Candy Japan April Income Report

http://www.candyjapan.com/april-profit-report

by micrypt • 14 years ago

110 78 14 years ago

tferris4• 14 years ago

'What a great subscription based business' is always my very first thought when I read news from Candy Japan. And every time I try to come up with a similar idea matching my region but I don't find any.

And these income reports are clever Marketing.

icebraining4• 14 years ago

And every time I try to come up with a similar idea matching my region but I don't find any.

I did the same, but my idea didn't really work. Too bulky and sensitive to the shipping delays.

tferris4• 14 years ago

What, flowers from Holland?

bemmu26• 14 years ago

Pastries do sound troublesome. Even with candies I have to avoid sending anything crumbly or containing chocolate or otherwise they will take severe damage during some trips. For example many postal systems are automated and move mail through conveyor belts that can sometimes crush items.

vasco• 14 years ago

Pastéis de Belém, heh?

bemmu26• 14 years ago

It's true there is marketing benefit from HN. Not just directly, but many bloggers read HN and sometimes feature the service because of that (btw. if you're thinking of doing that, you can reach me@bemmu.com).

shiftpgdn2• 14 years ago

For what it's worth I hadn't heard of you guys until this post and I just signed up. I imagine I'm not the only one.

prawn2• 14 years ago

Anyone tried the same idea but with Asian stationery? There's always been a huge array of crazy stuff when I've browsed stationery sections of department stores in Thailand, China, etc. I'd try it myself, but I think there'd need to be someone on the ground with direct, cheap access sourcing the product.

Lightweight, should be cheap to ship, etc.

tferris4• 14 years ago

Crazy stuff at stationery sections? What do you mean exactly?

prawn2• 14 years ago

Asian stationery is often pretty peculiar. Bizarre and cutesy characters, Engrish slogans, colour combos and so on. I think someone could put together packs of pens, pads, erasers, etc and have a crack. Wish I were over there to try it.

Would partner with someone who was there on the ground and handle design and so on if anyone was interested.

shiftpgdn2• 14 years ago

Jetpens.com does this but not as a subscription model.

bemmu26• 14 years ago

Hey cool, that's a great idea for another subscription club I could launch off the current code/customerbase.

elktea• 14 years ago

I was surprised not be greeted with high quality photos of examples of past candy. To see any of your product I need to find the 'past candy' link then decide on which unfamiliar product to click on.

bemmu26• 14 years ago

Yes, also intuitively to me it would make sense to have such photos, but I found the same thing as Manpacks did (http://mixergy.com/manpacks-ken-johnson-interview/) that showing product photos on the main page lowers conversions. It seems people are in it for the surprise factor.

patio11• 14 years ago

P.S. This is not untrue for software in many cases. Some products get a big boost out of screenshots. Many don't, and instead get big boosts by e.g. showing pictures of users or the team which wrote the software. (Whether a screenshot helps is surprisingly uncorrelated with my subjective impression of which products are "pretty", even given that I have less artistic sense than a mole rat.)

ticks• 14 years ago

Hate to say it, but I suspect that showing photos will put some customers off because the products don't look substantial enough.

I realise that there are overheads and that your service is presumably aimed at people with a high enough disposable income.

sparknlaunch124• 14 years ago

$2k per month profit (before tax) is not bad. There are some costs that cannot be avoided per order but imagine as volume grows, so will efficiencies. This model looks like the mens shaver business. Can see this working for any niche - shavers, stationary, fruit, nuts...

How can we see earlier blog posts?.

bemmu26• 14 years ago

I started this to learn and to provide some basic source of income in addition to software, so it has worked well for that purpose. It has involved writing more software than I expected, though!

Earlier posts are at http://www.bemmu.com/ with currently no easy way to see only the Candy Japan related things. I was still feeling a bit undecided where to put them, wondering if it's a good idea to expose customers to income-related posts.

sparknlaunch124• 14 years ago

Absolutely awesome blog. Pretty sweet ( excuse the pun) execution of an idea into a profitable business.

Do you think you automate the packing and shipping?

smiler• 14 years ago

Yup, www.graze.com for healthy snacks in the UK

sparknlaunch124• 14 years ago

> Yup, www.graze.com for healthy snacks in the UK

Yeh, there are many others offering fresh/organic/luxury/quality items delivered to your door. Wine has also made a comeback (forgot the name of the recent big US startup).

