Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazyanimefan666
Do you know a successful story happened around you? Sure we know a lot super stars like パナソニック株式会社， but is there any such stories around you? Doesn't have to be very successful ones.
I heard some interesting sayings about Japan:
It's not really a good idea to start a business in Japan, because anything that can be done are pretty much already been done, and giants/monopolies keep nudging new comers out of their market shares.
Things in Japan are usually quite expensive because they starts from manufacture A to wholesaler B, then to wholesaler C, then to wholesaler D, then to retailer E, and the retailers just don't bother to skip a few intermediates because customers are Okay with the prices.
Is it also true that the money that can buy 1 can of coke in Japan can buy 3 cans in the States?
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The last question is the easiest, so I will start with that. I never bought a can of coke in Japan before, but on average, a can of soda from the vending machine runs for about 150-250 yen. So thats $1.5 to about 2.5. Not quite three cans... but close. HOWEVER, you can pay the same money and get a large bottle at a convenience store un-chilled, so a lot of the overhead went towards the admin fee of operating the machine itself
My uncle told me an interesting story, which explain why FOOD (I am only talking about food here) is expensive, here goes. Japanese people are obsessed with food quality, as such, the retailers (Supermarket, food market etc) need to work on attracting their customer by displaying a form of quality, they decide that uniformity is a good way to do this, so when supplier ship them goods, they ask that all goods are in equal shape, size and color. This may be simple for canned or bottled food, but its impossible for agricultural produce to meet this criteria. Using watermelon as an example, farmers may only be able to sell 20 out of 100 watermelon to the store, because they were only able to sort out 20 of them that are in the same size, shape and color. As such they have to sell them to the supermarket at a high price.
BUT, they can sell their produce to restaurant without having to worry about such silly criteria. Thats why, in some cases, its cheaper to eat out in Japan than to cook at home (Taking into consideration the time and resource involved)
As for the other products, I actually don't find it that expensive, it is about 10% more than what I would have pay for in Canada, but about it, so I don't think its really that expensive....