From this term, together with my co-worker Sebastian, we have started an inbound service for overseas companies called JME (Japan Market Entry). To make it short, it is a service that helps foreign companies interested in the Japanese market advance into Japan. In addition to language support such as website creation and marketing support in Japanese, we also provide support for goods/products transportation in Japan, communication with various partner companies, contracts, taxes, etc.

What I feel while making proposals to overseas companies is that the Japanese market is quite unique. Overseas, except in China, the EC marketplace area is basically attracting customers on Amazon. However, in Japan, there are several marketplaces such as Rakuten and Yahoo (Yahoo Shopping / PayPay Mall), they have a large market share.

In addition, because website creation tools (Shopify / Magento, etc.) widely used overseas are not widely used in Japan, some companies postpone their entry into Japan due to management and scalability issues. In addition to the above, if transportation and tax issues and issues arise, the hurdles for entering Japan will be unexpectedly large.

At present, the companies that are interested in our services often explain the peculiarities of the above-mentioned Japanese market and understand the matters necessary for entering the Japanese market from a cultural / market perspective.  In the future, I would like to expand JME services in Japan by explaining the gap between this overseas market and the Japanese market.

Since the number of proposals to overseas companies inevitably decreases when normal operations/works are put in place, personally I have created/shared a lead list and I have kept that the number of proposals can be maintained before explaining the differences in the market.

SOPHOLA, Inc.
Kenta