Congrats. With regards to the customer support thing: this is something that you can very cleanly outsource to an assistant. Write up your current procedures in a Google doc and share it with a VA. Your options include somebody overseas from you (BCC's is done from the Philippines through a company called Pepper - happy with them) or, due to the unique contours of the employment market for rural Japanese women, you <i>may</i> even find someone in Japan with exceptional English but very poor options careerwise.<p>My wife's friends who do 内職 (work-at-home jobs compatible with e.g. raising kids) work a lot harder than your CS person needs to for less than $400 a month. If you go down that path, they could also do introductory phone calls to candy manufacturers on your behalf.
Great article Bemmu.<p>I love the professional product photos and the clear "what last month's box" contained photo on your home page. Some of our merchants @ Cratejoy have been experimenting with including a "last month's" box section/photo and have been getting very favorable results.<p>I'm curious, what is your monthly retention?<p>Have you done experiments with box contains and how it impacts retention?<p>We're starting to run optimization experiments where we take the product inventory and try to optimally allocate it amongst all subscribers to maximize retention. So like month 1 subscribers get the exact optimal set of products to make sure they stay subscribed until month 2, etc.<p>It's awesome that you are doing product surveys. I hope you do them every month. Have you ever considered sharing the results of your product surveys with your suppliers? Frequently that will be a great relationship building thing, maybe even get you better pricing or free product.
Awesome! You're obviously not struggling, but before long it might be worth reworking the site's aesthetic and branding? I honestly don't know at all how much it matters, but I'm gonna throw out some unsolicited design critique in case it's helpful.<p>- Tragically, King did sink their teeth into the word "candy", so using it in a candy-color outlined gradient logotype strongly evokes mobile games. May not matter, but it sends a mixed message.<p>- Only use the good photography. If you're shooting in a studio now, you can cycle out all the iPhone shots, which are contributing to a kind of "man-of-the-people candy blog" vibe, versus a "place that will send me awesome candy" vibe.<p>Images like this: <a href="http://www.japanstyle.info/wordpress/wp-content/images//20110908_ame01.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.japanstyle.info/wordpress/wp-content/images//2011...</a> make me curious and hungry, images like this: <a href="http://www.candyjapan.com/static/japanese-candy.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.candyjapan.com/static/japanese-candy.jpg</a> remind me of being told to check Halloween candy for razors.<p>- Lead with the photography. Right now, if I don't already have an idea of what "japanese candy" is, I'm not excited. It's cliche, but even just changing the title text to lightly shadowed white and sticking full-width high quality candy photos behind it in a carousel would be way more engaging.<p>- Consider folding the "Are you still active?" section into the title pitch. If this is a concern people have, you don't want them to have to scroll through the rest of the page to resolve it. Could be worth testing something like "Order now to be included in the July 15th shipment!".<p>- A more broad observation: The service (including the totally adorable "how it works" comic strip) seems to be pitched heavily towards something like American Otaku culture. In my experience, though, classmates would define social groups around being into manga, or wanting to learn Japanese-- but when a classmate would come back from Japan with some never-before-seen candy, <i>everyone</i> was excited.<p>That's just my take, anyway. Good luck!
There must be better shipping options available in someway. There are vendors on Ebay in China/HK/Singapore that can ship US$1 items, including batteries, their Ebay and Paypal commissions and free shipping[1]. I have no idea how they do it, but they do.<p>You could probably shave off some shipping costs by putting all of your packages into one crate from Japan to one of these locales and tranship from there.<p>[1] one example: <a href="http://www.ebay.ca/itm/1x-White-1LED-Kong-Frog-Strobe-Rear-Flash-Light-Taillight-Bicycle-Bike-/261442955835?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cdf36ea3b&_uhb=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.ebay.ca/itm/1x-White-1LED-Kong-Frog-Strobe-Rear-F...</a><p>Edit: Part of the allure is receiving the candy direct from JP, but you could pull an Apple and print: "Packaged in _____ Japan".
