Candy Japan 2017 Year in Review | Hacker News Reader

Candy Japan 2017 Year in Review

candyjapan.com

216 pointshamstercat105 comments

I'm glad to see this, as so often Year In Review posts are by companies humblebragging about how well they're doing, and they stop posting Year In Review when it's been a down year. It's refreshing to see a post that isn't "we're Crushing It", but is honest and real. (Though I hope next year will be more positive though!)

Also, I don't know if this has any SEO impact, but I thought the sitewide "flags" link in the footer of Candy Japan looked suspicious. At first I wondered if the site had been hacked or if you'd started selling backlinks, before I realized it's a requirement of the Creative Commons Attribution licence for the flag images. Maybe experiment with removing that from the sitewide, and just putting that link on a Credits / About Us page?

I'd love to read more about hiring the photographer & your artist. The artwork in the blog posts is amazing!

It wasn't that difficult. I just posted both as jobs on UpWork, then spent an hour looking through the portfolios of people who applied.

I am following Candy Japan for years and I like the idea. In its early years the landing page was super charming despite its bootstrapped style. Now in 2017, it just looks aged. I mean the entire presentation, the dull white packaging without any branding and the still unexciting pictures feel like somebody lost all motivation and ambition. No offense, just my perception.

I just googled competitors and all of them feel way more vibrant + being more active on social media (I checked Instagram for the first two):

https://www.japancrate.com/

https://tokyotreat.com/

https://wowbox.jp/

http://www.kawaiibox.com/

https://www.sushicandy.net/

Building a slick landing page which is also responsive can be quite some work but looking at that competition it's a must, sorry. Look, it's not that people really need a monthly candy box, it's not a rational decision, it's something emotional—an impulse buy. So, if the landing page isn't even thrilling what should then trigger the buy?

Social media in particular Instagram might be a significant marketing channel because Japanese candy and its colourfulness is tailor-made for Instagram.

Maybe the business model is also the problem. There are little lock-ins/network effects and a low-barrier market entry for Japanese entities, thus all these competitors. There might be opportunities to pivot the business or extend into new fields/models. The first thing which comes to mind is licensing successful products for exclusive import/distribution to key western markets. Different game but highly scalable. Maybe there more unseen opportunities. If not then selling the business could be an option (after a final revamp re presentation and SEO).

However, Candy Japan has still one major strength: Frequently placing stories on social news sites like HN and Reddit which always hit top 10 positions and generate tons of free traffic (should be 20-30k visits per placement which would translate in 200 to 300 subs at 1% conversion).

i was always curious how they get first page placements every time, that knowledge right their is their greatest asset imo.

I'd never seen the site before this HN submission. My first thought is how quaint it was and how it captures the qualities of the packaging.

The links you provided "feel" like they're all created from some stilted framework and not hand crafted like the subject's site.

I mean I like that Neocities quality for websites so I know I'm in the minority.

I think that's an excellent comment about instagram, i wonder if pinterest would also be useful -- since the images of the candies are so enticing.

I'm a current Candy Japan subscriber and have been for a long time. Looking over some of those they simply seem like a better deal. An average Candy Japan box has 4-5 items in it and you get two per month. That comes to $29/mo for 8-10 items. JapanCrate advertises 15 items at $30/mo. Tokyotreat is 17 items at $31.50/mo. Wowbox is 10-14 for $25/mo or 12-16 for $34.99/mo. Kawaii Box is 8-10 for $20/mo. SushiCandy is 20 items @ $15.99/mo.

To my eyes at least, CandyJapan seems to be the worst option of all of them. I'm afraid that they're simply being out-competed and without some rethinking of their model they will continue to lose subscribers over time. After looking at those competitors just now I will certainly be rethinking my subscription.

Candy Japan sends treats twice a month instead of one.

That's what I said:

> An average Candy Japan box has 4-5 items in it and you get two per month.

> Tokyotreat is 17 items at $31.50/mo.

No it isn't. It is 17 items for 35 USD/month if you pay per month. It is 31.50 USD/month if you follow their 12 month prepay plan (aka sub for a year and pay in advance).

