Naver Matome is a very simple curation platform that launched back in July of 2009. To date it has accumulated over 41 million users and over 1.2 billion page views per month. The platform is now operated by NHN Japan (perhaps best known as the company behind the Line chat app) after a merger with Naver in November of 2011. On the site, users are able to create pages that bundle images, links, and videos under a topic of their choice, ranging from dieting, to politics, to web services. There are many reasons behind the platform’s sucess including its friendly user interface, the wide genre of topics curated, compatibility with different social networks (especially Twitter), and strong SEO for both Yahoo and Google with 70% of its traffic coming from the two search engines. But above all, Naver Matome helps users overcome information overflow. This is especially true for the younger generation, which is Naver Matome’s biggest user segment 1. Many young people have never subscribed to newspapers, and for this reason Japan’s Nikkei,…

This is part of our ‘Japanese internet in-depth’ series (RSS). Stay tuned for more features that aim to explain what makes the internet unique in Japan.

Naver Matome is a very simple curation platform that launched back in July of 2009. To date it has accumulated over 41 million users and over 1.2 billion page views per month. The platform is now operated by NHN Japan (perhaps best known as the company behind the Line chat app) after a merger with Naver in November of 2011.

On the site, users are able to create pages that bundle images, links, and videos under a topic of their choice, ranging from dieting, to politics, to web services. There are many reasons behind the platform’s sucess including its friendly user interface, the wide genre of topics curated, compatibility with different social networks (especially Twitter), and strong SEO for both Yahoo and Google with 70% of its traffic coming from the two search engines.

cosplay-matome — Curated cosplay on Matome

But above all, Naver Matome helps users overcome information overflow. This is especially true for the younger generation, which is Naver Matome’s biggest user segment ¹. Many young people have never subscribed to newspapers, and for this reason Japan’s Nikkei, one of the country’s largest newspapers, has partnered with NHN to allow the use of texts (up to 200 characters) and images from the digital version of the newspaper in the hopes of attracting younger readers.

The total number of Matome pages now exceeds half a million. But what is the motivation for users to create these pages? Many users do it to earn pocket money. In November of 2010, Naver Matome began an incentive program, where some very popular Matome users with around half a million page views per month could receive payments as high as a few hundered thousand dollars.

Narumi is an example of popular curator with over 2.3 million monthly page views. Some topics he has created include:

Some curators specialize in tech, others in sports. Many of the curated topics are in fact very interesting and inspirational, although there are also many meant to be simply light or humorous.

Sometimes old articles from my personal blog get retweeted, and it’s likely that Naver Matome is contributing to that. The curators on the platform are great hunters of information, assisting others who may have difficulty finding relevant content. I hope that in the future traditional media can find a way to cooperate with Naver Matome and take advantage of the curation platform rather than seeing it as a threat or potential copyright violation, as some currently do.

Naver Matome is a unique corner of the Japanese net, and if you can read Japanese, you’re sure to find something you like over there. Enjoy!

The 20 to 29 demographic accounts for 34% of users, and 15 to 19 makes up 16%↩

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Looking for a job in Japan? Dragon Gate lets you pitch your skills to Japanese companies

Masaru Ikeda 2013.03.07

Dragon Gate is a job matching site that connects foreign students to Japanese companies. It was recently launched by Future Design Lab, a career consultancy based in Tokyo. Japanese business customs could potentially be a difficult obstacle for foreign students looking to work with Japanese companies. The consultancy helps them overcome this in a few ways, including helping in the creation of a CV as well as advising how to choose the right company to work with. The most interesting feature of Dragon Gate is that the service allows students to upload an 30- to 60-second introductory video clip for free. This video lets them showcase themselves on a prominent stage, and it enables Japanese talent seekers to easily assess the candidate’s level of Japanese proficiency as well as their business manner prior to hiring. Japanese streaming platform operator J-Stream provides the video solution for the website.. With these notable functions, the consultancy expects to help many foreign students find placements in Japanese companies. So if you’re a student or a recent graduate looking to find work in Japan, you might want to sign up!

Dragon Gate is a job matching site that connects foreign students to Japanese companies. It was recently launched by Future Design Lab, a career consultancy based in Tokyo.

