Enter Japan without
hiring a team.
Not a sole distributor. Not a country manager you have to recruit. Live next month, first buyer meetings in three, at around a quarter of the cost of building a local entity.
Book an intake call|
Products rarely fail here on quality.
They fail on shelf life, on labelling, on order size, and on who controls the relationship. All four are knowable in advance.
01
The distributor owns the shelf, not you
Most brands enter through a sole importer, hand over the territory, and never see the buyer again. Pricing, placement and the pace of the rollout stop being yours. Ending the agreement later is slow and expensive.
02
Retail here buys small and often
Japanese chains order in small lots with high frequency and expect short lead times. A supply plan built for monthly container shipments usually fails the first commercial review, whatever the product is.
03
Shelf life is counted on arrival
Buyers require a set share of the shelf life to remain at the point of delivery, commonly two thirds. Subtract ocean freight and customs and many products fail this test before anyone tastes them.
04
Labels and claims are decided by law, not marketing
Ingredient classification, mandatory label items, and which health claims may appear on the pack are all set by Japanese statute. The pack that works everywhere else is often the one that cannot ship here.
From channel selection to the first purchase order.
Split the work across vendors and it stalls at the seams. We carry it end to end and take execution responsibility for the result.
01
Channel selection
Decide where the product actually belongs
Convenience stores, drugstores, department stores, specialty grocery, e-commerce and food service each buy differently. We choose the channel your price point and volume can sustain, and say so with the numbers.
02
Regulatory clearance
Confirm the product can be sold before anyone pitches it
Ingredient classification, label requirements, permitted claims and shelf life. We establish the compliant form of the product first, so the launch date stops moving.
03
Buyer development
Reach the person who controls the shelf
We identify the retailers, wholesalers and platforms that hold the category, name the decision maker, and open the conversation in Japanese, one account at a time.
04
First order
Stay in the room until something ships
Trading terms, samples, the first purchase order and the terms that follow it. We negotiate as your Japan team rather than handing you an introduction and stepping back.
Confirm the product is sellable before you pitch it.
Ingredient classification, labelling, claims and shelf life are settled in month one, so the launch date stops moving.
Food or pharmaceutical
Japan draws a statutory line between food and pharmaceutical ingredients. An ingredient legal in a supplement at home may put the whole product on the pharmaceutical side here, which changes who may import and sell it.
Mandatory labelling
The Food Labelling Standards set the required items, the Japanese-language display, allergen declaration, nutrition calculation method and country of origin. Most imported packs need a new artwork version.
Permitted claims
Health and efficacy claims are restricted by the Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Act. We produce a line-by-line list of what your existing pack and marketing may and may not say in Japan.
Functional claims filing
Where a health benefit is central to the proposition, we assess whether a Foods with Function Claims notification is worth filing, and what evidence it would require.
Shelf life on arrival
We calculate remaining shelf life at delivery against your production and freight schedule, and tell you early if the format has to change.
Tariff and origin
HS classification, the applied duty rate, and whether an economic partnership agreement lets you reduce it with a certificate of origin.
Answer the buyer's first four questions with numbers.
Price build-up, MOQ, lead time, payment. Deals stall on terms far more often than on the product.
Price build-up
FOB or CIF, importer and distributor margin, retail margin. We work backwards from the shelf price a Japanese shopper will pay against the local competition.
MOQ and lead time
Minimum order quantity and the days from purchase order to delivery. The first question a buyer asks, and the one that ends most conversations.
Listing fees and promotion
Some chains charge for the shelf. Entry fees, promotion cost share, in-store sampling and launch support are budgeted before the negotiation, not after.
Payment and credit
Letter of credit or telegraphic transfer, deposit share and payment terms. We set the credit position on the first order before terms are discussed.
Japan should not take a year to start.
Entry is slow because of the work, not the decision. Research, list building, drafting, reporting. While people carry all four, the launch can never move faster than the headcount you assigned to it.
4x faster
To the first buyer meetings. Nine to twelve months is normal for a market entry of this kind. We work to three.
75% lower
Against building a Japan entity at roughly $475K a year. $120K a year here, with regulatory work, outreach and reporting included.
Because people are not carrying the work.
Agents research accounts, score fit, draft in Japanese and keep the pipeline current. A person reviews and sends. You never operate any of it.
The same sequence runs on every account.
Three months to the first meetings.
Qualify, open, meet. No six-month research phase before anything moves.
Month 1
Qualify
Channel selection and regulatory assessment. We establish whether the product can be sold in Japan in its current form, and what has to change if not.
Month 2
Open
Target account list, named buyers, Japanese-language outreach, and the pipeline infrastructure to track it.
Month 3
Meet
First meetings and sample rounds. Targets and positioning are narrowed on the responses we get.
Three ways to be present in Japan.
Move the inputs and compare. Look past the cost line at what you still own when the engagement ends.
Against building a Japan entity, the difference is $715K. The distributor route looks cheap only while volume is small, and it costs you the buyer relationship and pricing control permanently.
Distributor margin and entity costs are indicative figures based on common market practice; actual terms vary by category and agreement. Scratch Second pricing is exact.
The numbers assemble themselves.
Accounts contacted, replies, meetings, stalled deals. Delivered weekly in English, in a form your head office can read without translation.
Total conversion rate 21.4%
We have sold into this market before.
Scratch Second was founded in 2026. The work below was carried out by our founder, Hirokatsu Miyamoto, inside operating companies rather than under this company name.
Retail distribution
From 100 to 2,400+ convenience stores
Placed a two-year-old startup's product into a top Japanese convenience-store chain and scaled from 100 stores to over 2,400, as the first US-startup sales hire in Japan. Negotiation, category buy-in and rollout were run hands on.
2,400+ stores
Premium network
A 500+ outlet premium channel, built from zero
Specialty grocers, five-star hotels, airport lounges and wholesalers, opened and managed as one network rather than a list of one-off accounts.
500+ outlets
Pipeline and closing
2,000+ leads managed end to end
Built a real-time dashboard across the full funnel, designed the branching follow-up logic, and executed the closings rather than handing over a system and walking away.
2,000+ leads
Frequently asked questions
Japan does not have to wait on a hire.
Bring the product and the target price. We will tell you whether it can be sold here.
Thirty minutes is enough for the first conversation.