We also shouldn't put too much stress on the amount of items. It isn't descriptive of what's in the box. Tokyotreat is specific with what's in the box.

These services also seem to have more lightweight, cheaper deals:

* Japancrate's Mini is 5 items for 12 USD/month, original is 25 USD/month with 10 items (1 DIY kit), and the Premium is 30 USD/month with 15 items (1 DIY kit, 1 drink, and 1 bonus item so its 16).

* Sushicandy has a set of 20 for 16 USD, a set of 30 for 20 USD, and a set of 40 for 27 USD. With also, like Japancrate, the option to sub for 3 or 6 months.

* Wowbox has a 15% coupon right now, and has a "try it out" button on the landing page. That invites me to give it a whirl. They also have different themes, and allow me to select different size of packages.

* Kawaiibox specialises in the kawaii candy theme (I suppose? I'm very newbie to this whole theme stuff or Japanese candy but I am curious). Its 19.90 USD for 8-10 items with discount options available if you subscribe for longer. The discounts are modest: 18.90 USD for 18.20 USD for 6 or 12 months respectively.

* Tokyotreat I discussed above as it all started my post, but since GP mentioned 5 companies I want 5 bullets in list. Its more expensive than Candy Japan, but you also get more items.

Even though you had that detail wrong you are right that all of these are indeed cheaper than Candy Japan. I feel like Candy Japan is a very small business compared to these (which isn't going to volume, but then again the question is, is it going for quality then?) and no offence, but a 10% coupon on Candy Japan isn't going to cut it compared to the competition.

All seem to provide free shipping world-wide. Payment options vary. The ones I checked accepted credit card, some accepted PayPal as well but not all.

As a final note, again no offence but you're basically exporting some stuff you buy in bulk from some local stores. In my language we call companies that sell technology equipment with low margin "dozenschuiver" (box mover, aka Sokoban). 50 USD/hour isn't a bad wage at all in that field. Larger Asian stores (called toko here) might even sell Japanese candy. You can't compete with that, so you want it to remain a special niche.

I agree that items/box is a bad metric. A regular-size butterfinger amounts to 4 kid-size. I'm not sure what a better metric might be.

> the question is, is it going for quality then?

I wouldn't say so. The candy in CandyJapan boxes seems about average. I've actually seen some of their candy brands in local grociers' foreign food isles quite cheaply. This leads me to believe the CandyJapan stuff is nothing particularly special. Some of the DIY candy kits they include lately are gross too—they're usually some variant of slime + sugar/flavor.

As a side note I actually ordered a Tokyotreat box. They have decent item count and they include a drink as well. I've really enjoyed some of the random Japanese drinks I've tried and I'm looking forward to receiving some!

There is no way they get 200-300 subscriptions from a social news story. Their own self published data does not support this.

IDK but when checking his self-published data I see spikes adding min 200 new subs. Guess those came with blog posts.

And: 1% conversion when being on the landing page is way below average.

And2: This post was almost two days on the front page, guess he reached more than 20-30k visits. So, 200-300 subs should be the minimum he reached.

That's right, for a year-in-review post like this it is typical to gain 20 - 50 new subscribers and serve ~10k sessions. Somehow they never seem to spread beyond HN, not sure if there could be elsewhere I should be posting or something else I could do to get them to spread better.

An in depth comparison is in order (though you made a decent stub, and other responses are also valuable).

I went to Japancrate, and I can order once but also subscribe for say a year and save $30 in total (one month). That's not a whole lot saving. I get moved when I get 2 months free when I sub for a year (~16,67%). Also, Japancrate do seem to send to world-wide, but only accept credit card (Candyjapan's statistics show about half of the customers pay via PayPal). I feel like Candyjapan is winning out on these PayPal customers but you wouldn't know that for sure until you'd cancel the option or did an A/B test. Regardless, things like payment options, different packages, and discounts matter. Kawaiibox also provides PayPal as payment option.

PS: What happened with Candy Japan and not sending to Germany?

