Saturday, June 30, 2012

Im at Buriam (Isan)

Lots of greens with no people. I guess soil is rich in nutrition and plants and trees grow quick. Impression of isan is green as the one of Kathmandu Nepal rock.

Friday, June 29, 2012

Posting again (Looking for a business partner in the US)


We are looking for business partner who can operate our rubber charm sales business in the US. http://hotmobily.com/


The business is to create promotional items such as keychains and coasters based on clients requirement. We have designers who can modify adobe artwork in Thailand and you do not need to spend lots of time for the art work.


We are now selling the products by the web site from Japan and have some difficulties.

1. We can not answer by phone. (We are on the other side of the globe.)
2. Sending samples is costly.
3. Answering email questions are not easy.


So now we are looking for business partner who can operate this business in the US. Best collaboration will be someone who now has SME and is looking for another products or channel. If you are interested in please contact me in the address left.

Economy in Thailand

A am asked questions like how is the economy in Thailand and I answer it is not bad. Here are some conversations that I had recently.


1) When I talk to recruitment company they say that the market is shortage of man power resource and a candidate may choose any job if he/she has moderate or better skill.

2) A guy working large food industry in Thailand says that raised salary 20% in April this year. The   government decided to raise minimum wage and the difference between minimum and inexperienced staff salary got small and they decided to raise minimum so that they can keep employees. Again it is 20%, not2%.

3)Unemployment rate in Thailand is less than 1%.

Despite flood last year the economy in Thailand does not seem to go worse. 

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Changing toward mobility

I see that about 10% of access to our pvc rubber charm sales site is from either mobile or devices like ipad. (mobile devices with full browser) The web site is targeted to Japanese. I expect that the percentage will increase dramatically in the next 5 years. For B to C we need to assume that mobile is the standard and pc is additional. I wonder what is the % in the US.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

looking for business partner in the US

We are looking for business partner who can operate our rubber charm sales business in the US. http://hotmobily.com/


The business is to create promotional items such as keychains and coasters based on clients requirement. We have designers who can modify adobe artwork in Thailand and you do not need to spend lots of time for the art work.


We are now selling the products by the web site from Japan and have some difficulties.

1. We can not answer by phone. (We are on the other side of the globe.)
2. Sending samples is costly.
3. Answering email questions are not easy.


So now we are looking for business partner who can operate this business in the US. Best collaboration will be someone who now has SME and is looking for another products or channel. If you are interested in please contact me in the address left.

Saturday, June 23, 2012

Illegal music/movie download will be punished in Japan from 1st OCT 2012.

The law was passed on 20th June to allow police agency to penalize those individual who download illegal movie or music contents while they know they are illegal. The penalty is 2 year in prison and/or 2 million yes fine. The law will be in effect from 1st October this year.


Downloading illegal movie or music is illegal in Japan but there is no criminal charge for it. There exists only civil charge. I guess there are many people who get illegal contents from p2p applications such as share and winny and those will become completely illegal.


Will internet users in Japan start think about new ways to avoid this law? By the way streaming is excluded in this law.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Reverse offshore

Off shoring in IT industry is to make software in lower cost countries. For Japanese it means China. Thailand is also a country with low labor cost. It should be cheaper to make software in Thailand than in Japan.


But now I think it is time to start thinking about reverse off shoring. Especially large scale development. What I am concerned are 3 things.

1. Increasing labor cost and other costs in Thailand while decreasing labor cost and commodity price in Japan.

2. Time for translation and miscommunication

3. Inadequate number of engineers with high skill in Thailand while skilled engineers of both Japanese and foreign (China and Korea) in Japan.


I guess some of Japanse agree with this but there are not many who will actually reverse off shore the next project. Not easy to convince senior management.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Japanese IT companies coming to Thailand

In 1970s and 80s large manufacturing companies in Japan set up factories in Thailand to get the benefit of low labor cost. In 90s parts makers especially in auto industry came to Thailand to meet the needs for large makers. After year 2000 companies in trading industry came to Thailand and now companies in service industry such as IT, warehousing, catering and food are coming. I am in IT industry and I get more questions from large Japanese IT companies about setting up an branch office in Thailand. Set up an office is easy but counting business in Thailand and even growing is not an easy issue. Japanese IT companies usually target Japanese makers but it will be necessary to target both local Thai and non Japanese foreign companies to grow. The market is limited if they target only Japanese.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Brand image

This is our company's web site to sell personalized keychains and charms to the Japanese market. There are about 10 competitors in Japan and because of the size of its market all of 10 are in the similar business size, which is not large. I started this business because the products can be made in Thailand with lower cost and are sold in Japan with better price.


Since almost all of our competitors including us do not own their own factory to make product. So to attract customers what will be important? All of them are doing same business and selling the same products. After doing this business 2 years I feel that lower cost and faster delivery date are the most common things to be asked. Yes if we sell cheaper we get orders but we do not get profit. Yes if we can deliver faster but there is a limitation.


So now we are trying to build our own brand image. We chose 2 things that we value in this business. Highest quality of products and best customer relation service. For product quality we clarified what is considered as a defect products and what are ok products. It is posted on web site. We also show customer survey result to public. We use 3rd party survey system so that we can not modify result. It is a real message from customer. For customer relationship we have well experienced staff to answer questions from customer. They are not the people who joined a week ago and answering questions.



We will keep this way for sometime. If our industry becomes like airline that consists of high and low price business units then I will need to think again what needs to be our brand image.



By the way we are trying to sell the same products to the US market. We are operating from Japan and are looking for US partner who can provide call center/ customer support / marketing function in the US. Let me know if you are interested in becoming our partner. We will discuss in detail. (My email: kadota*youandearth.com , change * to @)