Japanese business customs could potentially be a difficult obstacle for foreign students looking to work with Japanese companies. The consultancy helps them overcome this in a few ways, including helping in the creation of a CV as well as advising how to choose the right company to work with.

The most interesting feature of Dragon Gate is that the service allows students to upload an 30- to 60-second introductory video clip for free. This video lets them showcase themselves on a prominent stage, and it enables Japanese talent seekers to easily assess the candidate’s level of Japanese proficiency as well as their business manner prior to hiring. Japanese streaming platform operator J-Stream provides the video solution for the website..

With these notable functions, the consultancy expects to help many foreign students find placements in Japanese companies. So if you’re a student or a recent graduate looking to find work in Japan, you might want to sign up!

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Japan’s Pocket Concierge fills cancelled restaurant reservations with eager customers

Junya Mori 2013.03.06

Read this story in Japanese. When you go for a night out on the town, how do you find the best restaurant? In Japan, most people rely on internet resources such as Tabelog, Gournavi, Naver Matome, or even blog posts. But with Japan’s high internet penetration, many people in your area are probably doing the same thing. As a result, it can be even the harder to reserve a spot in the restaurant you want. Pocket Concierge was recently launched with the aim at solving this kind of problem, allowing you to book even popular restaurants that might be wait-listed for several months. How does it work? You bookmark the restaurant of your choice by clicking the ‘wish-to-go’ button on the Pocket Concierge website. When the restaurant finds any unexpected vacancy in their reservation list, they will e-mail you an invite through the site. You will be requested to enter what day and how many people are in your party. Pocket Concierge will then e-mail you confirmation of the booking after finalizing with the restaurant. While popular restaurants are tough to reserve, when they experience sudden cancellations they could be wasting food – and it’s useful for them to be…

Read this story in Japanese.

When you go for a night out on the town, how do you find the best restaurant? In Japan, most people rely on internet resources such as Tabelog, Gournavi, Naver Matome, or even blog posts. But with Japan’s high internet penetration, many people in your area are probably doing the same thing. As a result, it can be even the harder to reserve a spot in the restaurant you want.

Pocket Concierge was recently launched with the aim at solving this kind of problem, allowing you to book even popular restaurants that might be wait-listed for several months.

How does it work? You bookmark the restaurant of your choice by clicking the ‘wish-to-go’ button on the Pocket Concierge website. When the restaurant finds any unexpected vacancy in their reservation list, they will e-mail you an invite through the site. You will be requested to enter what day and how many people are in your party. Pocket Concierge will then e-mail you confirmation of the booking after finalizing with the restaurant.

While popular restaurants are tough to reserve, when they experience sudden cancellations they could be wasting food – and it’s useful for them to be able to invite other customers instead. Interestingly, the service is not PC dependent as it is also available to use via fax.

Pocket Concierge was founded by Kei Tokado who was has experience in the restaurant business, including time as a restaurant chef. His unique background and insight made it possible to come up with such an idea, having seen the need for such a service first hand.

Early insights

Pocket Concierge has been operating in closed beta since the beginning of this year. And so far they have intriguing insights, finding that sales professionals in their 30s often dined with business partners, and male business owners in their 40s were also very responsive. Kei Tokado explains:

We previously intended to provide users with an alternative way to book ‘hard-to-reserve’ restaurants. But from the closed beta program, we found that customers using our service were very satisfied because participating restaurants provided them with extra rewards when the customers dined. In comparison to existing restaurant-related online services, we believe we provide more value, even offline.

We heard from many restaurants that it’s possible to learn in advance the sort of occasion a customer might have, or if they have certain ingredients they dislike or might be allergic to. This information makes it possible to provide a service which fits the customer very well.

For users, it’s free to make a reservation more than three days in advance of your visit, but otherwise you will be charged. The service started in Tokyo but expects to expand to other major Japanese cities including Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe, and Fukuoka.