The box subscription business model is getting harder and harder as competition increases. I can relate on two points with my own Japanese tea-of-the-month subscription (https://tomotcha.com):

- At one point customs were very slow to clear in Germany (one to two months), though shipments never actually bounced back. Paying for tea and not getting it is frustrating. Then eventually it arrives, two months late. We lost customers because of it. Eventually that problem went away and now shipments are going through as usual.

- Competition: we used not to have too much competition when we launched 3 years ago, now similar services are aplenty. It hurts conversion rates, a lot...

It sounds really worth it if I earned USD. Unfortunately I live in a place with a weaker currency and a strong immigrant population. I'll definitely subscribe once I try the teas they have around :)

I'm actually thinking to add currencies besides only USD and EUR. At the end of the day we don't have any particular love for either, since our costs are all in JPY. The biggest issue is to not clutter up the interface...

The world wide shipping makes the prices worth what you're getting, but it doesn't change the fact that my currency isn't that great.

What I've seen in some e-commerce shops is that they automatically change the currency based on the customer's location and have a small option on the bottom or top right of the site displaying available currencies. For your site a dropdown menu/box for the currency to the right of the price might be best.

My thoughts:

Subscription boxes are hard. I sold mine.

It's hard to keep subscribers happy every month, especially with food.

Most profitable subscription boxes are profitable because they are run by savvy internet marketers & capitalize on novelty, trends, & gifting, not because the products deliver incredible value to the customer.

I think Proactiv is the only subscription box service that's stood the test of time without having to drastically change their business model and they have historically been extremely savvy with their marketing.

If you look at the landscape of subscription boxes, it suggests that for longterm growth & profit:

1. Curation doesn't work.

2. You have to make / manufacture / private label your own stuff (Dollar Shave Club & Proactiv)

3. You should raise money, use that money to sell your first million boxes at a loss, grow rapidly and try to race towards an exit.

4. If your product doesn't solve a major problem (acne sucks, razors are too expensive etc), you are probably doomed over long term (10-20 year horizon), so it's best to sell in year 3-5.

I recently moved to Finland, and briefly considered setting up an online shop to export Salmiakki to the UK, as lots of people there seem to love it and beg me to bring it when I returned.

I'm amused you're from Finland, but instead are importing Japanese candy! (In the end I decided I couldn't be bothered with the hassle. I just make sure every time I do return to the UK I pack my suitcase with 10-40 boxes of candy.)

Please import me some proper rye bread, karjalanpiirakka and lakkahillo every week. There are no such things here in Berlin.

I think this store can send these things to you: https://www.suomikauppa.fi/index.php?language=en

We got rye bread here in The Netherlands. I was in Berlin a few weeks ago. German bread is amazing. So tasty. The jams I had were insane as well. Loads of fruit, sugar not so much. Again, very taste.

It's likely to be a tricky one as there's a ton of competition on Amazon that sells not just Finnish salty licorice but from the rest of the Nordic countries and the Netherlands as well. They're overall expensive, but the selection is fairly wide.

What are the odds - we have a tiny bottle on our shelf that some visiting Finlanders gave use about five years ago!

Is... is Slamiakki still safe to drink after five years? There's a lot of weird looking condensation on the bottom. If we gently shake the bottle, it looks like something from X-Files is reaching out to drink us.

Drink? It's licorice...

Oh. Then we apparently have licorice liqueur.

Yup, widely available. Here's a random shot of a bottle I have at home:

https://i.imgur.com/Wy34Uui.jpg

The more common version comes in a black bottle, but there are a couple of varieties out there.

99% of the time when people talk about Salmiakki they mean the candy/licorice, but the remaining time they mean the drink.

Ours is smaller. Might try it tonight, since the kid is in daycare tomorrow and if we die it'll inconvenience her less.

There's other liquorice liquor available throughout the world as well. A brand I know from The Netherlands is called "drop shot" [1] (drop is the Dutch word for liquorice).

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dropshot+liquor&iax=images&ia=imag...

There is also a branded "liquor" with the same name. I enjoy both the drink and the licorice.

