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A closer look at, Booth, Pixiv’s new e-commerce platform

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See the original story in Japanese. Japanese social illustration service Pixiv recently announced its new e-commerce platform, Booth. It was officially launched last week, opening stores of nine prominent artists to sell their works online. We’d like to take a closer look at it right now. Artists’ works could be things like decorative postcards, hand towels, clear file folders, t-shirts, and smartphone cases (see below). After signing up on the platform, you can receive updates from your favorite artists when have new works available. When you buy an item, your purchase action will be posted on the artist’s wall, which encourages other users following that artist to buy as well [1]. For artists, the platform lets you set a selling price or distribute their items to users for free, for evaluation or promotion purposes. Booth’s ‘Warehouse service’ packages, and ships your products on your behalf. The storage charge is free to keep items up to six months, and the shipping and handling charge is 700 yen (about $7), regardless of where in Japan your recipient is located. The goal is to meet all your e-commerce needs online, letting you concentrate on your creative activities. Their dashboard for artists is smartly…

booth-top

See the original story in Japanese.

Japanese social illustration service Pixiv recently announced its new e-commerce platform, Booth. It was officially launched last week, opening stores of nine prominent artists to sell their works online. We’d like to take a closer look at it right now.

Artists’ works could be things like decorative postcards, hand towels, clear file folders, t-shirts, and smartphone cases (see below). After signing up on the platform, you can receive updates from your favorite artists when have new works available. When you buy an item, your purchase action will be posted on the artist’s wall, which encourages other users following that artist to buy as well [1].

tsuchinoko-list

For artists, the platform lets you set a selling price or distribute their items to users for free, for evaluation or promotion purposes. Booth’s ‘Warehouse service’ packages, and ships your products on your behalf. The storage charge is free to keep items up to six months, and the shipping and handling charge is 700 yen (about $7), regardless of where in Japan your recipient is located. The goal is to meet all your e-commerce needs online, letting you concentrate on your creative activities.

Their dashboard for artists is smartly designed, and it’s easy to check how much revenue you’ve make on the platform. Because of Pixiv’s huge user community and integration with social media, I think the company will succeed in differentiating from competitors doing similar businesses.

tnsk-cow

booth-dashboard


  1. Their business model for the platform resembles that of US-based Society6 and Taiwan-based Fandora Shop.

Japanese social illustration service Pixiv launches e-commerce platform for creators

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See the original article in Japanese Pixiv, Japan’s popular online social illustration platform, has just announced a new service. It’s called Booth, and it enables anyone – even those new to web design – to create online stores. The concept somewhat similar to Base, often referred as the Japanese Shopify, and Stores.jp. Booth has just opened to registration, with plans to launch officially on December 19th. So what is the difference between Booth and the other store-creating solutions like Base and Stores.jp? Booth’s strength lies in its integration with Pixiv, letting users promote products directly on the site, with searchable tags and notification of new products for Pixiv followers. Online stores will be connected to the existing community of the shop owners, making it easy to attract users. The stores will of course specialize in digital content such as illustrations, pictures, movies, music, and books. It will also be possible to offer the products for free so that shop owners can easily provide samples. Booth is being billed as a “creator friendly service”, which means that creators won’t need to pay any initial costs, monthly fees, or sales fees. Only transaction fees on credit card payments will be charged. So…

Booth

See the original article in Japanese

Pixiv, Japan’s popular online social illustration platform, has just announced a new service. It’s called Booth, and it enables anyone – even those new to web design – to create online stores. The concept somewhat similar to Base, often referred as the Japanese Shopify, and Stores.jp. Booth has just opened to registration, with plans to launch officially on December 19th.

So what is the difference between Booth and the other store-creating solutions like Base and Stores.jp? Booth’s strength lies in its integration with Pixiv, letting users promote products directly on the site, with searchable tags and notification of new products for Pixiv followers. Online stores will be connected to the existing community of the shop owners, making it easy to attract users.

