Truemors
Rockwave, Inc., a mobile technology startup company based in Otsu, Japan has released the beta of it's service, called aiship and aidrop, which the company says will allow people in Japan and North America to engage in e-commerce simply via their mobile telephones. The service is also available for conventional PCs.
The service's business model is based on the drop shipping model which has been popular for years in the US and other Western countries. The drop shipping concept, as a business model in Japan, only appeared in the last half of 2006. By contrast, currently nearly half of the items sold on eBay, the US based electronic marketplace, are thought to be drop shipped.
Drop shipping via an application service provider (ASP) such as aidrop/aiship allows resellers to sell, market and promote directly to customers without having to stock inventory, process payment or ship items.
In the US, there are several established drop shipping service providers, however none in Japan. Such a system that covers the world's two largest markets and economies is making some waves in Japan, being reported on news portals such as Yahoo!, Google, Excite, Infoseek, CNET, ZDNet and others.
Rockwave, Inc., in partnership with Yamato Transport Co., Ltd., Japan's largest delivery service, delivers products to the customer directly from the vendor, via a completely automated system. Currently the system is only available in Japan but Rockwave says that an English language system and deliver support will be released for North America sometime later this year.
The aidrop/aiship system includes a number of feature and function firsts; a web-based version of the tanpin kanri system first developed by 7-11 Japan (demand chain management), JAN code (Japan Article Number barcode) ASP in addition to recent trends including convenience store payment and mobile telephone payment.
Rockwave founder and CEO, Hiroyuki Iwanami said, "There are so many interesting and fascinating products in the world. We are looking forward to being able to ship high-quality, unique Japanese products to customers in North America and to source novel and reasonably priced products from North America to customers in Japan -- all via the ubiquitous and convenient mobile telephone."
Comments (0)