You mention the decline in search ranking and Google traffic.

I'd strongly suggest you set up on Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube.

I would do an occasional YouTube video, talking about and showing people the various types of Japanese candy. Maybe do just one per week, focused on a group of related candy. I read your post about YouTube traffic and correlation to sales, I think the solution to that is what it tends to be with everything marketing: consistently drive it over a long period of time (obviously along with clickable links to your site, which the blogged-about video lacked).

I'd post nice, alluring photos to Pinterest and Instagram. Making sure to update both accounts at least weekly. Every item from every box should eventually get an Instagram post, with a description. Japanese candy packaging always seems to my US eyes to be very colorful, energetic, with fun designs - which I think lends very well to a site like Instagram (and its scale is obviously immense).

A Facebook page would also be ideal if you can or want to invest the time to cultivate it (a lot more work vs posting occasional media content to the other sites).

Google isn't dying per se as a highly valuable source of traffic, but things have changed a lot in the last five or six years. Google search as a traffic source no longer occupies the overwhelming position that it used to, and that is going to continue to weaken vs everything else collectively.

Idea: allow people to order add-ons to their monthly packages (something relatively cheap like manga, magazines, etc.). You can order it automatically from Amazon Japan with free domestic shipping. So people could get their candy + whatever stuff they need from Japan, while saving on shipping costs.

Seconding this. I don't know what effect it will have on shipping costs and general logistics and if it's worth it profit wise for the people running it, but I would love this option.

That's an insane amount of work for a feature that would essentially be "at cost". Complicates shipping logistics, brings new problems (what if customers change its mind after Amazon is already ordered), different boxes and shipping cost for everyone, etc.

I've run something similar to this. It has many problems, especially in the international shipping arena.

Suppose I sell a box of candy that I make a comfortable profit on. You want me to receive, store, and repackage a book that I don't make any money on to the order. I'm just adding something to your existing order and doing you a favor, right?

So I send you a box of candy and a book. The shipment gets lost in the mail / held indefinitely in customs / destroyed / stolen. You don't subrogate Amazon over the missing book (they did their job; I received it), you subrogate me for both the book AND the candy. I take on a lot of additional responsibility and work for no payoff (and often losing money in the process).

Not to mention the changing shipping costs, bizarre object handling and the look on your face when I tell you that car-sized stuffed panda or pallet of Calorie Mate you bought and shipped to my warehouse added $200 in shipping charges to your $20 candy order. The reality of the situation hits you and now you don't want either. Then I lose a candy sale, and have the pleasure of storing and handling your giant Amazon order/return.

The alternative is adding a hefty handling fee to the cost of add-on items, but then using me as a middleman likely ends up costing more than just buying it directly. Then the social media accusations of price gouging on shipping start making the rounds. "My god, how could they charge $200 to ship a stuffed panda!" It's bad for business.

This model only really works when you have a friend over there who can send you stuff. When something gets lost, it sucks, but it's your problem, not your friend's. The dynamic changes when your friend is a business-- everything becomes their problem. It's not worth the trouble.

There are dedicated repackaging services out there whose logistics operate at much better scale than a company whose primary focus is retail.

> Another major hit was that all the packages we were sending to Germany started bouncing back. After this continued for several shipments, I decided just not to ship to Germany any more.

I guess that explains why I only ever received one package from my gift code.

Is that still a thing? Because when I open the website from Germany it says:

> $29 monthly with free shipping even to Germany.

I've sent refunds for the missed packages to Germany. If you haven't gotten a refund, please contact bemmu@candyjapan.com. This Germany thing happened very recently, I'll update the site to reflect it.

Update: Just changed it, should update when the CDN cache expires. Incidentally noticed I also had "East Germany" in my country list, oops :D

Have you thought about offering a box subscription of just one kind of Japanese candy? I’d gladly pay up to US$50/month to get Japanese KitKats sent to me as would some friends. I’m sure we aren’t alone, but not sure total market size of course or if it’d be worth it for you. Japanese KitKats are already seasonal in flavors, so makes doing a variety box even easier. Hope you’ll consider it!

