Le Wagon ApéroTalk: From blogger to entrepreneur, with Thomas Bertrand
Most French people who were dreaming about Japan 10 years ago know him. Or more specifically they know his blog, “La rivière aux canards” (the litteral translation for 鴨川), one of Kyoto’s famous rivers. And what started for Thomas as a 1-hour-per-day passion spent on Blogger turned year after year into two businesses.
During this very personal talk, we had a chance to discover what led him to first open Bento&Co, a bento boxes online shop, and later on Ship&Co, a smart way to automate shipping from Japan to the rest of the world. What struck us the most With Thomas’ story? Every decision he made, whether it was to open two businesses or a shop in Kyoto, seemed to flow naturally from his day-to-day experience — He never forced himself into becoming an entrepreneur.
What to do during your commute?
Before social networks and #foodporn appeared (and our attention span dwindled to chunks of 30 seconds), blogging used to be the favorite online channel to share your adventures. When Thomas started “La rivière aux canards”, there already was a few French bloggers in Tokyo, but no one to cover Koyto’s unique environment: “I started in 2005, mostly talking about things I had for dinner, what I liked (and disliked) about Japan, people I would meet on the train” Thomas starts, “and I was really passionate about it: blogging every day, spending 1 or 2 hours to write an article. Back then I was working in Osaka, and during my commute I would spend 1 hour just to think about what to write in the evening”.
If you’re thinking about blogging, the one single advice Thomas has is regularity. And by blogging every day, he progressively grew his audience to 1,000 views for each post “I was spending half an hour every day to answer mails, comments… People were also contacting me to meet me or have dinner. And yes, I did answer a few mails during my day job” Thomas continues, “That’s also when I heard about a French guy selling online through his store La Fraise, and I thought: What if I opened my own online shop? That one Friday evening, I was on Skype with my mum, and she mentioned about Bento. I researched about it, and I guess I made up my mind after just 30 minutes: I’d sell bento boxes”.
Shipping bento boxes around the world
For those who wonder, we’re not talking about daily meals sent across continents by air: Bento&Co is selling the bento box itself. Even though the idea felt obvious for Thomas when he started in 2008, people around him had a different opinion: “Friends I was talking to did not believe it had potential… On my side I was sure it would work, and it ended up coming at the right time: the foodie culture was starting, people were becoming more conscious about their health, and being able to cook your meal and bring it to work in a nice box almost became a trend. Keep in mind it was a couple of years before Instagram launch, and another couple of years before taking pictures of your meal became a thing”.
So how do you start an online shop? “I already had a Shopify account, and two people I met through my blog, one designer and one developer, helped me set it up nicely. I basically got started with 50,000¥”. Obviously, Thomas had to convince a few people around, including his wife and the tax office “I had no idea how it would work tax-wise, but a friend of mine just told me to get started and see what happens. So I went to the tax office, and told them ‘I am going to start an online business’. Apparently they were ok with that”. One thing that came back several times during the talk: Thomas don’t think he could have started this business without his blog’s audience “People I met from my blog were helping me, and obviously my readers were my first customers”.
Since then, Thomas expanded his bento boxes providers’ network, and pay a lot of attention to his relationship with local craftsmen: “We work every single day with customers we don’t see, but we do work really closely with our makers. For example we have Hakoya, located in Kaga, and they do all these boxes by hand. We’re happy to be able to make their craftsmanship known abroad”.
From shipping to Ship&Co
What do you need to run an e-commerce boutique? Well, not much. Bento&Co is using mainstream industry tools like Shopify, Stripe, Mailchimp and obviously have an account on each and every social network. Thomas is actually pretty positive about the quality of service he gets from Shopify and Mailchimp “Shopify costs us a couple of hundred USD a month, same goes for Mailchimp. We did a benchmark, but money-wise I’d say there is no service more efficient than these two”. One thing he was not so pleased about, though, was the shipping process taking more and more of his time every day: “We started receiving orders from all around the world, and during Christmas we’d receive 100 orders a day. The thing is, I had to manually copy and paste shipping details to get the shipping form, and that was taking me 5 minutes per order…” So after realizing he could spend his time more efficiently doing marketing or interacting with his customers, Thomas started his second venture: a tool that would automate shipping form creation, and enable you to print one in less than 20 seconds.
It took him two years to get to a satisfying prototype, and you can now get a shipping form printed in 3 clicks: select the order, select the shipper, and print the form. And what started as just a tool to simplify his life is becoming a bigger project: Ship&Co just raised almost 1 million USD to accelerate its development. That’s where Thomas gets his “raising funds” advice from: “You just need to ask yourself the right questions. Is it the right time? Why do I need money? Do I want THIS VC firm to fund me? Can I get a better deal? I received a first term sheet last summer, but somehow we did not close the deal, and I received a much better offer from another VC firm later on. Basically, if you receive one offer, you can probably receive another one”. Since he asked himself the right questions, he also knew exactly what to do with the money: “We just hired new engineers (including one of Le Wagon Tokyo’s alumni!), and we have 5 of them now. What I like is that they’re not only good tech people, they’re also really cool guys overall. Every single day we’re going to go out for lunch all together… food plays a team building role”.
What’s next?
When asked about his next steps, Thomas knows the upcoming challenges and is learning how to tackle them: “With Bento&Co I was doing B2C… Ship&Co is obviously B2B, and it’s a completely different way of doing business. We do have a business model, charging 20¥ per form printed, now we just need to convince large companies to use our tool. One critical thing is for example to understand who you need to convince: Is it the boss? The procurement manager?”.
Listening to Thomas is truly inspiring, and not a lot of entrepreneurs show this kind of pragmatism and passion. At the end of the talk, that left us wondering: What will his next business be about?
By the way: if you happen to know about React or Node, Thomas is hiring! Thanks a lot Thomas for this talk, and good luck for what’s coming :-)
