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Embracing Japanese pop culture
Entrepreneur.com top features |
On the lookout for new products
Eric Nakamura finds his product source contacts to be a crucial part of his company's success. In 1994, Nakamura started zine Giant Robot, featuring Asian pop culture. The zine turned into a glossy (currently with a circulation of 55,000) and Nakamura opened the first of five retail stores in 2001. He also sells items through his Web site and has a restaurant, gr/eats, near his original Los Angeles location.
Nakamura does most of the product sourcing for the business, finding things like wind-up toys, vinyl figures created by artists, and quirky stationery and books.
"You can't just copy someone else's shop," says Nakamura, who says this has happened before and is always looking for new products for the Giant Robot Web site. "It's not that easy and you can't get a lot of the things we get. We have a lot of connections other people won't have, and by the same token, they get connections we don't have."
Living in Japan helps Peter Payne directly source items for his e-commerce stores, J-List, which contains some adult-only items, and the friendly-for-all-ages J-Box. Some products ship directly from Japan, where Payne operates his business with his wife, Chiharu, while others ship from a warehouse in San Diego.
Payne started selling used Japanese music CDs in 1996 but eventually branched into DVDs, anime and kanji T-shirts. He now has nine full-time and six part-time employees in Japan, and six full-time employees in San Diego.
"One of the good things about Japan is it's so multi-faceted," Payne says. "There's something for you whether you like the idea of beautiful rock gardens in Kyoto or the newest video game."
Staying on top of trends
Traditional Japanese items like wooden sandals and Samurai sword key chains are perpetual bestsellers, but Payne also works hard to stay on top of trends.
"We've got 10 to 15 suppliers that we buy from in Japan, and [we] look at things like catalogs and new product announcements from distributors," Payne says.
"It's hard to know what will sell so we keep our ear to the ground, watching blogs that talk about currently popular anime series, gadgets from Japan, and so on. Often, we'll see something on a blog post, like [the recently trendy] microwave potato chip maker, and we'll scramble to get it in stock as quickly as popular while people in the blogosphere are still taking about it."
Payne says he's seen a definite increase in demand for Japanese products recently, due in large part to the ability for fans to access Japanese media, trends and culture on the Internet. Kelts also sees "a lot of room for growth, especially in related product lines" to popular manga and anime.
Manga is a particularly growing segment; the Japanese comics for all ages increased in sales by 10 percent in 2007, reaching $220 million. Nearly 1,500 titles were estimated to have been released in 2007.
One common denominator among businesses that successfully sell Japanese products in the United States is the careful curation of their product mix. Just because something is big in Japan doesn't mean it'll be a hit here.
"What is interesting about [businesses] that have been successful [selling Japanese products] is they're not going to Japan and seeing what's hot in Japan right now," Kelts says. "They're keeping a very firm grasp on what their American customers would like. So I think respecting the cultural differences is still important. It's not exactly localization. They're not changing the products to suit the American customer. They're just selectively offering Americans what might work here."
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