The stores will of course specialize in digital content such as illustrations, pictures, movies, music, and books. It will also be possible to offer the products for free so that shop owners can easily provide samples.

Booth is being billed as a “creator friendly service”, which means that creators won’t need to pay any initial costs, monthly fees, or sales fees. Only transaction fees on credit card payments will be charged. So creators will be paid nearly the full amount of the product price.

Also if the user stores products in Booth’s warehouse, the company will assist the user in storing, packaging, and shipping. By providing these services, Pixiv hopes to help eliminate these problems to let creators focus on making better products.

I often visit the Pixiv site, as well as Tokyo Otaku Mode, a website curating content about Japanese Otaku/geek culture. Otaku Mode is divided into galleries that presents creators’ works and pictures, and online shops to sell Otaku-focussed products. Unlike Tokyo Otaku Mode, Pixiv previously had only a gallery. As a user of both services, I think Booth will add much value for Pixiv, in the same way that it added value for Otaku Mode, bringing more exciting experiences to users.

Tokyo Otaku Mode

An online community for Japanese girls who like ‘boys love’

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One of the cultural developments that Japan can be proud of is its creative illustrations and manga, and the community that has grown around it. There are many communities dedicated to creators such as Pixiv, drawr, and others. We are starting to see communities dedicated to even more specific groups of people. PictBLand is one example, where the target users of the site are ‘Fujoshi’ or so-called ‘rotten girls’. This modern term refers to females who likes novels and manga about male homosexuality (love between two males is often described as ‘boys love’ in Japan, hence the ‘BL’ in the service’s name). On PictBLand users can view other people’s illustrative works, or post their own. There are many original works as well as creations that imitates well-known manga such as One Piece. It’s a good place to showcase all your work as well as a place to find inspiration. The site opened back in April of this year, and in about three months, the total number of registered users surpassed 20,000. This is an impressive number considering the niche purpose of the site. Interestingly this illustrations community was an open website at the very beginning, but it later switched to…

PicBLand

One of the cultural developments that Japan can be proud of is its creative illustrations and manga, and the community that has grown around it. There are many communities dedicated to creators such as Pixiv, drawr, and others. We are starting to see communities dedicated to even more specific groups of people. PictBLand is one example, where the target users of the site are ‘Fujoshi’ or so-called ‘rotten girls’. This modern term refers to females who likes novels and manga about male homosexuality (love between two males is often described as ‘boys love’ in Japan, hence the ‘BL’ in the service’s name).

On PictBLand users can view other people’s illustrative works, or post their own. There are many original works as well as creations that imitates well-known manga such as One Piece. It’s a good place to showcase all your work as well as a place to find inspiration. The site opened back in April of this year, and in about three months, the total number of registered users surpassed 20,000. This is an impressive number considering the niche purpose of the site.

Interestingly this illustrations community was an open website at the very beginning, but it later switched to a closed service a month after its launch (now requiring user-registration to view uploaded works).

PictBLand-works

There are other features unique to the site, such as Antenna tags and Exclusion tags. The Antenna tag lets users can show off certain works, whereas the exclusion tag eliminates creations that you don’t want to show from the timeline. As a result, all works showing up in a timeline are exactly the ones that they want to be shown. Many can be viewed freely while some require users to join specific threads in order to see the actual works.

Of course the genre of this online community could generate some controversy. But by optimizing the site to a closed space, users can freely express their love for this very specific type of illustrations. The community is slowly growing, gaining more and more fans with time. It will be interesting to see what the site will grow into in the near future.

