An Interview with Desu Box!

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

Website

Facebook

Ta-ta for now

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