Terrie's Take 386 -- ValueCommerce IPO, ebiz news from Japan
General Edition Sunday, August 6, 2006 Issue No. 386
+++ INDEX
- What's new
- Services lineup
- News
- Candidate roundup
- Upcoming events
- News credits
Logistics: The So-Fast Corporation========Why Choose the So-Fast Corporation? Failed logistics is a frequent reason why foreign import/retail companies in Japan eventually pull out. In the start-up phase, management is focused on just getting the business up and running, and so it is tempting to abdicate the logistics to a large trading or transportation firm. But the reality is that the convenience is soon replaced by frustration -- as any change request, any problem resolution takes forever and becomes "too hard to do". Now, So-Fast Corporation offers its "Start Logistics Package" which includes: One customer that did switch is Guthy-Renker, featured alongside So-Fast in the Spring 2005 issue of J@pan Inc, www.japaninc.com/article.php?articleID=1429. Guthy-Renker is one of Japan's largest TV marketing companies. If logistics are a key part of your success in Japan - get connected with So-Fast. |
| +++ WHAT'S NEW |
What was notable about this IPO, apart from the healthy valuation despite recently declining IPO pricings, was that the company was founded and is still run by foreign entreprenuers.
-- somewhat like Google's Adwords program. This business model is known as affiliate marketing, and ValueCommerce is the industry leader here in Japan.
They serve 600m (not a typo) ads per day through 173,000 partner sites! Now, that's a lot of ads, and of course a lot of ad revenue. It also makes them one of the biggest traffic aggregators on the Japanese web.
...The Information Janitors/
| +++ SERVICES LINE-UP |
Contact sales@japaninc.com if you want your company here.
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- Find new bilingual sales staff -- a specialty for DaiJob.com,
andrew.peters@daijob.com Ph: 03-3499-3040
| +++ NEWS |
- Decline in population
- Loan defaults fall
- Suntech buys MSK
- Welfare cuts hit elderly poor
- Tax increase will hurt housing market
-> Decline in population
For the first time since records started in 1968, Japan's death rate exceeded her birth rate.
According to the Internal Affairs ministry, 1,072,281 people died through fiscal year 2005, while only 1,065,533 babies were born.
As a result, the number of Japanese (not including foreigners) fell 3,505 from the year before.
People aged 65 or older now account for 20.3% of the population.
(Source: TT commentary from hindu.com, Aug 5, 2006)
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/003200608050313.htm
->Loan defaults fall
The government has announced that the nine financing organizations it uses to provide credit to SME and special interest companies,
reported that their combined bad loan balance has dropped to JPY6.9trn (US$60bn), down a healthy 14.8% from the year before.
While this is a good result, before we cheer too much it is worth noting that in fact
3 of the 9 still lost money. More significantly, two of them focus on small companies.
So it appears that the credit shakeout for smaller firms continues.
***Ed: The nine lenders -- in case you're looking for a business loan are:
the Development Bank of Japan; Shokochukin Bank; Japan Bank for International Cooperation;
National Life Finance Corp; Japan Finance Corporation for Small and Medium Enterprises;
Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Finance Corporation; Okinawa Development Finance Corp;
Japan Finance Corp. for Municipal Enterprises; and the Housing Loan Corporation.