Crowdsourcing Cute: How France’s Orangina is leveraging Pixiv in Japan

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Since many Japanese adults grow up with anime and manga, it is only natural that brands try to communicate with consumers using characters that trigger a certain familiarity or nostalgia. Unfortunately, the Japanese character market is in decline according to a recent report by Character Databank. In 2012, the market shrank by 4.5% compared to the year before, now sitting at about 1.5 trillion yen. The change in media environment, as well as the aging population and low birth rate are some of the reasonings why the industry is stalling. But the slowing market is not stopping brands from bringing new creative characters into being. A soda beverage from France, Orangina, landed in Japan for the first time last year. The popular drink is leveraging the online social illustration platform Pixiv to give its Orangina product a personified/human character. A total of 200 illustrations will be chosen, and the winners will be awarded a one-of-a-kind soda can with his or her character printed on the can. These premium cans will also be displayed at the famous Comiket exhibition in August, as well as the Japan Expo planned to take place in France this coming July. You can already find over…

Pixiv-Orangina

Since many Japanese adults grow up with anime and manga, it is only natural that brands try to communicate with consumers using characters that trigger a certain familiarity or nostalgia. Unfortunately, the Japanese character market is in decline according to a recent report by Character Databank. In 2012, the market shrank by 4.5% compared to the year before, now sitting at about 1.5 trillion yen. The change in media environment, as well as the aging population and low birth rate are some of the reasonings why the industry is stalling.

But the slowing market is not stopping brands from bringing new creative characters into being. A soda beverage from France, Orangina, landed in Japan for the first time last year. The popular drink is leveraging the online social illustration platform Pixiv to give its Orangina product a personified/human character.

A total of 200 illustrations will be chosen, and the winners will be awarded a one-of-a-kind soda can with his or her character printed on the can. These premium cans will also be displayed at the famous Comiket exhibition in August, as well as the Japan Expo planned to take place in France this coming July.

You can already find over 170 Orangina girl pictures over on Pixiv. We’ve included a couple of fun examples below.

For those of you not familiar with Pixiv, it’s a social platform that was launched back in September of 2007, which allows creators and fans to communicate through art (such as illustrations, manga, as well as essays). It has over five million registered users, and over three billion monthly page views as of September of 2012. Pixiv operates many sister websites like Drawr, where users can upload and share hand-drawn illustrations; and Pixiv Encyclopedia, an encyclopedia for animations, comics, and games.

orangina-2
from Pixiv user 燈妃(とき)@touya
orangina-1
from Pixiv user ‘Mary’

See how one creative Japanese office does the Harlem Shake

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The viral Harlem Shake meme has been taking the world by storm recently, as you have likely already seen in your internet travels. The infectious dance has even made its way to Japan too, as the folks over at Pixiv have produced a really fun and particularly elaborate version. As you can see in the video above, it starts off with a lone Stig-like dancer, followed by the rest of his office mates once the beat drops. Ranging from an inverted/skirted office lady to a fuzzy costumed panda in the background, the Pixiv team certainly looks to be having lots of fun here. In fact, the Tokyo-based company, which runs a very popular online art community of more than 6 million members, is known for having a lively and creative company culture. When a new staff member recently came to the Pixiv office from Malaysia, they welcomed him with a fun personalized hanging banner. They have an amazingly colorful work space (pictured right) which almost makes Google’s famously playful office seem drab. Stay tuned for more information about Pixiv, as we hope to bring you more details about them in the future. Written with contributions from Junya Mori

The viral Harlem Shake meme has been taking the world by storm recently, as you have likely already seen in your internet travels. The infectious dance has even made its way to Japan too, as the folks over at Pixiv have produced a really fun and particularly elaborate version.

As you can see in the video above, it starts off with a lone Stig-like dancer, followed by the rest of his office mates once the beat drops. Ranging from an inverted/skirted office lady to a fuzzy costumed panda in the background, the Pixiv team certainly looks to be having lots of fun here.

mdn.co.jp
Photo: mdn.co.jp

In fact, the Tokyo-based company, which runs a very popular online art community of more than 6 million members, is known for having a lively and creative company culture. When a new staff member recently came to the Pixiv office from Malaysia, they welcomed him with a fun personalized hanging banner.

They have an amazingly colorful work space (pictured right) which almost makes Google’s famously playful office seem drab. Stay tuned for more information about Pixiv, as we hope to bring you more details about them in the future.


Written with contributions from Junya Mori