Stationery from Japan is very close to my heart so I'm even more excited about the Pen Japan than Candy Japan.<p>Just this spring I got a Hobonichi planner sent from Japan to EU. It's not sold in Europe and in addition to great format it has unbelievable paper (Tomoe River) that is extremely thin yet opaque and works great with fountain pen.<p>Also Pilot (incl Namiki fp range) has always surprised me with the design, workability and ergonomics that has been put into each and every little writing instrument Pilot has manufactured, including even the very cheap low end.<p>Stationary geeks and students might find Pen Japan very attractive. There's unbelievable amount of people still into reviewing paper and fountain pens at The Fountain Pen Network forums. Pen Japan would definitely benefit from people having the real recurring <i>need</i> for new paper/notebooks etc.<p>Pro Tip: Get a cheap Lamy Safari fountain pen + notebooks with decent paper (Clairefontaine/Rhodia is great; Moleskine not that good) -- writing feels natural again even after all the digital pads and keyboards available.
The idea that sending out blank envelopes so that you can reach the threshold for discount is genius, never thought of that. Might have to look into it for my business.
Fascinating post, and so glad that things are going well.<p>Very tempted by Pen Japan, although trying to sign up by Paypal looks like it's going to subscribe you to Candy Japan instead.<p>Will give it another try later on. Congratulations again!
Love the idea to branch out into stationary. Now you've got the option to grow up <i>and</i> out. There's probably loads of other suitable Japanese niches too.<p>Have you done any AB testing with the personalised message on the home page ("Free shipping even to {user's country}")? I'd be interested to know how that affected conversion.
I love this idea and subscribed after only a minimal amount of waffling, so thanks for doing it. :)<p>I would like to ask however if there was any specific reason for posting this directly after a batch of packages just went out. Looking at it naively it would seem that it means anyone who learns about your project this way has the maximum wait time ahead of them, on the other hand it's possible that this allows you to include the maximum amount of new customers in the next shipment. Or was it just coincidence? :)
Would this work with ads? Organic, free traffic from HN and blogs is nice, but it seems more like a low probability gamble than something you could count on. Your growth is going to be random and you really can't do any projections.<p>The lifetime value of each subscriber is really high, so it seems to make sense that you could spend $XX in customer acquisition costs.<p>I've wanted to do something similar for a while, but this is really my only sticking point.
that's awesome! I remember seeing this get started on HN a couple of years ago.<p>As an ex-resident of Japan I may sign up one of these days when I miss the candy :) although I must say I was more into the Japanese potato chips, all those seasonal editions! perhaps there's an idea for a sister-site!
Hi, how come the mailing address for Pen Japan is in Finland? Is it for tax reasons? and how do you actually get the mail?
Thanks and good luck with the new venture!
Congrats Bemmu! I love reading these status updates by people such as yourself and patio11.
The other added benefit is that both of you live in Japan, where I hope to one day live, and both of you are running your own companies from there.
Also I am loving the Candy you have been sending lately, so keep up the good work!
Awesome service + very interesting article to read too. Not sure if anyone has already made these suggestion:
1) Allow new subscribers to get [part] of old shipments.
2) Offering part of old shipment that was a favorite in future shipment.
3) Page for subscriber to rate pieces from the shipment. To support #1, #2 and #5,
4) Different sized / freq subscription.
5) Custom one time packaging.<p>I'm more interested in 4/5 personally. I already have access to some of these things where I live, you are in Japan (I'm not), so I'm sure there are more things I would like to try, but I think current offering is too much for me. ... I may break down and subscribe anyway, I don't know, too much thinking, brb need some snack.
There is a similar offer in France shipping international candies each month. Candy as a service is a pretty neat concept. <a href="https://lesbonbecs.com" rel="nofollow">https://lesbonbecs.com</a>
Very good write-up, thank you!<p>I've seen the trend in these monthly food items (I believe it started with the beef jerky guy) and for the most part it seems super gimmicky. I think you found a great niche that provides some real value (who doesn't love crazy exotic candy?) and something I may actually try out.<p>Have you tried selling to any startups/businesses? Office candy is a treat everyone loves and could boost your sales quite a bit compared to just selling to normal consumers.
