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Candy Japan total sales cross $1M
- zacharycohn 9y agoCongrats!!! You are one of my favorite stories to follow. Keep up the great work, and congrats on the new family member. :)
- bemmu 9y agoThank you. Went from balancing "dev mode" and "business mode", to having "daddy mode" added on top.
- tunnuz 9y agoKudos to the author, Candy Japan has always been one of my favourite stories on hacker news :)
- smaili 9y agoFor those jumping to conclusions, beware: > Most of this money has been spent on product and shipping, meaning I haven't made anywhere close to a million dollars in profit with this.
- lsaferite 9y agoAnd a counterpoint > But the great thing is, I've been able to live off of the sales. So, he's at least been able to live off the profit, which is great.
- metalliqaz 9y agoSeems HN users are familiar and even enthusiastic with Candy Japan. I'm not sure I understand, though. It's just a dude offering intermediary shipping, right? Am I missing some interesting tech stuff here?
- jdavis703 9y agoNope, no interesting tech AFAIK. Just someone applying the hacker mentality to their business.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- djrogers 9y agohttps://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/algorithmic-fitting-of-japanese-candy https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/algorithmic-fit... Nahh, nothing interesting to a bunch of hackers </sarc>
- Eridrus 9y agoNo interesting tech stuff, but it's not just shipping, it's also curation. I subscribed to a similar service for over a year (Japan Crate) and the fact that I didn't have to go find these items myself is most of the point.
- RepressedEmu 9y agoHe has been consistently posting in-depth articles about his code base and business for years. People like him and his wacky business the same way we like Levels.
- aparadja 9y agoLevels?
- noodle 9y agoLevels is a digital nomad who has consistently posted in-depth articles about his businesses and codebases for years. People like him and his travel lifestyle the same way we like Patrick.
- factsaresacred 9y ago
- aphextron 9y ago>"Health insurance To me this was the biggest sticker shock, which I didn't mention at all in my old post as I wasn't paying it yet, as I was still tax resident in Finland. Now I'm currently paying 508 EUR or 569 USD for my health insurance here [for a family of 3]. That's not a typo or a yearly cost, that's what it costs every single month." Sounds like a bargain
- gambiting 9y agoUK here, sounds expensive to me. I mean, it's calculated as a percentage of your salary - so if you don't work at all, or earn below the taxable threshold, you never pay anything and still have full coverage. Earn loads of money = pay loads towards health insurance. As someone on a moderate salary, ~569USD/month sounds like a lot to me, but I can only assume that with his profits, it's not bad at all.
- wu_tang_chris 9y ago$6/gallon gasoline sounds expensive to me. I'd much rather live here on a moderate salary. Enjoy paying VAT taxes!
- vidarh 9y agoVAT adds up to a very low percentage of what a typical family spends, as firstly, most people only spends a small proportion of their salary on things that VAT are due on. E.g. if you pay 25% in tax + national insurance, then your net salary is 75% of your gross. If you spend 1/3 of that on mortage/rent, you're left with half of your gross salary. This leaves you with VAT adding a theoretical maximum of 10 percentage points to your taxes. But of course, in reality you have a bunch of other costs that VAT aren't charged on, and a number of essential goods such as most food are zero rated, and a number of additional goods are charged at reduced rates. Last time I did the maths for myself (earning well beyond average), despite the headline VAT rate for the UK of 20%, I paid less than 4% of my salary towards VAT. Overall my tax level was comparable to e.g. California (and if factoring in health insurance etc., California would have been much more expensive if I wanted to ensure equivalent coverage). Your mileage will vary depending on what you spend your money on. Now, if you spend a lot of your income on gasoline, you have a point - it will drive up the taxes you pay a lot. And also, there certainly are US states that would be cheaper. But a comparison like that is pretty meaningless without factoring in cost of living and salary levels as well.
- jaequery 9y agoim actually quite surprised that the online candy market is still so small. candy in general is a multi billion dollar industry and with the benefit of the large hn community and its multiple first page posts, i expected them to have grew to a mega online mall for candies by now. its quite an interesting case, what could be the problem here?
- bemmu 9y agoPartly my reluctance to expand to having a warehouse of products. As it is now I know exactly how many of each product I need, so there is no need to store anything except only for the duration of shipping. It also means mostly shipping can be done in batches, instead of daily like a mega online mall would require.
- justinclift 9y agoAny idea when you'll get the stats article done? :D
- sushid 9y agoThere are a few things removed in your assumption: 1. Most prefer what they're familiar with. They grew up with the candies in their local stores so they might not be too eager to purchase foreign candies. 1. Candy is often a very impulsive purchase. You might grab a small bag or a bar at the checkout aisle. As a result, a monthly scheduled purchase might not be what people are looking for.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ythn 9y agoThis guy spends 297 USD per MONTH on convenience store snacks?? That's insane. That's roughly $10 worth of "snacks" per day.
- intro-b 9y agohaving lived in japan, the amount and quality of food/snacks/drinks/alcohol at convenience stores makes them a pretty attractive option something as simple as coffee and a sandwich in the morning and some beers and snack food after work could easily add up to a couple hundred a month, even though most of it isn't the kind of food traditionally associated with convenience store junk food
- mikekchar 9y agoYep. I live in Japan and while I probably (...uh... probably...) don't spend $10 a day at the convenience store, it would be pretty easy. I also go at least once a day. $1 for coffee, 80 cents for daifuku (the best food in the world), $1.50 for yogurt, $2 for fruit... I notice he has a bag of beef jerky in his picture. That's particularly expensive (probably $3 or so). I think the thing missing from the picture is that convenience stores in Japan are a lot more convenient than they are in many other places in the world. The 7-11 store near me sells vegetables, sliced meat, bacon, eggs, milk, etc, etc. So while it is common to buy months and months of food items from a grocery story (or possibly a yearly supply of mayonnaise from Costco) in NA, people tend to buy small amounts of things from smaller stores in Japan.
