Danny Choo
A Week in Tokyo 201509
The first post in the A Week in Tokyo series that I wrote was back in November 2007. It's been interesting looking at past posts to see what life was back then and how much it has changed over the years. Unfortunately, there started to be big gaps in the frequency of updates.
As talked in the latest Desk Diary entry, I had to make a decision to hang on to a large user base I built up until then - or risk losing it by pursuing a further passion - to make a 1/3 scale fashion doll with the aim to make it a global brand - there are only a few truly global doll brands that I'm aware of - Barbie, Blythe and Pullip all of which are of a similar size and targeted at a similar market.
I made the sacrifice and soon after I found myself in a situation where I saw readership numbers that I built up over many years start to dwindle over night through the lack of writing - at the same time not being sure how well Mirai Smart Doll would do. No matter how confident I was in the product - it was ultimately the consumer who would decide the outcome of the decision I made.
The result of the sacrifice only started to be evident a few years later in June 2014 when I launched Smart Doll - a fashion doll modeled after a character I created called Mirai Suenaga. Mirai sold well - so well that exactly the same model still has demand after a year of her release.
I built the company purely on internal funds and successfully bootstrapped to a point where we are self sustainable - however I'm being faced with another major decision that I need to make. I understand that I can only take the company so far on its own cash and that if I want more growth then I'm going to have to take some form of financial investment. I was contacted by JAFCO who are considering to help me take the company public and I currently have a few investors who are also interested - I just need to work out how much of what I have now that I'm willing to sacrifice.
There is one thing for sure however, part of running a business involves doing some stuff that you are *not* so passionate about to bring in the cash flow that enables you to the stuff that you *are* passionate about.
Anyway - first photo taken in my hood near Nishikoyama station. All my photos are taken on the Sony A7 with the occasional Sony RX100 III. All these photos are HD size too which may make decent wallpapers for some of you.
View more at www.dannychoo.com/en/post/27315/A+Week+in+Tokyo+201509.html
A Week in Tokyo 201509
The first post in the A Week in Tokyo series that I wrote was back in November 2007. It's been interesting looking at past posts to see what life was back then and how much it has changed over the years. Unfortunately, there started to be big gaps in the frequency of updates.
As talked in the latest Desk Diary entry, I had to make a decision to hang on to a large user base I built up until then - or risk losing it by pursuing a further passion - to make a 1/3 scale fashion doll with the aim to make it a global brand - there are only a few truly global doll brands that I'm aware of - Barbie, Blythe and Pullip all of which are of a similar size and targeted at a similar market.
I made the sacrifice and soon after I found myself in a situation where I saw readership numbers that I built up over many years start to dwindle over night through the lack of writing - at the same time not being sure how well Mirai Smart Doll would do. No matter how confident I was in the product - it was ultimately the consumer who would decide the outcome of the decision I made.
The result of the sacrifice only started to be evident a few years later in June 2014 when I launched Smart Doll - a fashion doll modeled after a character I created called Mirai Suenaga. Mirai sold well - so well that exactly the same model still has demand after a year of her release.
I built the company purely on internal funds and successfully bootstrapped to a point where we are self sustainable - however I'm being faced with another major decision that I need to make. I understand that I can only take the company so far on its own cash and that if I want more growth then I'm going to have to take some form of financial investment. I was contacted by JAFCO who are considering to help me take the company public and I currently have a few investors who are also interested - I just need to work out how much of what I have now that I'm willing to sacrifice.
There is one thing for sure however, part of running a business involves doing some stuff that you are *not* so passionate about to bring in the cash flow that enables you to the stuff that you *are* passionate about.
Anyway - first photo taken in my hood near Nishikoyama station. All my photos are taken on the Sony A7 with the occasional Sony RX100 III. All these photos are HD size too which may make decent wallpapers for some of you.
View more at www.dannychoo.com/en/post/27315/A+Week+in+Tokyo+201509.html