Oursue your passion

 

Secrets from the Marketplace, Part I: Pursue Your Passion

August 20, 2013

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With this post, I begin a three-part series I call Secrets from the Marketplace. One of the great strengths of Rakuten is the vast array of talent and creativity that exists throughout our Internet services eco-system. Every day, there are ambitious, creative minds coming up with new ways to do business and make our customers happy. In this series, I will share some of the secrets our merchants have discovered.
Today’s secret: Pursue your passion.
iDog is a business that thrives on love. Nami Hasegawa was working at a web-design company in Nagoya when her mother, then the president of a children’s clothing maker, asked her for advice about making clothes for pets.
Nami seized the opportunity and set up the iDog shop on Rakuten Ichiba in Japan. Now the company makes 200,000 items of pet clothing a year, ranging from warm winter dog jackets to morning and wedding dresses for canines attending owners’ nuptials.
No one would argue that any dog needs a wedding dress. But Nami’s business doesn’t run on “need”. It runs on “passion”. This comes through in the virtual community iDog has created alongside its apparel business. Nami and other team members write and post about their pets. Customers take photos and post about their own pets Nami often uses these “customers” as models for her catalog. By creating a community, iDog doesn’t just sell pet apparel. It acts as a platform and connection point for customer and their beloved pets.
The next time you are focused on creating the next new technology, the next new efficiency, the next new tactic, remember: sometimes, the answer is not a gadget or a process or an operation. It could be an emotion.
My book: Marketplace 3.0
Photo: Screen capture, http://global.rakuten.com/en/store/idog.