- ericd 9y agoYeah, the convenience stores were one of the biggest surprises for me when touring Japan. I ate a lot of my lunches at 7-11 and Lawson, whereas I completely avoid 7-11 in the US.
- jpatokal 9y agoWhile convenience store food in Japan is far superior to convenience store food pretty much anywhere else in the world (except maybe Thailand!), it's actually somewhat expensive and not as good as what you'd get in Japanese fast food chains. For example, a convenience store gyudon (beef bowl) costs more and is less tasty that Yoshinoya's standard Y300 gyudon.
- johanm1 9y agoCongratulations! Curious to know - do you need any type of FDA or import-export license to ship things in US from a foreign country?
- traviswingo 9y agoCongrats to the author. I remember first hearing about this as a side project and thinking it was a super cool and fun thing to work on! As a side note, nearly half this thread is talking about health insurance...really?
- _mb 9y agoSo cool! well done :) I found a minor bug, if you go to https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/ https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/ (note the slash at the end), then the server gives 500. Perhaps just redirect the user to https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes for a better UX.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- JoeDaDude 9y agoGreat idea! Is there any interest in shipping instant Miso soup from Japan? Trader Joe's has discontinued their offering and I am looking for a replacement.
- myth_drannon 9y agoI'm surprised it still succeeds despite CrateJoy having a bunch of Japanese candy subscriptions
- malux85 9y agoI love Candy Japan - are there any services like this for other countries?
- godzillabrennus 9y agoDon't know but there is another for Japan called Japan Crate. http://www.japancrate.com http://www.japancrate.com
- gotrecruit 9y agoshameless plug - i run supercandyshop.com and i can confidently say our box is way more value packed than any other box out there. we ship Asian candies, mostly premium Japanese and Korean candies, but we also search for high quality and seasonal candies from other parts of Asia like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, etc.
- Razengan 9y agoJapan has plenty of unique stuff not found anywhere else (not counting the inevitable Chinese knockoffs, which, tangentially, almost seems to be a law of physics; if something exists China will make a copy of it, but I digress.) #IdeaForHN: Someone could start a service where people sign up for receiving random goods from Japan, from their preferred categories (e.g. video games, figurines, sex toys, etc.)
- texteller 9y agoReally happy to see the figures :), stories like this are highly inspirational to me. I am sure it's not going to take a long time to touch $1M in profits too. Keep up your hard work!
- syntaxing 9y agoGood to see Candy Japan growing! I was a huge fan of the article about making an algorithm to pack the candy that showed up on HN [1]. After the article, I spent the next week or two looking into packing algorithms... [1]https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/algorithmic-fitting-of-japanese-candy https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/algorithmic-fit...
- lsaferite 9y agoBox filling algos are rough. Working in ecomm for many years and trying to optimize costs, you spend a lot of time thinking about these kinds of problems. Apparently Amazon's answer is "F it" as they send massive boxes for tiny things frequently. Slightly related, I worked in the sign printing industry for many years as well. There we also had fitting algorithms for ganging vector designs into runs for printing and cutting on large format printers. Those are a lot easier since it's 2D only, but they are still hard to get to perfection.
- syntaxing 9y agoYeah it's crazy when you think about it. We somehow manage with new break through on voice, image, and speech recognition but yet we still struggle figuring out how to efficiently pack things in a box or plate.
- i_am_viet 9y agoHave you considered offering a savory snacks crate, which doesn't consist of majority ramen? Japan Crate has the Umai crate, which we (Tofugu) subscribed to for six months; majority of the contents were ramen :/ Was hoping for some chips and other goodies.
- stevekemp 9y agoNow I'm wondering if I should start mailing Finnish Salmiakki to people. Downside is I suspect repeat business might be rare!
- gotrecruit 9y agoas someone operating a similar candy subscription service, we have been considering that offering (a savory snacks box) but the issue with shipping things like chips is that they have so much air in the packaging itself. this is a problem because let's say we ship in a small box, which for us usually contains around 1kg of candies, it can only contain at most four small bags of chips. for four bags of chips, taking shipping costs into consideration, it would cost close to 40 dollars, with more than half of the costs coming from shipping. would people really be willing to pay 40-50 a month for 4 bags of exotic chips?
- i_am_viet 9y agoAhh right. This is definitely a road block :( What was the cost analysis like to include a diverse selection of savory items? Filling an entire box with chips is definitely not cost effective, but including one with a mix of other goods seems plausible? Is there demand for a "snacks" box consisting of sweet and savory? The problem I had with Umai crate was nearly every box was just ramen. Might as well call it the ramen box.
- gotrecruit 9y agowell yeah there were some demand for snack boxes from customers who were keen on Japanese chocolates and confectionaries like Pocky, Glico as well as exotic chip flavors from Asia. interestingly, there was even a request for a ramen box. it's not something we've written off entirely, it's definitely something my business partner and i still discuss from time to time. if you genuinely are interested in a savory box, drop me an email at sales@supercandyshop.com. i'd be willing to start that new line if there is even a single interested subscriber. i will make sure there's no ramen haha.