Yesterday, I was at Makuhari Messe.
Today, I was at Tokyo Big Sight.
These are two major tradeshow facilities in/near Tokyo.
There is another one, Pacifico Yokohama.
Gift Show is a tradeshow that many companies display myriad of items.
You name it, there is something.
There were few things that caught my eyes.
One of the item was coffee from company in Kyoto.
They just started this last year February, exactly an year ago and won several Asian awards of best packaging and concept as well as taste.
I spoke to the person in charge and due to COVID-19, they had to give up on doing B2B business and had to switch to B2C.
They need to do a lot of marketing.
The other was stone dealer that creates tombstones and cuts rocks.
This company is not far from my home.
Since there are many people that are giving up on graves (closing the family graves) there are no new clients.
The biggest issue here is that the business they do is NOT the “closing” but they have a massive stone pit (quarry) and they cut out stones and sell them.
So, in order for them to keep the business afloat, they need to sell stones in a different form.
They carved out and made a sink.
Very beautiful one indeed.
Smooth as fine porceline.
But they too, need marketing.
The other was wood business organization from Fukuoka.
They gathered 10 companies to display the Buddhist funeral altar.
Some, I must say looked very cheap and the price was cheap so I ask them if it was manufactured in Vietnam or Cambodia but it was made in Japan…
Other altars I saw were very nice and very crafty.
Definitely a meister artwork.
Issue here is also the marketing.
These altars are dissapearing from Japanese household due to the structure of the house.
But for pets, it’s booming.
All of these people were having problems with marketing.
They can do sales but not marketing.
Many Japanese don’t understand the difference between marketing and sales since there is no one word in Japanese that describes “Marketing”. It’s been in the sales division from the very beginning.
Let’s learn marketing.