SOPHOLA has entered its ninth fiscal year. I founded the company in April 2018, and today I am the only person who has been here from the beginning. Yet it is thanks to our many employees, contractors, tech partners, and customers that the company has kept going for eight and a half years, launching a range of businesses and services and delivering value that only SOPHOLA can offer. We have now served more than 500 companies and sole proprietors in total. To everyone who has chosen, and continues to choose, the products and services of a small company in Nagano over those of the marketing consultancies in the Tokyo area, I am deeply grateful.

Against that backdrop, SOPHOLA launched two new ventures in the first half of this fiscal year. The first, which has no capital ties to SOPHOLA, is the Institute of Integrative Intelligence, a general incorporated association. It researches “Integrative Intelligence,” a process of introspection grounded in more than 30 years of my own reflective practice, and I established it to broaden the use of that process in the age of AI and to help people deepen the fun and joy of self-exploration. The second is Jonen Peakworks (https://www.yamayama-curry.com/), a mountaineering brand we launched on the 24th of last month. Born in Azumino and committed to local sourcing, it develops and sells food and gear unlike anything that has existed before. What the two have in common is a major shift in who we serve, from B2B to B2C, and I am finding that some of what we have learned so far simply does not apply.

At Jonen Peakworks, about four team members are now working almost constantly, and with a wide variety of organizations, companies, and individuals involved, the brand is just beginning to let out its first cry. To be honest, we have never launched a consumer brand of our own, and of course we have never run an e-commerce business, so there is a great deal we do not know. But every day I am moved by how many people are working on this alongside us with so much passion. There is far too much to do, and of far too many kinds, for me ever to have launched this alone.

To express that gratitude, we created a page called “The Jonen Peakworks Crew.” It lists the companies, organizations, and individuals who are co-creating Jonen Peakworks with us. We are also talking about adding our internal team members to the site, and I am very much looking forward to seeing what form that takes!

There is still a little under a month until sales begin on Makuake, but I hope you will buy Jonen Peakworks’ first products there, “Curry by Mountaineers, for Mountaineers” and “Keema Curry by Mountaineers, for Mountaineers,” and enjoy them on a mountaintop. They are ready-to-eat pouch curries for climbers and hikers: more committed to Shinshu ingredients than anything before them, truly delicious, and made to help you recover from fatigue!

I will keep moving the brand forward together with everyone, grateful for each and every encounter. I have also let the Integrative Intelligence work stall, so I will be restarting it toward the end of the year. Please look forward to that as well!

Masaki “Mark” Iino
Founder & CEO
SOPHOLA, Inc.