Japanese Green Tea KitKats seem very popular.

I've been asked for them before back in the United Kingdom.

Now, in Hawaii - we put 10 bags in the suitcase because we'd been asked to bring them.

There’s literally hundreds of flavors of Japanese KitKats. I know of probably over a dozen different varieties which are green tea based.

I've said this before, but a twice-monthly subscription to sweets is too much sugar. If it was once every 3 months then I'd consider subscribing.

Good idea, could be worth trying to let people select different frequencies, which practically would mean just skipping the packages in between.

Or: let people rate the candy. Then send the ones people love most. I.e., a "best of Japanese candy" package.

By the way, when you've discovered candy that you like a lot, how do you order more of it?

You'd cancel the subscription and order the favorite candy from amazon :(.

My friend received a selection of wine each month from the local store. After a while his tastes narrowed to a specific grape. Cancelled his subscription and now he goes directly to the store to get those wines. Candy Japan needs to work on retention.

Exactly, this is why I unsubscribed despite the candy selection being awesome - we just don't eat that much candy!

> What went wrong? This year I didn't have as much to blog about. In 2016 I had five popular posts (1 2 3 4 5), while in 2017 I only managed two (1 2). The posts tend to send a lot of high-quality traffic, so the impact was bigger than you might expect. I haven't figured out how to invent posts from thin air when I simply have nothing new to share.

benmu if you're reading, what about doing shorter but more regular posts on life in Japan from your family's or just your perspective?

(That being said, I'm much worse than you on blog posts; something I will correct starting now.)

> Tried paid YouTube ads, and while I did get some subscribers, in the end they were just too expensive to keep running. Tweaking the ads was very time consuming and expensive (but fun).

Instead of paying for Youtube ads, why not just do your own candy videos instead?

I was actually thinking about canceling the service (trying to save a little more money + eat healthier) but I really love articles like this so I'll stay on for at least a few more months :)

I would say for me, the personal story is a big selling point. You're just a guy who moved to Japan and started this service as opposed to some faceless conglomerate. The new landing page is much nicer but maybe add some of the stuff in the "Who runs Candy Japan?" page to the landing?

> Another major hit was that all the packages we were sending to Germany started bouncing back. After this continued for several shipments, I decided just not to ship to Germany any more.

Have you ever figured out what was up with that? That sounds like something is going wrong with the Zoll. Normally, sending products to all EU countries should work the same.

Hi, I just checked your site and I noticed you are improving the UI of the web site as I suggested you on Twitter a while ago: now there are images on the pages “check your email for link” and “thank you” page after a subscription. Nice!

Furthermore, about the photos you added on the home page, having good photos of the products you are selling (like examples of older boxes) is a huge improvement. IMHO you did the right thing having them shot professionally. Most of your competitors already had photos of candies, and I finally subscribed to your service mostly because I finally could see in advance examples of what (and how many of them) I will get in the mail.

So, keep going and best of luck! Bye

P.S.: thank you for the discount code in the article :)

Nice story! Thank you for sharing. A few thoughts:

1) when is the last time you sat down with new and existing customers to see their reaction to getting their physical boxes? You might get a lot of good insights of how exciting (or not) the existing experience is of receiving the candy. How does that change between the 1st and 10th box a customer receives?

2) why are people churning? Do you have a prioritized list of reasons? Not what they said (most users don’t actually want to offend you or your business) but what their real reasons were for canceling?

3) keep in mind that the real product is the box with candies. The website is just for sales. Yes, SEO is definitely important to get new subscribers, but to improve your product you have to improve the box or the offerings around it.

4) pricing. I noticed that the lowest offering of $29/month is rather expensive for a novelty purchase. How much experimentation have you done around testing lower price points with less frequent shipments? This could help with acquisition and retention.

I’ll be happy to help you understand how to look at retention, basic AARR analysis, interview customers, etc. just let me know.

Bemmu, you mentioned you tried YT ads. Have you tried to build an audience on YT? For example with unwrapping / “reviews” of some of the candies.