Hi Bemmu, congratulations.<p>Do you have any costumers in Brazil? What are the delivery times? Do they report anything relating to this, and import duties? I'm almost subscribing.
I'm a Candy Japan subscriber and signed up for Pen Japan first chance I got. I'm very happy with both so far and glad to see business is doing well!
Hey Bemmu!<p>Congrats man. I have a couple ideas:<p>-CandyGerman.com appears to be dynamically determining the country of visitors by IP and including it in their free-shipping banner. At least they seem to have correctly guessed I am in Thailand. Perhaps test that out on your page? I noticed someone here asking if you shipped to Brazil - which would be painfully obvious if you had a sub-text like that. You could get even fancier if you you wanted - "XYZ candy shipments sent to Brazil as of June 2014. Sign up here to be lucky number XYZ + 1."<p>-Another commenter suggested down-selling a once-per-month plan that's available only to people who are canceling. I think that's super-smart. You can even split all the half-subscribers between your two shipments so that they stay the same size. I can think of very little reason not to offer this. At 800 subscribers * 5% attrition = 40 unsubscribes, if you can get 10% of the people to convert to a once-per-month plan for say $15 instead of $25, that's $60 of MRR recovered every month. Let's say the average half-subscriber stays an extra 4 months, that's an extra $240 every month. Obviously as your subscriber base increases, if your attrition rate is higher, or if you can convert more than 10% of unsubs, that number will go up accordingly.<p>-Have you done the math to calculate the addition profit you'd make by sourcing directly from manufacturers? It can have a huge impact on your bottom line. Will the grocery team still help you pack your goods if you buy the product yourself? If so, it's definitely something to start pursuing. If not, you'll need to have another plan for packing before you start buying product directly.<p>-In my experience photos and design can meaningfully increase conversions. I'd definitely consider icushman & thekevan's suggestions. If you're willing to invest 1 month's profits into a better candy offering occasionally, I think it's reasonable to invest the same amount into designing a site like icushman suggested and testing it against thekevan's. There isn't really another way to determine things like "does pro-photography and/or an Otaku vibe positively or negatively effect conversions?"<p>And a question: How are you purchasing postage? Is there a Japan Post API? We use Easypost's API for MonthlyBoxer shipments and it's been hugely helpful.
I remember the original comment when you were starting out. It's very inspiring for someone who wants to start a business in Japan. :)<p>I would like a service like Candy Japan but for drinks.
Sadly shipping costs will be way to high for this to be profitable. Why can't Japanese drinks become popular in Europe instead of the other way around. My favorite drink is getting replaced by Orangina and Fanta over there :<
Hi Bemmu,
Kudos on the success and good luck with PenJapan.
I was curious what is your churn % (if you're willing to share that information), and what are the churn reasons?<p>Also, how do you think PenJapan will fair compared to CandyJapan, considering the latter is for perishable products, unlike stationary people are likely to still have and be using when they get the next envelope.
Nice one Bemmu.<p>I don't want to give you extra work but have you thought of also having something that condenses Japanese TV / Ads / Graphics which could be a newsletter? Desin<p>Also diversifying and applying all this to Nordic / Pacific / S. American countries?
First of all thanks for the post and the data. So helpful!
Anyway, If I read your graph correctly, you've got 800 paying subscribers * $25 that's 20K per month? So 50% profit margin isn't that bad at all!
Hey, randomly clicking around your Pen Japan site, and got the form to request review stuff. Looks like you copy/pasted from Candy Japan, as it refers to Candy Japan instead of Pen Japan.<p>Cool ideas!
I only had one pair of friends who I thought would subscribe. I would be more likely to subscribe to a "random cool stuff from Japan box" if it were around the same cost.
I almost signed but I remembered, there's a shop in Vancouver where they sell only Japanese candy and snacks. They are a cash only business but offer ton of variety.<p>Candy-as-a-service is a pretty awesome idea and imagine if this was selling software, it would've had higher profit margin.