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Japan’s DeployGate aspires to be a standard tool for Android development

Rick Martin 2013.03.04

Japanese social network Mixi (TYO:2121) doesn’t often do business beyond its home market, so I was pretty intrigued recently to get a preview of a relatively new project from its innovation team that is making an effort to go after global users. DeployGate initially launched last year, promising an easier way to distribute test versions of Android applications as part of the development process, all without an SDK. That service is getting an update today, one which expands its focus past just developers, placing more emphasis on the users. With this shift, it moves in on the territory of Test Flight, although its focus is still heavily on the development process. DeployGate initially came about as a result of the Mixi in-house developers scratching their own itch. As the were developing Mixi Android clients they often ran into problems, finding they had a need for easier deployment of apps to test users. DeployGate is the solution they came up with, eventually becoming a product that The Mixi innovation team would ship as a product, spun off from the Mixi development team. The process looks simple enough from a developer’s point of view. Your app is uploaded, and then you can…

L to R: Kenta Imai, Yuki Fujisaki, Kyosuke Inoue

Japanese social network Mixi (TYO:2121) doesn’t often do business beyond its home market, so I was pretty intrigued recently to get a preview of a relatively new project from its innovation team that is making an effort to go after global users. DeployGate initially launched last year, promising an easier way to distribute test versions of Android applications as part of the development process, all without an SDK. That service is getting an update today, one which expands its focus past just developers, placing more emphasis on the users. With this shift, it moves in on the territory of Test Flight, although its focus is still heavily on the development process.

DeployGate initially came about as a result of the Mixi in-house developers scratching their own itch. As the were developing Mixi Android clients they often ran into problems, finding they had a need for easier deployment of apps to test users. DeployGate is the solution they came up with, eventually becoming a product that The Mixi innovation team would ship as a product, spun off from the Mixi development team.

The process looks simple enough from a developer’s point of view. Your app is uploaded, and then you can create a unique deployment page (or distribution panel) for that iteration which can then be circulated to whomever you wish, typically via email. It can be password protected too if you like. The amount of users you can reach depends on your payment plan. After deployment over-the-air, a developer can then monitor error and crash reports from the web dashboard (pictured below), push updates, debug remotely, or even cancel privileges remotely if they choose.

The ability to deploy different app versions to different groups means that the newer version of DeployGate makes AB testing a little easier than before.

The new version of DeployGate has a number of new features, most notably a new pricing plan that makes it more accessible to more people. The pricing plans are listed below. As you can see, the new version follows a freemium model, although paid plans are reasonably priced.

	Free	Lite	Pro	Biz
Number of apps	4	10	50	100
Number of developers/collaborators	2	5	25	100
Version histories	5	15	100	1000
Devices	20	100	3,000	30,000
Monthly fee (yen) [1]	0	525	3,650	9,975

With this new version, the hope is that developers and marketers will use the free plan and want to do more, eventually upgrading to paid plans. So far the team has mainly used Google Adwords for marketing, so this should give the product an extra push now that more people can try it out. But the advantages for any individual developers are obvious.

The team has high hopes for DeployGate too, saying they want to become the de facto solution for developing Android applications. That’s a lofty goal, but it looks like they have some prominent clients already. So far, notable companies who use DeployGate are Baidu (Japan), Kayac, Zaim [2], and Tokyo Otaku Mode. I’m told that currently the service has enough paid customers to sustain their current ecosystem, and that’s certainly promising.

So far they have users in 90 countries, with 3,400 apps distributed in total. And surprisingly their customers appear to be more global that than I’d have expected from anything associated with Mixi, with 76% of usage in English, and 24% in Japanese.

It will be interesting to see if this service from the innovation team can break free of the stagnation that has been hampering Mixi as a whole in recent years. But with DeployGate, along with the recently launched Nohana camera app, it’s certainly great to see them try.

In dollars, that’s $8, $45, amd $120. ↩
Zaim is a made-in-Japan personal finance application which I really like a lot. In the coming weeks I hope to feature it in more detail. ↩

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Smapo: Can Japan’s answer to Shopkick fend off new competition?