I know there are tons of people watching similar things (though my 1st hand exp is just seeing how my kid wants to spend infinite amount of time watching surprise eggs unwrapping).

Just a hunch, but that might have a bigger ROI than ads.

Thanks for the writeup, love the openness!

> though my 1st hand exp is just seeing how my kid wants to spend infinite amount of time watching surprise eggs unwrapping

If kids are the main demographic, I doubt they generate a lot of ROI.

I think you're wrong about children not having purchasing power. Remember all those toy commercials on TV during Saturday morning cartoons? Those advertisers weren't just throwing money away, they were marketing to kids, and those kids then bugged their parents to purchase the toys.

The same holds true for YouTube; in fact I might go so far as to say it's even more powerful today. Kids are choosing the videos to watch and people to subscribe to. That means they have an interest and are actively participating in the process. I would think this would make them a better target with a higher ROI. Especially if the investment is a couple of hours of video creation.

I was discouraged from doing this after having someone make such a video that generated millions of views, but no sales at all (https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/sales-results-f...). (Just noticed that video has since been removed for "violating community guidelines", I wonder what's up with that)

But I'm still a bit motivated to make more videos, because at 10k subscribers you get to visit the Roppongi YouTube space :-) Here's the old channel we haven't really updated in a long time: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAWrpxBNP8LukXGd4xQIDxg

Send free boxes to YouTubers, if you haven't already.

I wouldn’t discount YouTube based on that experience. That channel looks to be one of the channels that drives a lot of views through children, specifically, children watch and watch and watch these videos on TVs (driving up the viewcounts) but aren’t engaged, they aren’t going to convert to customers. You may wish to try more targeted channels, i.e channels with an engaged audience of people who like Japanese culture. A video with 1,000 views to people who are enamoured with Japanese culture will perform significantly better than that video.

Every time the year update comes around I have the same I question (first time posted):

Why not have a cosplayer (preferably a lady) (dressed in costume) review the candy and post that to YouTube? I mean, this can be done for cheap ($75-100 per video or so).

Why?

It's possibly good marketing.

Fair question. I've made some basic audience assumptions. These are:

- people who buy Japanese candy also like other Japanese items

- people who buy Japanese candy also like the Japanese culture

- people who know about Japanese candy are within a certain age range.

- people within that age range that know about Japanese candy have also purchased some

- people who enjoy the Japanese culture that fa within the age range of those who like the candy may also potentially enjoy Japanese pop culture

- people who enjoy that pop culture enjoy consuming media about it

- people who enjoy consuming the media have adopted newer platforms (YouTube vs tv).

- most of these people are male

A show with a cosplayers who talks about Japanese candy in a memorable way seems to fit these assumptions.

Why a female cosplayer? Sex sells.

I traveled all over asia with very little issues with using my Chase credit card, but when I went to purchase candyjapan for a Xmas gift, my purchase was insta-denied by Chase.

it was almost like the banks have flagged your merchant account as fraudulent.

You mention you haven't expanded. Have you considered also doing Japanese stationery / office supplies? All the best tools I've got came from my one trip to Japan :)

I tried that actually, releasing Pen Japan at one point and had a few subscribers as well. Then I realized I can't really appreciate nice stationery myself. I would need to hire someone to curate it. The quality of the service was poor, so I decided not to go on with it.

Ah, well that was my one idea :P

It's also hard in that: once I have one awesome Japanese stapler, how many more do I need? For me the answer was just 1: a staple-free stapler. Then I was saturated.

Doubly so, I wouldn't need a new Hobonichi Techo every month, but I love Japanese stationery.

I spend countless hours drooling over https://jetpens.com Have bought way too many mechanical pencils, leads and erasers.

Aw that is a bummer, I subscribed in 2017 and love the Service!

Interesting article, and good to know you're still operating despite the problems.

> All those new subscribers beyond the first 800 were actually fakes who had subscribed with stolen credit card numbers [...] a lot of shipping addresses turned out to be fake as well

I don't know if this was already discussed in previous years, but this sounds like a rival (either established or wanting to copy your model).

