Fenetre Partners is a leading consulting firm for market entry into Japan and business development in Japan. We provide our clients with market research, distributor & partner search, B2B business matching, marketing & sales rep and trade support.

　In Japan, due to its conservative or exclusive culture, you need a local office and Japanese staff when you enter the market. Finding a distributor alone usually does not work in this mature and fiercely competitive market. In most cases, distributors and retailers in the consumer industry require various kinds of manufacturer support, which includes advertisements, in-store promotion, marketing campaign, etc. In the machinery industry, pre- and post-sales technical support is a must. Your company needs to respond to these needs with your staff who works in Japan and speaks Japanese.

　However, if you establish a subsidiary in Japan, the annual cost would be at least over 250,000 USD to cover the registration, accountant, rent, recruitment, salary, utilities, and other operation costs. It is not a small investment for SMEs. Therefore, we would like to propose outsourcing of marketing, sales, and technical support to our office for 100,000 USD, which is less than half of the estimated cost of establishing your own subsidiary.

　In this scheme, we run a Japanese liaison office for a client. For example, if your company name is XYZ, we name the liaison office XYZ Japan and create business cards for XYZ Japan. We do all marketing and sales activities in Japan on behalf of the client, including distribution channel development, sales development, retaining customer relationship, pre- and post-sales technical support, and so on.

　Marketing and sales strategies should be determined through a discussion between the client and us. We report our activities monthly and annually and adjust the implementation of the strategies accordingly.

　In a typical operation of this service, one manager and one sales person are in charge of a particular client’s business. Our professional fee, 700,000 JPY ~ 1,100,000 JPY depending on sales person’s working hours per month plus some commission, includes rent, phones, computers, utilities, and salaries. Transportation, accommodation, and actual promotion costs are charged separately.

　After making a contract with a client, in the first month, we start preparing marketing material in Japanese such as website, brochures, technical documents, name cards, presentations,etc. and visit the client’s site to have product and sales training so as to understand the products and their advantages.

　Then we list up target customers and distributors and put them into a long list in the second month. On the receipt of review and approval by the client, we start contacting all the candidates to set initial meetings in which we start identifying a key person in each organization and establishing relationship with them. It takes a few months to complete.

　In the fourth or fifth month, we invite the client to visit prospects screened by our office to have meetings for further discussion for the test marketing purpose. Our staff arranges all the meetings with logistics and accommodation during your market visit to Japan.

　In the sixth month, the client reviews our performance and marketability in Japan and makes a decision of how to expand their business in Japan or whether to withdraw from the Japanese market. We sometimes continue working with the same condition and sometime increase our working hour on the result of the test marketing in the first sixth month.