
Candy Japan total sales cross $1M - myth_drannon
https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/sales-cross-million-dollars
======
smaili
For those jumping to conclusions, beware:

> Most of this money has been spent on product and shipping, meaning I haven't
> made anywhere close to a million dollars in profit with this.

~~~
lsaferite
And a counterpoint

> But the great thing is, I've been able to live off of the sales.

So, he's at least been able to live off the profit, which is great.

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tunnuz
Kudos to the author, Candy Japan has always been one of my favourite stories
on hacker news :)

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johanm1
Congratulations!

Curious to know - do you need any type of FDA or import-export license to ship
things in US from a foreign country?

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metalliqaz
Seems HN users are familiar and even enthusiastic with Candy Japan. I'm not
sure I understand, though. It's just a dude offering intermediary shipping,
right? Am I missing some interesting tech stuff here?

~~~
bemmu
The service is simple, no fancy tech (it's just a bunch of Python). Possibly
the initial appeal was that random-boxes-of-surprises services were rare, and
my openness with the numbers.

~~~
Razengan
You should expand the service (or start a new one) into other categories of
physical goods: manga, novels, video games, figurines and other merchandise
not found anywhere else outside of Japan.

Let subscribers pick their preferred categories and allow them to choose the
amount of money they want to pay each month + shipping costs,

then you go out and buy random things from one or more of those categories (in
order of user preference), and keep a record of which items you sent to each
customer, to avoid duplicates.

Social fluff: Let users post on-site reviews of the items they receive from
you.

Ideal outcome: People discover the uniqueness of Japan, share it with their
friends and other users, and you help spread some joy and pocket the change.

~~~
aninhumer
How about just offering other kinds of snacks? I'm vaguely interested in this
service, but I'm also trying not to eat too much sugar.

~~~
mercurysmessage
Japanese sweets, especially chocolate, taste like they have less sugar to me.
They might be the same, but you could be better off with them than others.

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syntaxing
Good to see Candy Japan growing! I was a huge fan of the article about making
an algorithm to pack the candy that showed up on HN [1]. After the article, I
spent the next week or two looking into packing algorithms...

[1][https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/algorithmic-
fit...](https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/algorithmic-fitting-of-
japanese-candy)

~~~
lsaferite
Box filling algos are rough. Working in ecomm for many years and trying to
optimize costs, you spend a lot of time thinking about these kinds of
problems. Apparently Amazon's answer is "F it" as they send massive boxes for
tiny things frequently.

Slightly related, I worked in the sign printing industry for many years as
well. There we also had fitting algorithms for ganging vector designs into
runs for printing and cutting on large format printers. Those are a lot easier
since it's 2D only, but they are still hard to get to perfection.

~~~
syntaxing
Yeah it's crazy when you think about it. We somehow manage with new break
through on voice, image, and speech recognition but yet we still struggle
figuring out how to efficiently pack things in a box or plate.

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traviswingo
Congrats to the author. I remember first hearing about this as a side project
and thinking it was a super cool and fun thing to work on!

As a side note, nearly half this thread is talking about health
insurance...really?

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_mb
So cool! well done :)

I found a minor bug, if you go to [https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-
scenes/](https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/) (note the slash at the
end), then the server gives 500. Perhaps just redirect the user to
[https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-
scenes](https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes) for a better UX.

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i_am_viet
Have you considered offering a savory snacks crate, which doesn't consist of
majority ramen?

Japan Crate has the Umai crate, which we (Tofugu) subscribed to for six
months; majority of the contents were ramen :/ Was hoping for some chips and
other goodies.

~~~
gotrecruit
as someone operating a similar candy subscription service, we have been
considering that offering (a savory snacks box) but the issue with shipping
things like chips is that they have so much air in the packaging itself. this
is a problem because let's say we ship in a small box, which for us usually
contains around 1kg of candies, it can only contain at most four small bags of
chips. for four bags of chips, taking shipping costs into consideration, it
would cost close to 40 dollars, with more than half of the costs coming from
shipping. would people really be willing to pay 40-50 a month for 4 bags of
exotic chips?

~~~
i_am_viet
Ahh right. This is definitely a road block :(

What was the cost analysis like to include a diverse selection of savory
items? Filling an entire box with chips is definitely not cost effective, but
including one with a mix of other goods seems plausible? Is there demand for a
"snacks" box consisting of sweet and savory?

The problem I had with Umai crate was nearly every box was just ramen. Might
as well call it the ramen box.

~~~
gotrecruit
well yeah there were some demand for snack boxes from customers who were keen
on Japanese chocolates and confectionaries like Pocky, Glico as well as exotic
chip flavors from Asia. interestingly, there was even a request for a ramen
box. it's not something we've written off entirely, it's definitely something
my business partner and i still discuss from time to time. if you genuinely
are interested in a savory box, drop me an email at sales@supercandyshop.com.
i'd be willing to start that new line if there is even a single interested
subscriber. i will make sure there's no ramen haha.

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texteller
Really happy to see the figures :), stories like this are highly inspirational
to me. I am sure it's not going to take a long time to touch $1M in profits
too. Keep up your hard work!

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ythn
This guy spends 297 USD per MONTH on convenience store snacks??

