TOKYO, Oct. 30 — A marketer of Japanese-grown rice is to expand online sales of cooked rice packs to China, aiming to capitalize on Chinese consumer spending power in its fast-growing e-commerce market.
ZEN-NOH Pearl Rice Corp., the marketing arm specializing Japanese-grown rice of the country’s largest agricultural cooperative, has begun selling cooked rice packs at Wandou.
An online shopping platform for Chinese consumers, Wandou is operated by online seller and trader Inagora, based in Tokyo.
Inagora was set up in 2014 jointly by Weng Yongbiao and Minako Yamamoto. It has created a niche in China’s growing online market, specializing in Japanese goods.
Today, about 35,000 items from 190 Japanese manufacturers are available at Wandou, the company’s platform. The number of downloads from the site has reached 2.5 million this year.
To make Japanese goods more attractive, Ingora produces a promotional video telling the story behind Japanese goods and it uploads footage on this to the site.
Ingora has shot a video showing how Japanese cooked rice packs are prepared, as Chinese consumers are not familiar with the product, the company explains.
Products at Wandou are available on the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group’s platforms, and it could help Japanese agricultural cooperatives to expand into overseas sales channels.
“We hope that this will help connect Japanese-grown products and the vast Chinese market, revitalizing the Japanese local economies,” said an official from ZEN-NOH Peal Rice Corp.