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.02.28

Many of our readers are likely familiar with Shopkick, a popular smartphone app that rewards customers as they enter a store. Well, Japan has very similar service called Smapo, which provides a smooth combination of in-store hardware and a free smartphone app for both iPhone and Android. I recently had spoke with Yo Shibata, the CEO of Spotlight Inc. (the company behind Smapo) to find out more about this service. With Smapo, all that a user has to do is to download the free app, and turn it on when walking into a participating merchant — exactly like Shopkick. Every time the app is turned on, users receive about 30 yen (about 30 cents) in points which can later be exchanged for gift certificates to be used at participating stores. What differentiates Smapo from its US counterpart is that it uses a sort of inaudible audio signal to detect users walking in, via the required in-store hardware which is about the size of a matchbox. There are so many small shops in Tokyo, and many brands decide to set up within crowded departments where in many cases, there is no proper store entrance. Smapo’s technology is valid as long as…

Many of our readers are likely familiar with Shopkick, a popular smartphone app that rewards customers as they enter a store. Well, Japan has very similar service called Smapo, which provides a smooth combination of in-store hardware and a free smartphone app for both iPhone and Android.

I recently had spoke with Yo Shibata, the CEO of Spotlight Inc. (the company behind Smapo) to find out more about this service.

With Smapo, all that a user has to do is to download the free app, and turn it on when walking into a participating merchant — exactly like Shopkick. Every time the app is turned on, users receive about 30 yen (about 30 cents) in points which can later be exchanged for gift certificates to be used at participating stores.

What differentiates Smapo from its US counterpart is that it uses a sort of inaudible audio signal to detect users walking in, via the required in-store hardware which is about the size of a matchbox. There are so many small shops in Tokyo, and many brands decide to set up within crowded departments where in many cases, there is no proper store entrance. Smapo’s technology is valid as long as the user is in the store space (the inaudible audio signal does not go beyond the store’s walls) so wherever they are, the system works.

Finding new faces

Many notable merchants have already joined Smapo including mega electronics franchise Bic Camera, department stores Daimaru and Marui, as well as popular fashion retailer United Arrows. All of these merchants wanted a new way to attract consumers. Because many people do their product research in advance on computer and on smartphones these days, there is less of a need to actually visit the stores than before. Newspapers are one common place where merchants advertise, but the number of newspaper subscibers have dropped to half of what they used to be 15 years ago.

The user demographic for Smapo is half male and half female. And in an effort to satisfy the younger female generation, Smapo recently launched 58 more merchants targeting young women, including The Body Shop, and Amo’s Style (a lingerie brand). Early adopter male users are still fans of the app too. At Bic Camera, which can be a heaven for tech savvy geeks, Smapo can bring over 10,000 people to a store monthly.

But how effective is Smapo in actually attracting new consumers? Shibata-san cited Marui as an example. Their problem was that people perceived their brand as one specifically for young people, and they wanted to make an effort to bring in customers who shopped there in their youth, but may be a little older now. By bringing users to a specific part of the store such as the men’s shoe section or the women’s bags floor, they managed to land many new customers.

When they run a TV commercial, of all the customers who arrive at Marui, only 10% are new. With Smapo, that number rose to an impressive 40%. And of those 40%, about half the people ended up buying something.

Besides the chat application war that’s famously going down in Japan, O2O is another sector that’s going to generate some heat this year. NTT Docomo have adopted the exact same model as Shopkick and Smapo for their newly launched Shoplat. The system works in the same manner, but it seems that their speciality is restaurants and bars for now.

Ever since their launch in September of 2011, Smapo has seen no significant competitor, which also meant that they were essentially wholly responsible for developing the market. With the largest mobile carrier in Japan now in the game, we expect that this space is going to get far more competitive in the coming months. It is not very often we see such a young startup butting heads against an internet giant in Japan. Stay tuned, because this is going to get interesting.

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Niconico Douga: Japanese online video site puts discussion front and center

SCORE 1,945

Yukari Mitsuhashi 2013.02.27

Youtube is the most popular online video site in the world, and it’s certainly big here in Japan too. But Japan also has a very unique video sharing site called Niconico Douga that’s wildly popular among netizens [1]. The site enables users to comment on top of the video they’re viewing, resulting in the feeling that everyone is together in one big room enjoying (or not enjoying) the same video. Comments are displayed at the time in the video corresponding with when they were posted, and the random marquee-style text transforms the video into an entirely new form of entertainment. Here’s a screenshot of how it looks, with the actual video included below. Niconico Douga quietly first emerged back in December of 2006, pushing out a beta version a month later. Since then, the site has offered many unique features to its users, successfully accumulating over 30 million users as of 2012. That averages out to a whopping 440,000 new users per month. The user demographic is mostly male (with 67% men and 33% women) and most of the active users are in the 20-29 age range (about 42%). There have been over 8.7 million videos uploaded to the site…