That's insane. That's roughly $10 worth of "snacks" _per day_.

~~~
intro-b
having lived in japan, the amount and quality of food/snacks/drinks/alcohol at
convenience stores makes them a pretty attractive option

something as simple as coffee and a sandwich in the morning and some beers and
snack food after work could easily add up to a couple hundred a month, even
though most of it isn't the kind of food traditionally associated with
convenience store junk food

~~~
mikekchar
Yep. I live in Japan and while I probably (...uh... probably...) don't spend
$10 a day at the convenience store, it would be pretty easy. I also go at
least once a day. $1 for coffee, 80 cents for daifuku (the best food in the
world), $1.50 for yogurt, $2 for fruit... I notice he has a bag of beef jerky
in his picture. That's particularly expensive (probably $3 or so).

I think the thing missing from the picture is that convenience stores in Japan
are a _lot_ more convenient than they are in many other places in the world.
The 7-11 store near me sells vegetables, sliced meat, bacon, eggs, milk, etc,
etc. So while it is common to buy months and months of food items from a
grocery story (or possibly a yearly supply of mayonnaise from Costco) in NA,
people tend to buy small amounts of things from smaller stores in Japan.

~~~
ericd
Yeah, the convenience stores were one of the biggest surprises for me when
touring Japan. I ate a lot of my lunches at 7-11 and Lawson, whereas I
completely avoid 7-11 in the US.

~~~
jpatokal
While convenience store food in Japan is far superior to convenience store
food pretty much anywhere else in the world (except maybe Thailand!), it's
actually somewhat expensive and not as good as what you'd get in Japanese fast
food chains. For example, a convenience store gyudon (beef bowl) costs more
and is less tasty that Yoshinoya's standard Y300 gyudon.

~~~
mattnumbe
I think it's mainly because you can't find a Yoshinoya in a town/road that
isn't even on google maps but you can find 3 lawson's and a famlymart.
(convenience≠cheap)

~~~
ericd
Also, afaik Yoshinoya doesn't carry anything that can compete with Family Mart
Milk Cocoa. Japanese convenience store drinks are so good.

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jaequery
im actually quite surprised that the online candy market is still so small.
candy in general is a multi billion dollar industry and with the benefit of
the large hn community and its multiple first page posts, i expected them to
have grew to a mega online mall for candies by now. its quite an interesting
case, what could be the problem here?

~~~
sushid
There are a few things removed in your assumption:

1\. Most prefer what they're familiar with. They grew up with the candies in
their local stores so they might not be too eager to purchase foreign candies.

1\. Candy is often a very impulsive purchase. You might grab a small bag or a
bar at the checkout aisle. As a result, a monthly scheduled purchase might not
be what people are looking for.

~~~
EliRivers
_Most prefer what they 're familiar with._

Don't they just. Convincing people who grew up eating ketchup that it's
revolting is almost impossible.

~~~
Rapzid
Mustard is the one, true condiment.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Pardon me, would have you any Grey Poupon.

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zacharycohn
Congrats!!! You are one of my favorite stories to follow. Keep up the great
work, and congrats on the new family member. :)

~~~
bemmu
Thank you. Went from balancing "dev mode" and "business mode", to having
"daddy mode" added on top.

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myth_drannon
I'm surprised it still succeeds despite CrateJoy having a bunch of Japanese
candy subscriptions

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Razengan
Japan has plenty of unique stuff not found anywhere else (not counting the
inevitable Chinese knockoffs, which, tangentially, almost seems to be a law of
physics; if something exists China _will_ make a copy of it, but I digress.)

#IdeaForHN: Someone could start a service where people sign up for receiving
random goods from Japan, from their preferred categories (e.g. video games,
figurines, sex toys, etc.)

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malux85
I love Candy Japan - are there any services like this for other countries?

~~~
gotrecruit
shameless plug - i run supercandyshop.com and i can confidently say our box is
way more value packed than any other box out there. we ship Asian candies,
mostly premium Japanese and Korean candies, but we also search for high
quality and seasonal candies from other parts of Asia like Singapore,
Malaysia, Thailand, etc.

------
JoeDaDude
Great idea! Is there any interest in shipping instant Miso soup from Japan?
Trader Joe's has discontinued their offering and I am looking for a
replacement.

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aphextron
>"Health insurance To me this was the biggest sticker shock, which I didn't
mention at all in my old post as I wasn't paying it yet, as I was still tax
resident in Finland. Now I'm currently paying 508 EUR or 569 USD for my health
insurance here [for a family of 3]. That's not a typo or a yearly cost, that's
what it costs every single month."

Sounds like a bargain

~~~
YorickPeterse
In The Netherlands this would be quite expensive, though it depends a bit on
what your insurance would cover. For example, my health insurance plan
(covering just me, not a family of 3) costs around €110 / month ($130) but is
a fairly basic plan and requires that I pay the first €300 myself (which is
stupid if you ask me) per year, anything after that is covered.

You can get cheaper or more expensive plans depending on the amount of value
you pay yourself (known as the "eigen risico" or "own risk"), but the cheapest
I could find was around €80 / month.

~~~
davedx
Family insurance plans in NL can be pretty good though. Can't remember what my
wife pays for her and our 3 kids but it's less than 4x one person.

~~~
chesterc
IIRC it's exactly 1X. Children are covered by their parents' insurance.