Graze have a great website. Will offer some inspiration to others looking at getting into similar businesses.

antihero• 14 years ago

I'd say you could do some serious work on your site. I have no idea what amazing candy could be sent. Your site is very bland for a site about CANDY. I really like the idea and I think you would totally increase conversion if you actually did some selling of what you're giving (GIANT PICTURES OF CANDY LOOK AT THIS AMAZING CANDY IT COULD BE YOURS TWICE A MONTH). Videos are cool, but I don't see a single beautiful picture of candy on your site.

Also, based on the demographic of people who will want candy from Japan, perhaps toy with the 8-bit nyan-cat-anime-retro geek-style vibe? Cute rainbows and hello kitty and all giant eyes and all that. Perhaps do huge detailed 8-bit renditions OF THE CANDY.

bemmu26• 14 years ago

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I agree that might be cool, although would need to test it against current. If you know someone who could such a mockup for me, let me know. The current site was just designed by myself, I wanted to do more cute / sweet style design, but couldn't come up with one that I was satisfied with. You definitely have a point here.

Update: added some example pics

CharlieA• 14 years ago

It's candy and it's japanese... that just conjures all sorts of images of a super high tech factory run by cats and magic. I'd love to see a candy envelope being stylised packing animation in the background or off to the side. It could look amazing visually and would explain the concept instantly.

aw3c22• 14 years ago

Another idea: Let your customers comment on the "past candy". Let them rate it and share it and talk about it.

lewispb2• 14 years ago

I like how you've used my IP address to tell me that delivery will be free 'even to the United Kingdom'.

May I suggest using the same code to also convert the price from $23.95 to the users local currency as this will help increase conversions. £15.10 feels a lot less than $23.95!

Other than that, great idea and I wish you all the best!

bemmu26• 14 years ago

That's a great idea, I get this gut feeling/fear though that it might introduce some extra complexity. I might be able to do that at least for EUR/USD/GBP but I suppose have avoided it until now to keep things simple. Will have to think that through more.

lewispb2• 14 years ago

Sure. I see your PayPal subscription is $23.95 per month - which is fine, there's no need to change that. I'm just thinking from a UI perspective you could try using money.js (1) to show to the user the current price in their local currency:

Mystery sweets from Japan for £15.10 ($23.95 USD) / month

(1) http://josscrowcroft.github.com/money.js/

mwill• 14 years ago

I get a similar 'even to Australia' message, and damn do I appreciate it. As an Australian I find myself avoiding online purchases because shipping costs routinely run more expensive then what I want to buy, unless you want to wait 30+ days for your item. It's a fantastic personal touch that just makes me instinctively like the service and want to show my friends.

shimon_e• 14 years ago

Hope he has an exclusion list for countries the post office don't post to. Whether it is political or temporary due to natural disaster.

rmATinnovafy2• 14 years ago

I've been following your posts since you started with the business. Have to say that I'm impressed by your tenacity in keeping this fun idea going.

Now, your marketing copy is all over the place. The layout is so hard to follow. Things are just too spread around, and the eye cannot follow an easy reading path.

Put everything into two columns, side by side. Put more pictures, and more information. Get a smaller third column on the right side for the testimonials.

Also, your headline is not bade, but it has nothing under it for me to read . The job of a headline is to get people reading the copy. You have no copy.

The big ugly green button is akin to a car salesman handing you a buying contract for a brand new car before you even shake hands. Get that out of there!

I believe that if you did a video of you hand picking specialized candy for your customer then sales would improve. People are not buying the candy, they are buying the experience. Let them see the process through a camera so they can relate and live out their Japanese fantasy. In fact, do a 10 minute long video of you shipping for candy. Put all the different candies and give out your opinions. Talk to Japanese people, and have them share their favorites. You could even try and get the best selling candy manufacturer into letting you do a little tour of their factory.

There are so many neat things you can do that will turn this into a 10K business ASAP.

Good luck!