***Ed: The great thing about government loans is that they are cheap and (typically) don't discriminate against foreign businesspeople.**
(Source: mainichi-msn.co.jp, Aug 4, 2006)
->Suntech buys MSK
Apparently Japan's output of solar cells soared 48% last year. We think this is a very savvy acquisition by
Suntech.** (Source: people.com.cn, Aug 4, 2006)
http://english.people.com.cn/200608/04/eng20060804_289816.html
->Welfare cuts hit elderly poor
An excellent article in the Boston Globe says that welfare payments to retirees with no other source of income have reduced by as much as 25%. They quote one 73-year old living in Tokyo who has to get by on JPY72,000 (US$620) a month! Less than some people spend on their dogs. According to the Welfare Ministry, there are now about 500,000 elderly who are destitute and are not being supported by their families or children. The problem is the ballooning cost of welfare overall, and the government's efforts to cut it. Welfare cost the nation US$826bn last year and will hit US$1.37trn by 2025, about 28% of Japan's GDP. ***Ed:
It's time for the government to wake up and look at making pensions means-tested. Under such a regime, the wealthy will get very little of their pension contributions back
-- many will not expect it anyway -- while the poor will be at least get a safety net.** (Source: TT commentary from boston.com, Aug 4, 2006)
-> Tax increase will hurt housing market
With all the talk about increasing the consumption tax in 2009, the Japan Federation of Housing Organizations (JHO) decided to do a survey to see what the impact of an increase would be on the housing market. Not surprisingly, the JHO found from its 1,714 responses that people would cut back or not buy at all. The JHO reckons that the negative impact of a tax rise will be about JPY4trn
(US$34bn) on the national housing market. (Source: TT commentary from nikkei.co.jp, Aug 1, 2006)
http://www.nni.nikkei.co.jp/AC/TNKS/Nni20060731D3ZJSN10.htm
NOTE: Broken links
Many online news sources are now removing their articles after just a few days of posting them, thus breaking our links -- we apologize for the inconvenience.
| +++ CANDIDATE ROUND UP |
DaiJob, Inc's executive placement team, Daijob Consulting
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DaiJob has great candidates. Contact Andrew Peters at
andrew.peters@daijob.com, or Ph: 03-3499-3040 for details.
-> Information Systems Manager
Male, 40, Native Japanese, Business English skills
Experience:
- Application management, system administration, security
- Compliance audit checking, financial systems support
- Vendor negotiations
- Management of engineers for global projects
Technologies:
- OS: Windows 2k,NT, VMS and Solaris
- Networks: TCP/IP, DECnet and LAT setup and maintenance
- Languages: VBA (Access, Excel) programming
- Hardware: VAX Cluster, PCs, Cisco routers
- Applications: Microsoft (Exchange server, IIS, SMS, SQL), Lotus Notes, Bloomberg, NRI (T-Star, Fund Web), Toshin Kyokai system.
*Looking for JPY11M. Available 1 month's notice.
--------------------------------------------
-> Systems Administrator
Female, 41, Native Japanese, Business English
Experience:
- 18yrs corporate experience in Japan
- Experience developing and troubleshooting complex database systems
- Extensive knowledge of sw applications, networks, IT h/w
- Database Management
- PBX & Network Management & PC infrastructure
- SQL DB Server Maintenance & Management
- Construction of SQL reports
- Oracle support and admin
Certifications: MCP, MCDST
Programming: COBOL, VB, VBA, SQL, Java, C++
* Looking for JPY4.5M. Available 1 month's notice.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-> IT Project Manager, IT Manager
Male, mid 30's, native Japanese, high Business English
Experience:
- 2 1/2 yrs Project Management in CRM implementations, ITIL Problem Management Process implementations and eNotify implementation projects including Hong Kong and Korea.
- 3 yrs Lead Application Support. Providing 2nd and 3rd level support for a SCA web application in APJ region.
- 3 yrs as a Customer Engineer on site; troubleshooting hardware and network problems
Technologies:
- Hardware: HP UNIX servers and Workstation, Compatible PCs, Network devices, Peripherals including DLT & DDS tape libraries and Disk array systems
- Software: HPUX, MS, Windows, Apache, Oracle, Perl, SQL, JavaScript, HTML
Certifications
- ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) Foundation
- Project Management Professional Certification
- High Availability Support Environment Certification of HP K-Series Server Certification HPUX 10.X Certification
- Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer + Internet on Microsoft Windows NT 4.0
* Looking for JPY11M. Available 1 month's notice.
--------------------------------------------
DaiJob has great candidates. Contact Andrew Peters at
andrew.peters@daijob.com, or Ph: 03-3499-3040 for details.
+++ UPCOMING EVENTS/ANNOUNCEMENTS |
No announcements this week.
IT events announcements are priced at JPY50,000 per week. |
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END
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| +++ ABOUT US |
Written by: Terrie Lloydterrie.lloyd@japaninc.com.
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