Edit: https

Small charges on stolen credit cards are usually to test if the card is still valid.

Hence charities are popular to test on too.

So I guess credit card frauds are human too

Ah, okay, makes sense (in an evil way).

It just sounded like it was a sudden wave after the site had become more popular, but it maybe just appeared on the radar of scammers as well as the competition.

I have long stopped telling people whether their charge worked if an order looks suspicious, to prevent them from getting this information. So that wouldn't work now.

I am not sure I follow, could you clarify? You do send a confirmation after sign up I presume?

Can't find it but he had a whole blog post about it

Well I can't say "your payment was processed successfully", because that would give information to people who want to test cards. Rather I manually read through the orders, and only contact people if something went wrong with their payment AND the order doesn't look suspicious.

Are you on Stripe?

I doubt about rivalry, his business doesn't make that much money, even after years of development and quite successful social media posts (I've heard about it a dozen times).

He needs to expand into other niches. Japan is full of weird things.

Thing is that even with the limited market he has some 5 serious competitors.

As bemmu readily admits competition is eating into his market.

You name the niche you will see competition no matter how obscure.

Thanks, fixed the https issue.

Maybe I have a too rosy world view, but I don't think rivals would be this mean. Probably some simpler answer. Maybe there's some forum post somewhere like "how I got free candy by using this list of credit card numbers" and people keep trying that.

You're probably right; I've read of people's Google ranking being trashed by rivals using spamming tools, so maybe my world view is too dark. OTOH, I seem to be naive about how credit card scamming works.

I appreciate your occasional updates posted here. They're always interesting.

> "This year I didn't have as much to blog about ... The posts tend to send a lot of high-quality traffic, so the impact was bigger than you might expect. I haven't figured out how to invent posts from thin air when I simply have nothing new to share."

This obviously seems like a lost opportunity. If you want to sustain the business, you simply have to write more posts, as a start. I visit Japan for two weeks every year and find the culture endlessly fascinating. Searching here for mentions of Japan [1], the most popular is yours, but not a business update, rather your post on the Japanese writing system [2]. Ignore the news stories and look at all those other posts about Japan posted by others. These are Japan topics that this community found interesting (I hope you promote to other communities). You could write posts about coffee culture, beer culture, Izakaya's, ex-pat life, other one-person businesses, life in Japan, J-pop even k-pop, heck even the McDonald's menu in Japan vs elsewhere etc etc. Of course the link to candy is tangential but a blog on entrepreneurial life / life in Japan would attract Japanophiles who I expect would be interested in regular candy packs from Japan. But why just focus on candy as the income. Why not become a go-to guy for Japanese culture through the eyes of a Westerner? You wouldn't be the first but you have a unique viewpoint. What about adding a podcast. Building an audience, listing on Patreon. Just some thoughts.

I also have some comments about your website vs your competitor, presumably [3].

* On Safari, when I type in "candy japan", the Siri suggestion is your competitor's, despite the search term basically being your domain name. You have work to do on SEO.

* Your competitor's photos of their offerings are front and center. Personally that draws me in immediately. Your photo is at the bottom of your page. You are literally burying the lede

* Your competitor has a time-limited call to action at the top of their page "Free Shipping even to United States! Next box subscription closes in: You have 4 Days left to get the next box!"

* Your competitor has great testimonials. Do you have social media contests? Promote use of a hashtag / instagram posting so you can easily cultivate for your page?

* This is probably an error, but when I click on your home page link "Past Boxes", I expected to see great photos of your past boxes. Social media pics and videos from happy users etc. Instead the very first text on the Past Boxes page is the post linked above with the text "This was another tough year for Candy Japan, with many factors combining to a sharp decline in subscriber numbers." I wanted to check out photos of amazing Japanese candy I can order but now I'm just bummed out.

* There are so many things your competitor is doing that you are not. Check out how easy he makes it for reviewers to get a free copy. Check out the reviews on his website. Being copied sucks but fight back. Take their ideas and improve upon them. Stay one step ahead.

