火曜日, 9月 22 2015
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 byJAFCO 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.
#27315 #Tokyo #Japan