MBA2258 The Business of Japan P2: The Economy of Kawaii

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Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Powerful business lessons you can count on every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company. I started my co founder back in 2014 and today is part two of our four part series the Business of Japan. Last week we took a deep dive on why Japan is so good at business and how we can apply their principles to our own businesses. Today we're going to take an interesting turn on this topic. We're going to discuss the economy of Kawaii. Kawaii very loosely translates as cute. Japan is the master at cute things but but it goes beyond hello Kitty and designer pancakes. Kawaii is really the emphasis of aesthetics. Making sure your product, your packaging, your presentation all looks amazing. So much so that people buy the product because of how good it looks and not so much so what it can actually do for them. In this episode I'm going to share with you all the different examples I gathered in my experience in Japan where Japan really leverages the Kawaii culture and knowing people like good looking things. From convenience store goodies to a cat that makes $10 million a year. Yes, an actual Cat to how you can apply these principles to your own business today to get more customers, more revenue, more sales. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I want you to meet Tamara. Tama is a female cat who gained world renowned fame for being a station master. Yep, like a train station master in Japan, it's officially the train master of the Kisha station in the Wakayama Prefecture. Tama is such an important figure in this town that it has its own Wikipedia page. Tama is the honorary train master with an actual train master's hat and is a major attraction for people in Japan and outside of Japan to come and see. So much so, Japan makes $10 million a year thanks to Tama, the train master. Now, why is a cat making $10 million? Well, Japan knows people love cute things. They like beautiful things, they like interesting things. So much so they will visit this town, spend money, just to see this cute cat with a conductor's hat. Now, you might think this is silly, but the fact of the matter is, whether you think it's silly or not, it makes money. And the one thing that Japan knows is that aesthetics, design, beautiful things really do make money. The simplest example of this is if you walk into any convenience store like a 711 in Japan, even if you're just picking up a $2 snack, it's beautifully presented, it's beautifully packaged, and the snack itself is absolutely gorgeous. You see, the Japanese know that if something looks good, that's the best marketing you can ever do. If we look at a product and it looks really nice, it inspires confidence. It makes us believe it will be nice, we won't have buyer's remorse, and it'll be worth our hard earned dollars. Many of us, we get sloppy when it comes to design and aesthetics. Whether it's our website, the packaging of our goods and products that we ship to our customers, or even ourselves. But the way something looks, whether it's your product, your service, your website, or even the way you present yourself at a conference, is your first impression. It's what people will judge you on before they even start looking into what you have to offer. Now, Japan has taken this to another level, meaning people buy things purely on the way they look. If they look cute, that looks nice, they want to buy it. A perfect example of this is one of Japan's biggest exports. Hello Kitty. The company behind hello Kitty, Sanrio, was founded in 1962. The founder, Shintaro Satoji, quickly realized that in order to compete in the market, when it came to stationary Pencils, erasers, or even apparel like sandals. They would have to stand out. They would have to do something that was a little bit different and added a little flair to their product. At the end of the day, why would you choose one notepad over the other? It's paper at the end of the day, right? But Shintaro said, no, I'm going to make them have a reason to choose my products by putting a cute little cat called Kitty White. That's the official name on all my products, on all my stationery, on all my clothing. This will allow me to stand out to. And boy, did it ever. Hello Kitty is worth over $5 billion a year. And the New York Times called it a global marketing phenomenon. So how can you use kawaii in your business? How can you be a little bit cuter, a little bit better designed? Well, let's start where people start with you, your website. Send your website to five people that have never seen it, maybe a friend, maybe some family members and ask them to send you. There are five favorite things about the website. If your design, if your aesthetic is not number one or two in any of those comments, you need to reevaluate your website and it may be time for a redesign. Investing in redesigning your website is one of the best things you can do to attract new customers and convert higher. You see, a well designed website screams quality. It says this business has it together and if I put down my money, there's a good chance they're going to deliver. Redesigning a website might sound like it's costly, but there are many different freelancers out there on upwork on freelancer. They can get at least your main pages redesigned and looking amazing for $1,000 or $2,000. A great investment given the fact that everybody that buys something from you goes to your website. The point of the website is to make an impression on people. To people say, wow, that's well designed, that looks cool, that's memorable. In our own businesses, we've had redesigns on our websites several times. In fact, we probably redesign our website every three years or so with tweaks along the way. If you sell a physical product, how are you delivering this product in a package that screams quality? I remember when I had my own online clothing store, Zenim Design, over a decade ago. I invested in my packaging. I made sure when my customers opened up their new shirt, their new clothing item, they felt like that was a great experience worth filming, worth being unboxed, so to speak. Yes, this is gonna cost a little bit more, but you can add it to the price and make sure you have a quality experience.

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Well, there you have it. Japan is known for its great design, its great aesthetics and B and Q and leveraging the fact that they know that that people love cute things, well designed things. They have whole economies based on it. So take a page out of their book and focus on your own design, your own aesthetic and making sure that everything you present to the world looks amazing. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. Next Monday we continue our four part series on the business of Japan where we talk about east meets west business at its best, how Japan merges Western culture and ideals of business with their own Eastern philosophy and traditions and how you can learn from this and apply some of those strategies to your own business. If you love today's show, if you love our podcast, give us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to give back to the show. Thank you so much in advance for doing that. Before I go. I want to leave you with this. When I travel, when I go somewhere new, I like to keep my eyes open for ideas. I have a little notes section on my phone where I write down notes of things that I observed, things I've noticed, things that hey, this is interesting. This is a quirky idea. I don't need to process the whole idea or figure out how I'm going to apply it in the moment. I just want to document what I see so then I can think about it later and so that I can live in the moment as well. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then.

Take care.

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