JAPAN—TEST MARKET FOR THE WORLD
It was 10:51 p.m. in
Tokyo, and suddenly Google was hit with a two-minute spike in searches from
Japanese mobile phones. “We were wondering: Was it spam? Was it a system
error?” says Ken Tokusei, Google’s mobile chief in Japan. A quick call to
carrier KDDI revealed that it was neither. Instead, millions of cell phone
users had pulled up Google’s search box after a broadcaster offered free
ringtone downloads of the theme song from
The Man Who Couldn’t Marry, a
popular TV show, but had only briefl y fl ashed the Web address where the tune
was available.
The surge in traffi c came
as a big surprise to Tokusei and his team. They had assumed that a person’s
location was the key element of most mobile Internet searches, fi guring that
users were primarily interested in maps of the part of town they happened to
be, timetables for the train home, or the address of the closest yakitori
restaurant. The data from KDDI indicated that many Japanese were just as likely
to use Google’s mobile searches from the couch as from a Ginza street corner
Japan’s cell-phone-toting
masses, it seems, have a lot to teach the Internet giant. The country has
become a vast lab for Google as it tries to refi ne mobile search technology.
That’s because Japan’s 100 million cell phone users represent the most
diverse—and discriminating—pool of mobile subscribers on the planet. Although
Google also does plenty of testing elsewhere, the Japanese are often more
critical because they are as likely to tap into the Internet with a high-tech
phone as a PC and can do so at speeds rivaling fi xed-line broadband. And
because Japanese carriers have offered such services for years, plenty of Web
sites are formatted for cell phones.
Tokyo’s armies of
fashion-obsessed shopaholics have long made the city fi gure prominently on the
map of W estern designers. Sure, the suit and tie remain the uniform of the salaryman,
but for originality, nothing rivals Tokyo teenyboppers, who cycle in and out of
fads faster than a schoolgirl can change out of her uniform and into Goth-Loli
gear. (Think Little Bo Peep meets Sid Vicious.) For American and European
brands, these young people are a wellspring of ideas that can be recycled for
consumers back home.
but now, instead of just
exporting Tokyo cool, some savvy foreign companies are starting to use Japan as
a testing ground for new concepts. They’re offering products in Japan before
they roll them out globally, and more Western retailers are opening new outlets
in Tokyo to keep an eye on trends. Ohio-based Abercrombie & Fitch and
Sweden’s H&M (Hennes & Mauritz) set up shop in Tokyo in 2008, and
Spain’s Zara is expected to double its store count to 50 over the next three
years. “Twenty-fi ve or 30 years ago, major brands tested their new products in
New York,” says Mitsuru Sakuraba, who spent 20 years at French fashion house
Charles Jourdan. “Now Japan has established a presence as a pilot market.”
some Western companies
also have signed on with local partners who can better read the Japanese
market. Gola, an English brand of athletic shoes and apparel, has teamed up
with EuroPacifi c (Japan) Ltd., a Tokyo-based retailer of fashion footwear.
EuroPacifi c tweaks Gola’s designs for the Japanese market and, a few years ago,
came up with the idea of pitching shin-high boxing boots to women. They were a
hit with Japanese teens and twenty somethings, prompting Gola to try offering
them in other markets. “They’ve sold a hell of a lot in Europe,” says EuroPacifi
c Director Steve Sneddon.