* We're just through the holiday season in the West. How many parents were hunting for last minute gifts for kids (or adults). This would have been amazing gift and yet I see nothing on your front page that's marketing to "last minute gifts", "last minute xmas gifts for children" etc. A number of magazine newsletters I subscribed to had features on "last minute gifts", most of which were ticket, voucher or coupon based. How much outreach did you do?

I'm not being critical. You've done a lot to get here and are now facing challenges. Meet them head on. There is so much more you can do. Not everything will work, but some will.

As it happens, I have a relation whose birthday it is in January. I'm going to prove my own point and buy her a subscription from your site. I enjoy your updates and salute your success to date. I wish you the very best going forward.

[1] - https://hn.algolia.com/?query=japan&sort=byPopularity&prefix... [2] - https://www.candyjapan.com/口 [3] - http://www.japancandybox.com

Maybe blog posts with candy reviews might bring in some traffic?

If we wrote those, where could they be shared to?

It seems you have a high churn rate among your subscribers. Have you ever investigated that? An automated plain text email asking for feedback or a survey after someone unsubscribed would probably do it, though I guess you probably tried this already.

Are your customers people who already know Japanese candy, but simply miss it because they're abroad? Or is Japanese candy new to them and your service is a way for them to try something new? With the temporary surge in search traffic, it sounds like it's mostly "new" people. In that case, my hunch would be that a subscription for a "novel" experience does not make sense. I would (personally) try to offer other novelty items as part of the subscription (eg. other Japanese cultural products such as Mangas, or candy from other countries if feasible). Just my 2¢ of course. It's your business and I know nothing about it.

And it sounds like you might want to invest in SEO. Your article says you dropped in relevance but does not mention whether you are addressing this problem already.

I never got the subscription services like CrateJoy. It's nice for a one-time gift, kind of like a grab bag. But once you've gotten a couple boxes, what's the point? You've discovered the brands/items you like, and it's easy to go out and buy them at regular prices (some of those crates are $35 for $10 worth of stuff)

Something that you can control and sell at a lower price than I can buy (cheap razors, for example) is a different story.

This is a bummer indeed. I’ve noticed a few businesses that did decently well around 2015, peaking, and declining into a slow death sort of thing. From what I read here, this seems to be happening and will likely get worse in 2018. It might be time to pivot into something else entirely.

I agree. This isn't the first project I've had where I've been riding a wave up and down. Many things have a limited lifespan, but can often still be worth doing.

> even to Sweden

Is Sweden typically a country where things aren't shipped to for free?

For me it said The Netherlands.

And for me, Finland. I guess it picks the client location the same way online ads do.

Funny thing, I was thinking "I bet they don't ship to Romania" but then I saw "even to Romania" and was both happy and somewhat disappointed that even they knew Romania doesn't get much love. Makes me feel a little better that everyone's getting the same template.

Yes, but I really do want to communicate to visitors that this isn't a US-only thing.

Oh, that makes sense and is quite clever.

20 years ago or so I ran an ISP and for fun we added a 'back to (your ISP)' link to our pages for the main other ISPs in our market. Mostly because we were kids showing off. It took a couple of days before we got a call from one of those ISPs to warn us someone had hacked us and added a link to their pages... They were worried we'd blame them so wanted to tell us right away...

In my experience free shipping for subscription boxes is often US-only. Not sure if this has changed since then.

Are there any other micro-businesses that do a similar end of year review?

I used to read patio11's when he ran Bingo Card Creator, and find the Candy Japan reviews similarly interesting.

Pinboard has done them in the past.

https://blog.pinboard.in/2017/07/eight_years_of_victory/

I wonder if the first season of the anime Dagashi Kashi in 2016 and the next season early 2018 had or will have any impact on it.

Another year has gone by.

I haven't done a company, or anything, really.

I should just do something. Hmm.

Did you try any of the smart fraud prevention? Like Siftscience?

Let's be honest, weeaboos make a poor target market to base any business on. No real purchasing power other than the allowance they get from their parents or perhaps a burger flipping wage, and I'd imagine most of them just pirate their cartoons.

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