Youtube is the most popular online video site in the world, and it’s certainly big here in Japan too. But Japan also has a very unique video sharing site called Niconico Douga that’s wildly popular among netizens [1]. The site enables users to comment on top of the video they’re viewing, resulting in the feeling that everyone is together in one big room enjoying (or not enjoying) the same video. Comments are displayed at the time in the video corresponding with when they were posted, and the random marquee-style text transforms the video into an entirely new form of entertainment. Here’s a screenshot of how it looks, with the actual video included below.

Niconico Douga quietly first emerged back in December of 2006, pushing out a beta version a month later. Since then, the site has offered many unique features to its users, successfully accumulating over 30 million users as of 2012. That averages out to a whopping 440,000 new users per month. The user demographic is mostly male (with 67% men and 33% women) and most of the active users are in the 20-29 age range (about 42%). There have been over 8.7 million videos uploaded to the site in total.

In general, the site is sort of perceived as a place for otaku who typically prefer anonymous communication. However since the launch of live streaming videos, people in the mainstream have also joined the site, including but not limited to politicians, idol groups, and music bands. Currently there are almost 100 official channels that live stream content on the site. What’s interesting is that Niconico Douga allows users to sign up using Facebook credentials, and that of course requires your real name. This may have been influenced by Ustream, which uses Twitter and Facebook for sign-in.

The company behind Niconico Douga is niwango, a subsidiary of dwango which runs a music and ringtone downloading business. Niwango’s sales for first quarter of 2013 was 3.8 billion yen (or more than $41 million). Of that, one fourth comes from their premium registry that allows users to upload videos of a larger size, as well as the capability to live stream videos, create communities, and more. So far 1.8 million users have joined this premium service.

Niconico Douga is definitely a unique domestic service with no strict equivalent outside of Japan, although the site does have a multi-language interface and has been supporting English comments since October of 2011. There are services like this other different genres such as bookmarking, curation, etc, and in the future I plan to introduce you to more of these Japan-optimized sites.

This is part of our ‘Japanese internet in-depth’ series (RSS). Stay tuned for more features that aim to explain what makes the internet unique in Japan.

Japanese people often refer to the site as NicoDou. ↩

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Trouble managing your Facebook page? Help is on the way this spring, from Japan

Rick Martin 2013.02.22

Japan-based Comnico has been helping many companies manage their Facebook pages over the past few years. But like many Japanese tech companies these days, Comnico has its eyes on overseas customers, and given the cultural and language barriers that come with international consulting, the company now has its eyes set on an interesting niche where it hopes to thrive. So what’s the big plan? Comnico has developed a tool that will enable companies to better manage, monitor, and promote Facebook pages on their own. I recently had a chance to catch up with CEO Masayuki Hayashi, who gave me an overview of Comnico’s new marketing suite, which the company hopes to make available to overseas customers this spring. The suite actually includes four products, which can be broken down as follows: Post Manager: This tool lets users make postings to their Facebook pages from within Comnico’s marketing suite. It has a very slick multi-user interface that includes url shortening (custom domain available), plus access to Getty Images in case you’d like to supplement your update with attractive pictures [1]. The post manager also includes a built-in image editor, making use of the Aviary API for quick cropping, addition of text,…

Japan-based Comnico has been helping many companies manage their Facebook pages over the past few years. But like many Japanese tech companies these days, Comnico has its eyes on overseas customers, and given the cultural and language barriers that come with international consulting, the company now has its eyes set on an interesting niche where it hopes to thrive.

