A few days ago I came across an intreagueing new company, based in the UK. Desu Box! Desu Box are aiming to start a monthly subscription service that will delivered tasty Japanese sweets, drinks and snacks to your door. This seems like a fantastic idea to me as it'll cut down on shipping times from abroad, and as far as I'm aware there isn't already something like Desu Box in the UK. I love Japanese foods so I followed them on Facebook to get regular updates of when they might be ready to launch. As this is something I'm very interested in and I thought my dear readers may be too, I contacted the owners of Desu Box to see if they'd like to do a mini interview!
Hello Desu Box!
Thank you for agreeing to a mini interview! I'm
hoping I can spread the word about yourselves!
Q: Your
company name is Desu Box - who is behind Desu box and what made you pick the
name?
A: We’re a couple of
friends, James (writing) and Jon, who both love Japanese tea, food and snacks.
We (semi-)regularly go to the London Comic Con where we usually stock up on
bags full of Pocky, Melon Pan and other snacks. Personally, I’m the one known
for eating weird food at work!We thought about many
different names and originally planned to come up with one that had a meaning,
as Chanoyu does (the parent company we started), but in the end ‘Desu’ just
sounded fun and out of the ordinary!
Q: Desu
box is hoping to be a monthly box full of tasty Japanese goodies. What made you
decide that you wanted to start a monthly subscription service, and why
Japanese snacks?
A: I stumbled across a UK based retailer and while stocking up on a few
snacks the thought just crossed my mind for a moment, but after looking for a
subscription box and finding only international options I decided to research a
little more, finding that these types of boxes are popular for almost every
other niche, but with nothing already available in the UK (other than
international options).
After attending so
many conventions we’ve tried a myriad of foods - we also import Japanese tea
(which is part of a future plan for the parent company, Chanoyu) and can’t stop
drinking it! It’s been years of exploration that’s lead us to try so many
different foods, so we had the idea that we would share the experience of
trying new things with our friends.
Q: What’s
your favourite thing about the thought of starting Desu Box?
A: My favourite thing must be that there
are so many people I have spoken to who really want us to succeed so we can all
try different snacks every month.
The emails we have had and the comments
on Facebook are so supportive and positive, it’s quite amazing just how many
people there are out there who think along the same kind of lines that we do!
Considering we’re only eight days into starting, there must be so many more who
think the same!
As a second favourite, there are many,
many snacks that we haven’t yet tried ourselves, which we’re both really
looking forward to trying!
Q: What
would you like Desu Box to achieve in the future?
A: As long as we can meet our minimum
Kickstarter funding goal that’s more than enough for us to ask! It would be so
satisfying to know that others will be anticipating their boxes and will enjoy
them every month.
We will have a very low funding goal of
about 50 backers (we’re still not fully sure), which will mean we can just about pull this off, but we really want
to put as much into the boxes as possible, so we’re talking with suppliers to
negotiate lower prices for higher quantity orders.
Q: It takes a lot of work to start a company,
what so far has been the most straight forward thing and what has been more
complicated?
A:The most
straightforward thing so far must be Facebook, which is turning out to be a
great tool to help us reach new people, although it is getting expensive with
all of these boosted posts!
We haven’t had
anything complicated thus far so I’ll anticipate something for the future:
Outreach. We’re currently compiling a list of blogs (like yours!J) whose visitors might be interested in us, so
that we can contact them to see if the might give us a mention.
I would estimate that
we might get about 5% of those blogs to spread the word about Desu box – at
most 10%, so this will probably be the most difficult thing for us to achieve!
Q: Where would you like to see Desu Box in a
years time?
A: A year is such a long time when it comes to this stuff – we could be running
dry on minimal (~50) subscribers if the Kickstarter gets minimal funding, or
maybe we might not even have started Desu box if the campaign doesn’t get
enough backers. So this is hard!
What I’d really like to see is hundreds
of fans who’re ecstatic to be part of a community, where we can all meet at
conventions to discuss our favourite foods. Meeting the people who help make
Desu box possible will be the real success for us!
And just for fun!
Q: If you
could have any job in the world what would it be?
A: I won’t lie, I’ve always had a bit of an
entrepreneurial way of thinking so the ideal job would have to be my own
business. I would love to travel regularly, especially to Japan and China –
with Chanoyu and Desu box I’m hoping that I can do that a bit further down the
line – even if it is just for business! :D
Q: Do you have a favourite cute character?
A: Favourite cute
character, hmmm… You’ve got me on this one! …Pikachu? :D
I really hope Desu box managed to fund their kickstarter as this would be a fantastic company to have in the UK.
If you'd like to support Desu Box or find out more you can reach them at the below
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| Website |
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| Facebook |
Ta-ta for now
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