Hello! This is Orcel Saito.
Yesterday, at the invitation of the Nagano Chamber of Commerce and Industry, we gave a seminar on ChatGPT and how to get started with cross-border e-commerce.
I collaborated with someone from JETRO (an independent administrative institution under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry that handles trade projects, etc.), and we were in almost complete agreement on the content of cross-border e-commerce.
To summarize:
1. Even if it's cross-border e-commerce, you can't sell things that can't be sold domestically or things that you don't really understand. First, you have to make it sellable domestically.
2. Cross-border e-commerce is not easy. You won't make any sales unless you carefully consider advertising costs and marketing strategies such as social media.
3. Nevertheless, cross-border e-commerce is an essential business issue for the future. Let's do business with a global perspective.
I usually hold seminars alone, and even when I do it with other people, the themes are often different.
This was the first time I'd attended a seminar where I was worried about what would happen if we had different views, but I was relieved to find that we all agreed (laughs).
The common denominators of successful cross-border e-commerce are that they have a certain level of sales domestically and that they persevere.
However, there is one fact that domestic businesses are overlooking.
This means that anyone who has a store in Japan, whether through their own e-commerce site or a mall, can essentially be said to be "already engaged in cross-border e-commerce."
There are agents in Japan, but there are many e-commerce sales agents around the world.
Last week, I visited about four Vietnamese e-commerce and development companies. One cross-border e-commerce company ordered products from Japanese sites like Mercari, Rakuma, and Rakuten Ichiba,
The company had a wide-ranging business of collecting packages in Japan and selling them to Vietnamese consumers.
We aggregate product information from each country and create a pseudo-platform, allowing Vietnamese consumers to make selections, which are then purchased on their behalf by employees in Japan.
In Japan, most shops do not support cross-border e-commerce, so this type of business is viable all over the world.
The company I visited had 120 employees.
There are many similar distributors not only in Vietnam but also in other parts of Southeast Asia and Taiwan.
In other words, starting an e-commerce business is the same as starting a business on a global scale.
Now that the yen is weak and Japanese brands are popular,
I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that cross-border e-commerce is well worth pursuing.