So what’s the big plan? Comnico has developed a tool that will enable companies to better manage, monitor, and promote Facebook pages on their own. I recently had a chance to catch up with CEO Masayuki Hayashi, who gave me an overview of Comnico’s new marketing suite, which the company hopes to make available to overseas customers this spring. The suite actually includes four products, which can be broken down as follows:

Post Manager: This tool lets users make postings to their Facebook pages from within Comnico’s marketing suite. It has a very slick multi-user interface that includes url shortening (custom domain available), plus access to Getty Images in case you’d like to supplement your update with attractive pictures [1]. The post manager also includes a built-in image editor, making use of the Aviary API for quick cropping, addition of text, or other edits. Posts can then be scheduled, or saved as drafts if they require approval from others in your company.
Insights: This feature can score your Facebook page, based on a number of criteria such as your reach among both fans and non-fans, and even the reaction you are getting per post. You can even compare your score with those of your competitors, and download and view the reports Excel format if you wish.
Promotions: While it is normally very difficult and expensive to conduct a promotion or campaign on Facebook, this feature lets you create ready-made ones far quicker, letting you offer rewards to participants with relative ease.
Monitoring: It can often be a chore to keep up with user discussion on your Facebook pages. Comnico’s tool helps detect flagged words, and also makes use of human monitoring through a partner company based in Okinawa. This monitoring feature lets you view posts by time, and it also includes multi-lingual support.

Shooting for businesses big and small

And while an offering with the apparent capabilities as this one shouldn’t come cheap, Comnico will be making pricing affortable to small businesses by tiering pricing according to the number of Facebook fans a company has. So for example, a company with less than 500 fans might pay 5000 yen per month (just over $50), while one with 20,000 fans might be 200,000 per month.

Who what kind of customers does Comnico foresee using such a service? Masayuki tells me that it would be a good fit for B2C companies like restaurants, for example. He adds that the advantages of a service like this in Japan are particularly apparent given that alternatives such as Gournavi charge a certain amount to manage fans, and that’s in their own closed system. That contrasts with Facebook, which is still growing in popularity in Japan, where companies can have direct access to their own fans.

Comnico has been operating this suite in Japan and is looking at April for the release of the English version. They don’t have any specified target for how many users they’d like to acquire in their overseas expansion, but they’re looking forward to giving it a try so they can see what happens. After its work in Japan the company has over 100 clients already under its belt — many of them very recognizable — so I imagine that should lend them some credibility in the eyes of potential clients.

It’s certainly good to see another Japanese company venturing beyond the nation’s borders in the interests of expanding business. Let’s stay tuned to see how they do.

Hayashi tells me that images tend to do far better on Facebook in terms of reach and engagement. ↩

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Lang-8: The language learning startup that’s playing the long game

Takeshi Hirano 2013.02.07

Lang–8, launched in 2007, is a language-learning platform in which users from different language backgrounds can socially correct each other’s writings. The CEO YangYang Xi started the service when he was 23 years old while studying at Kyoto University. Xi, born in China and raised in Japan, got the idea of the language-learning platform from keeping a diary, in which he asked friends to correct his own writings (in Chinese) when he was studying in Shanghai. Six years, half a million users later ¶ Skip to the present day in 2013, and Lang–8’s user base is about to reach 510,000, with the current active user rate at about 10%. The service is used by people in 190 countries, 70% of them from outside Japan. The primary users are business professionals. While the 500,000 user milestone is an impressive one, the company took more than a little while to get there. When asked about this six-year journey, Xi says he didn’t experience real growth until about a year ago, and that it took a lot of preparation to reach this point. Having started his career as a student entrepreneur, the first order of business was research and development. The service needed…

Lang–8, launched in 2007, is a language-learning platform in which users from different language backgrounds can socially correct each other’s writings.

The CEO YangYang Xi started the service when he was 23 years old while studying at Kyoto University. Xi, born in China and raised in Japan, got the idea of the language-learning platform from keeping a diary, in which he asked friends to correct his own writings (in Chinese) when he was studying in Shanghai.

Six years, half a million users later ¶

Skip to the present day in 2013, and Lang–8’s user base is about to reach 510,000, with the current active user rate at about 10%. The service is used by people in 190 countries, 70% of them from outside Japan. The primary users are business professionals.

While the 500,000 user milestone is an impressive one, the company took more than a little while to get there. When asked about this six-year journey, Xi says he didn’t experience real growth until about a year ago, and that it took a lot of preparation to reach this point.

Having started his career as a student entrepreneur, the first order of business was research and development. The service needed to expand enough to be profitable. Initially Lang–8’s staff spent the majority of their time on site development and other technical elements. But two years after launch, Xi had a bit of a falling out with his engineer. Abandoned and left alone to nervously face 15 servers on his own, he decided that he couldn’t entrust his work to other people. That moment prompted him to make an effort to learn programming, and in the following two years, he learned development skills by interning at a friend’s company.

