A health food manufacturer's "cross-border" growth strategy: Beyond domestic competition, into the Middle Eastern market.Kaneshu Bio Co., Ltd.

Could you tell us what led you to introduce STANDAGE's automated trading service this time?

We are a company based in Okinawa that manufactures and sells health foods. In recent years, as the growth of the domestic market has slowed, competition has intensified, and there has been an increase in large companies from other industries entering the market. Price competition has been particularly fierce in the retail market, such as drugstores.

Large manufacturers are expanding their market share by leveraging their cost competitiveness through mass production, which makes the situation very difficult for small and medium-sized enterprises like ours. Against this backdrop, we decided that in order to increase sales, we needed to look to overseas markets rather than relying on the domestic market.

As part of this effort, we had been exhibiting at trade shows, but with our limited staff, we faced many challenges in terms of both knowledge and experience when it came to expanding overseas. It was at this time that we came across "Omakase Trading." We decided to implement it in order to efficiently and seriously advance our overseas expansion.

What exactly did it entail?

What we value most is their ability to handle our sales activities on-site. Being able to entrust them with everything from exhibiting at overseas trade shows to business negotiation support is incredibly helpful for a company like ours with limited resources.

In fact, at Arab Health, one of the world's largest medical device trade shows and healthcare international conferences held in Dubai, we began business negotiations with a Kuwaiti company, and concrete discussions are underway. Having established contact with a market we couldn't reach on our own was a significant step forward.

What results have you achieved since implementing it?

Approximately one year has passed since its implementation, and our activities in overseas markets are gradually yielding results. In particular, the progress in business negotiations through "Arab Health" has given us a sense of accomplishment that we did not experience in the domestic market.

Currently, we are taking steps to ensure that these business negotiations translate into actual transactions and sales. Our overseas expansion is starting to materialize in unprecedented ways, and we feel that we are finally getting underway.

What kind of support do you expect from Omakase Trading in the future?

Going forward, we aim to steadily expand our overseas sales, primarily in the Middle East region. Ultimately, our goal is for sales from overseas markets to be equal to or exceed those from domestic markets.

Therefore, we hope that you will continue to strengthen your sales support and business opportunity generation efforts in the local area. We would also appreciate it if you could further enhance the provision of trade-related know-how and market information.

Comment from Mr. Sasaki of Kaneshu Bio

We are extremely satisfied with "Omakase Trading," which allows us to entrust all of our trade operations to them. For a company with limited personnel, being able to access overseas markets that were previously out of reach is a significant change. In the future, we plan to further increase sales and accelerate our overseas expansion.