PS. Shoot me an email to rm at innovafy dot com

bemmu26• 14 years ago

Hi, thanks for the feedback. The current layout is the result of lots of playing around with the site. Testimonials and the video had a big impact on conversions, so they are front and center now. I guess I might be biased from looking at the site a lot, but to me it seems pretty clean.

I think it needs to be clear exactly what step I want the user to take to join, so that's why that huge big green button is there. It's also not half bad looking in my opinion, although depends on your browser since it uses some recent webkit CSS stuff.

Factory tour / other kind of video back scenes content is probably a good idea. Since the current video works, it may be that that would work even better. Even before that though, I've been thinking of experimenting with a video that would just explain the service in simple terms.

You have a lot of ideas, have any for how to bring in traffic?

woodall2• 14 years ago

Have you tried targeted ads on reddit? Maybe for something like /r/snackexchange? I just spent $30 on a test ad, if you're interested I can share the traffic stats with you.

hellweaver666• 14 years ago

Personally, I really like the design. The only thing I would do would be to slightly increase the line-height on your copy. It should make it slightly easier to read (I usually aim for about 1.5em but some prefer slightly less).

xyzzyb• 14 years ago

For what it's worth, I love your design and the strong call to action.

pvidler• 14 years ago

Looking at the front page, I didn't really experience the problems you describe. I had just two issues:

1) The photos of the candy should really near the top and visible without scrolling -- 'candy' is not a term I come across often, so I wasn't completely certain what was being sold. Perhaps I'm unusual, but I don't bother with videos unless the product has already interested me.

2) My eyes skipped past the price completely. I was actually about to write here that they left it out, finally spotting it only when I went looking.

...the green pay button was fine for me -- not particularly ugly or dodgy looking.

aw3c22• 14 years ago

oh yes, have some random Japanese person pick stuff and ask them to say eg "from whatevercity, greetings to the rest of the world. I am Mr x and picked some of my favourite candy for you. this one is called sgggddtgcf, it tastes like qetffhh. the bright green one is a bit special, be careful. -- I hope you will enjoy them!". show the shopping/picking. ask cute Japanese girls if men are most of your customers. maybe do that once per month. maybe personally address some of your customers in it (ask before).

that movie inside my head ain't stopping. :)

bemmu26• 14 years ago

I think Japanese people are very camera shy. For example on social networks in Japan, most don't show their face in profile pictures. I did meet one guy who was the total opposite, so I managed to make a video with him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb7PP2z3nnw

The thing with these videos is that I need to make two per month, and I'm not sure how I would source that many people to agree to appear in the videos.

But yeah, it would be pretty awesome if I could figure out how to pull that off.

DarkShikari• 14 years ago

Candy is hardly a gendered product, and foreign interest in Japanese culture and food isn't either. Adding gendered advertising in such a way is unlikely to gain many new leads, but will certainly limit the audience dramatically.

For some reason, the "testimonials from random Japanese people" idea seems rather unsettling to me. It makes it feel exoticized, touristy, and fake.

hudibras• 14 years ago

Hmm, first General Motors and now Candy Japan pulls their ads from Facebook. How is Zuckerberg going to stanch the bleeding?

bemmu26• 14 years ago

Without my $250 / month they might have to cancel the IPO :)

joering2• 14 years ago

First thing is PayPal fees, after which we are left with $6895. We are switching from PayPal to accepting credit cards directly through WireCard + Recurly, but that will likely just raise our costs a bit (but will hopefully improve conversions).

This interests me the most. Could you shad some light as of why you switching knowing the cost will go up. You say it will improve conversions, but #1 isnt PayPal still the most well known payment system over the web, and #2 dont they offer payment via regular credit cards?

What you trying to do here, is replace better option with narrower one for all customers. If anything, you should add Google Checkout, as I got used to using it over PayPal (and sometimes wont convert) because PayPal got me real mad couple times in the past.

bemmu26• 14 years ago

Instead of redirecting users to PayPal and requiring them to have PayPal accounts with credit cards linked to them, I can directly ask for their credit card information. This is how it should look after the Recurly integration is complete: http://imgur.com/SHC0a

I am now paying PayPal $339 / month.

Recurly charges 1.25% + $0.10 / transaction + $69 / month. WireCard charges 2.75% + $0.19 / transaction + $24 / month. My total cost from these would then be about $473 / month. If I can get ~20 new customers because of this more convenient payment method, then it was worthwhile.

