Kibidango is a sweet dumpling that appears in a folktale well known in Japan called Momotaro (peach boy). A boy born out of a giant peach promises to his old foster parents to go fight against evil ogres on a remote island (Onigashima) and bring back the treasures. On his way, he meets comrades - a monkey, a dog, and a bird. Momotaro befriends them and everyone got Kibidango as a token of friendship. They all went to Onigashima, fought and won ogres, and brought the treasures back to the village, and lived happily ever after ---

This story reminds us of crowdfunding, where an idea is born where everyone joins forces to make it happen and gets something valuable in return.

Of course! We have worked with many brands in the past to help them with obtaining such approvals in the past.

Upon successful completion of a crowdfunding campaign in Japan, we submit a firm purchase order followed by a partial payment. The remaining payment will be made when you are ready to ship the product.

Crowdfunding platforms require someone to actively manage the campaign. In the end, someone needs to be fully committed to devoting their own resources to manage and communicate with each backer in the local language, just like what you did with your original crowdfunding campaign. While other platforms may be willing to provide local online marketing support including language translation, they won't be able to act on your behalf.

Kibidango is different. Not only we are the platform ourselves that knows inside out of everything around crowdfunding, but we are also the only crowdfunding platform that actually ran hundreds of campaigns ourselves. Who on earth does something like that?

We've learned our lessons hard way. We know what to do when it comes to launching new and innovative products in Japan. Period.

In terms of our business structure, you can consider us as an importer. We don't charge any platform fee like other crowdfunding platforms, or a fixed upfront fee like agencies. Instead, we work with wholesale price and try to make a margin between our retail price.

Yes! On top of our own organic traffic (we are a platform in the end), we also have an extensive partnership with GREENFUNDING, another leading crowdfunding platform. Together with GREENFUNDING and with extra traffic of social media marketing, we end up with a healthy audience who are always on the look for something new and interesting.

At the end of the day, an importer is not a platform. What this means is that the ultimate control of how the campaign will be featured will be at the mercy of each platform. An importer will never be able to fully guarantee that a certain campaign will be featured in the newsletters of a particular platform no matter how many users a platform may have. This will be a risk factor that a brand will need to understand upfront. On the other hand, Kibidango is different from any other importers because of the fact we are the platform ourselves with a fan community base of over 100,000 fans (i.e. registered users). We have ultimate control over how each campaign will be featured on our website or our weekly newsletters. In addition, we have a 100% insight into how the users are behaving on each of our campaign pages which we can leverage and improve the page over time, and to feed such insight into digital marketing (which we will take on full responsibility).

While agencies may help spread words about your product to various media and managing crowdfunding campaigns, they may not be willing to take inventory risks on their own, or handling customer support even beyond the warranty period. In other words, you will be responsible for fulfilling the products to individual backers on your own and be responsible for taking care of the customer support, including returns and exchanges. This may sound like any other market which you have done on your own with your previous campaigns, but Japanese consumers are known for their high expectations so you'd better be prepared.

We are witnessing consumers getting smarter - in fact, there are a number of articles sighting "the end of crowdfunding" in Japan, acknowledging the fact that crowdfunding sites have become a mere proxy for a pre-sale, disguised as a crowdfunding campaign but with a minimum goal amount and "All-In (flexible)" funding where the goal amount has marginal meaning. We think this is going to damage the excitement of crowdfunding in the long run - we need to show people that by setting a clear goal, all of the people involved - including consumers themselves - will play an important role in bringing the product into the Japanese market. A clear goal usually means minimum order quantity (MOQ) or any costs associated with getting appropriate approvals or certifications to import and market the products.

GREENFUNDING is an independent crowdfunding platform partially owned by CCC which runs one of the most prominent upscale retail chains called "Tsutaya Kaden". The platform has its own user base and has a unique partnership with Engadget Japan. We joined forces with them as both of us believed that we can deliver greater results by being able to launch a single campaign on two platforms simultaneously where consumers will be able to back a campaign on either platform. It is like launching a campaign on Kickstarter and Indiegogo at the same time with a combined amount raised and the number of backers. We thought this is a fair representation of how the brand is seen in the Japanese market while at the same time maximizing the impact of launching a crowdfunding campaign leveraging the user base of the two platforms instead of just one.

You pretty much don't have to do anything other than:
- permit us to use brand assets including text, photos, and videos
- cooperate with us on marketing activities so we can learn from your past experiences
- provide us with samples so we can reach out to media and influencers
- give us exclusivity at least for the crowdfunding period (so that no one can get the product other than from the campaign)