Interestingly, this period of personal growth for Xi coincided with strong user growth on the site as well – likely not a coincidence.

In 2009, Lang–8 received an angel investment of about 10 million yen from four private investors, including Nishikawa Kiyoshi of NetAge. In order to raise more funds, he will have to prove that Lang–8 has real growth potential. And that means addressing one key problem: smartphone support. Lang–8′s competitor busuuu experienced sudden growth as an iPhone application, reaching 1,9000,000 users. And while Lang–8′s userbase is not as large, its position as a social network is unique. If solid smartphone support is added, Xi believes it could become a serious competitor.

The other crucial point is monetization. Xi explained several of his ideas for controlling the corrections which play a central role in the service. For example, whether an entry receives corrections can be an issue. About 60% of English entries get corrected, as compared to 80% of entries in other languages. But a paid service could ensure that all entries are corrected. The jump from free to paid is never easy, but if that’s what users are looking for, it may possible.

Belief in an idea ¶

Xi’s six-year journey from a struggling student startup to a community of 500,000 has certainly not been a glamorous one – although his persistence is certainly admirable. But compared to the explosive growth of social gaming and chat services in recent years, Lang–8′s growth rate might not grab the attention of investors.

Even with the recent improvement in user growth, there must have moments when Xi considered throwing in the towel. But he asserts, “I feel it has potential, and that’s why I can continue.” There are several entrepreneuers who are currently supporting him as mentors, and hopefully this can help with his plans to grow and expand his staff in the future.

That kind of unshakable belief in an idea is what has carried him this far. And with any luck, it’ll continue to drive him as he takes Lang8 to the next level.

news

Japanese fashion coordination site iQON raises $3.2M, will boost marketing efforts

Takeshi Hirano 2013.02.04

See original story in Japanese Vasily, a Tokyo-based startup which runs online fashion coordination service iQON, announced today that it has fundraised a total of 300 million yen (approximately $3.2 million) from Globis Capital Partners, Itochu Technologuy Ventures, and GMO Venture Partners. This is the second round of funds following the previous series A funding of 140 million yen ($1.5 million) in May of 2011. The iQON service allows you to combine clothing and accessories online and share fashion coordination ideas with other users. Each item has a direct link to fashion e-commerce sites where you can purchase it, and the startup will generate revenue from partner sites using an affiliate model. More than 300,000 coordinated outfits have been registered since the service launched in April of 2010, and users are bookmarking their favorites more than a million times a month. The startup introduced its iOS app last February (and an Android app is now also available) which really took off. It even helped some of their partnering e-commerce sites make more than 20 million yen monthly sales through the affiliate traffic. The company focused on service development in the series A phase, but will be intensifying branding and marketing…

See original story in Japanese

Vasily, a Tokyo-based startup which runs online fashion coordination service iQON, announced today that it has fundraised a total of 300 million yen (approximately $3.2 million) from Globis Capital Partners, Itochu Technologuy Ventures, and GMO Venture Partners. This is the second round of funds following the previous series A funding of 140 million yen ($1.5 million) in May of 2011.

The iQON service allows you to combine clothing and accessories online and share fashion coordination ideas with other users. Each item has a direct link to fashion e-commerce sites where you can purchase it, and the startup will generate revenue from partner sites using an affiliate model. More than 300,000 coordinated outfits have been registered since the service launched in April of 2010, and users are bookmarking their favorites more than a million times a month.

The startup introduced its iOS app last February (and an Android app is now also available) which really took off. It even helped some of their partnering e-commerce sites make more than 20 million yen monthly sales through the affiliate traffic. The company focused on service development in the series A phase, but will be intensifying branding and marketing efforts from now on.

When discussing fashion e-commerce sites in Japan, we can’t help but mention Zozotown (listed on the Tokyo Mothers exchange since 2007). The site is a partner for Vasily rather than a competitor because the two companies have different business models and won’t compete and/or conflict. Vasily’s CEO, Yuki Kanayama, says they will keep working closely with their good partner Zozotown in the future.

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