I'm also expecting some increased life happiness from having to deal less with PayPal (the interface is sloooow).

OzzyB2• 14 years ago

And how are you going to handle SSL encryption for your checkout/cc page? Going to use a separate hosting service for that part?

I see that you're running on App Engine, hence the question...

andrewpi• 14 years ago

I think some customers (like myself) would be more hesitant to use a non-PayPal option on your site. With PayPal, I can easily cancel at any time. I would be worried that by directly providing you with my credit card number, it would be harder to cancel.

robodisco• 14 years ago

Perhaps it isn't an issue at this scale but for exporting food products aren't there any regulations / paperwork to fill in? I'm sure I remember hearing the US were getting stricter re: this. Perhaps this is where your missing deliveries are going.

bemmu26• 14 years ago

I should be OK as I am not the importer of the candies, rather the people receiving them are. Still, I try hard to be on the safe side so I've contacted FDA twice to ask if there's something they'd like me to do, once via physical mail and once by email and got ignored both times.

If I started doing the importing on US side myself in bulk amounts, that would be a different story and would involve at least filing FDA prior notices.

rudiger• 14 years ago

I feel like your landing page is too "corporate".

Candy Japan is about the emotional experience. The design should reflect that!

bemmu26• 14 years ago

I agree it's not that "sweet". I wonder what would be a good example of the kind of site design I should be aiming for?

mendable• 14 years ago

Have you thought to tap out the Japanese Expat market as an advertising/marketing opportunity?

That might include Japanese people living abroad, students, workers living in the middle east for 12 months, etc

The service could very easily appeal to people living abroad and wanting a reminder of home every month.

bemmu26• 14 years ago

I might try it, but wouldn't they have friends who send them items? It's very common even inside Japan that relatives send food items to each other, and I the Japanese expats who I knew in Finland were also getting items sent to them by their parents.

KaoruAoiShiho• 14 years ago

I agree with mendable, I feel like your service is very convenient, much more so than having friends send you things.

famousactress2• 14 years ago

I love it, but I'm really curious about taxes/export-import-duties/regulations, FDA, etc. I guess I always assumed there'd be some strict rules that would make starting this kind of business kind of hairy. Not so?

bemmu26• 14 years ago

I'm far from expert yet on this, but as I understand it depends on whether you are the one bringing the product into the country or not.

For example if I were to go to an anime expo in the US to sell candy there, then I would need to clear the customs and comply with FDA regulations such as the list of ingredients that have to appear in the packages.

But when I am situated here in Japan and people order things from me from all over the world, then they are the ones who are clearing the customs. However when the shipments are really small, customs is not a problem for the person receiving them and many countries have limits where you never need to deal with customs if the order size is small enough.

famousactress2• 14 years ago

That's interesting, but I would think it would have limits. Would you be able to send small amounts of a drug that was legal in your country to a country where it's illegal? I suppose you'd only be subject to the laws of your country in that case, the buyer would be subject to the laws in theirs?

Of course, we're talking about Candy.. I'm just intrigued by the idea of shipping-worldwide subscription businesses in general.

jianshen• 14 years ago

I heard that the Kinder Egg in Germany isn't sold in the US because it has a toy in the center and would be considered a choking hazard by US safety standards.

I realize right now it's just a small operation but if you hit it big, what are the approval hoops that you have to run thru for stuff like that?

nimrody• 14 years ago

Having tried Japanese candies (and deserts in general) while visiting Japan, I'm very surprised that this actually works.

When it comes to sweets and deserts Japanese taste is so different from what's popular in the west. It might be interesting but I'm not sure I'd want to pay for a continuous supply.

French/Belgium products might appeal to western taste better.

Other than that - Good luck!

WiseWeasel• 14 years ago

Because it is different than what is typically available, there is a market for those who have developed those tastes which isn't being served in a lot of places.

bemmu26• 14 years ago

I think that's exactly why it works, because you get to try something different. Before living in Japan I did some holidays here and it was one of my favorite activities to just buy random things from kiosks and vending machines and to be surprised with new tastes.

Candy Japan April Income Report

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