Looking Back on Our Second Year

NowVillage, which came into the world in October 2020, finally closes its second year today, 30 September 2022.

I am writing this review for the people already here and for anyone thinking of joining us.

Looking back roughly on the year, we are still a long way from the organisation we want to be, and nowhere near grown up.

This year’s results ➡ what we strengthened ➡ where we will focus next year

That is the order I will take.

1. This year’s results

Performance was as follows.

Revenue year on year: 305%
Gross profit year on year: 250%
Net profit year on year: 25000%
※ Approximate figures, as the accounts are not yet closed.
Net profit comes out as an odd-looking number because the first year was so low.

In measures beyond the P&L,

Number of clients

Cumulative clients grew from 45 to 140.

Site page views

Website

Up from 2,000 page views a month to 10,000 a month.

We now get enquiries through the website consistently every month.

Headcount

We closed the second year with 8 full-time employees, 10 contractors and 3 interns.

P&L, balance sheet and cash flow all grew roughly two to three times year on year.
The digital marketing market is worth 500 billion yen, and for a company in its founding years turning over a few hundred million, I take that growth rate as a pass.

2. What we strengthened (business)

① Relationships

Staff turnover across our first two years: 0%.
Nobody took time off for health reasons either, whether a leave of absence or appointments for treatment.
A start-up is life or death to begin with.
One small distortion in the organisation and growth stops; you are left chasing ad hoc fixes, the state of an infant, in other words.

Within that, the thing we value most is this internal communication and these relationships.
Our people took on the company’s goals positively, explored the craft, shared what they knew and helped each other out when things went wrong.

Closing the second year on such good terms is what pleases me most.

② Wider services and better quality

Both the marketing services we offer and their quality improved greatly.

▽Services
Last year: Google Ads, Yahoo Ads, Facebook, affiliate, Twitter, YouTube

This year: all of the above plus SEO, Instagram, Indeed, regional revitalisation marketing, tourism tour development, training for hotels, recruitment pitch decks, marketing consulting, recruitment consulting and support for running seminars

▽Industries served
On top of the first year, the second let us widen the range of our services considerably.
New clients included the insurance industry, which is growing; taxi, restaurant and tourism businesses, where digital marketing has yet to take hold; and government bodies, credit unions and national universities, which have come to value knowledge of social media in recent years.

Before

After

Recruitment agency for recent graduates Foreign-owned distributor Care-sector recruitment agency HR CRM System development Production Home renovation Recruitment consulting Graduate placement for university sports club members Engineer staffing Recruitment agency specialising in nursery teachers Shopping centre promotion

Construction staffing Staffing specialising in homemakers Insurance agency Welfare-sector recruitment agency B2B call centre MOS training school Adhesives manufacturer OEM manufacturing One-to-one tutoring school BPO Solar power Taxi SaaS for tax accountant career moves Yakitori restaurant Hotel Credit union Ehime Prefecture tourism DMO Miyagi Prefecture Recruitment RPO National university Private university

Honestly, breaking into a new industry is very hard, and the reason we have been able to build a record across so many of them comes down to understanding the client’s business, researching competitors, planning, execution and verification,
doing these basics thoroughly.
Clients always look at a track record in their own industry, so when a firm like ours has none, the only way is to use your head, move your feet, research and bring the client a proposal they can accept.

That our three CXOs, Aoki, Tabiraki and Takayama, led the way in widening our customer range with so little track record behind us is truly something.

3. What we strengthened (education)

Alongside the business activity above, this year we put effort into education in many places, outreach in organisational terms.

① Tokyo Medical and Dental University

I spoke as a lecturer on the Digital Marketing Course within the Entrepreneurship Development Programme run jointly by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Tokyo Medical and Dental University.
Following the good reception last year, in addition to the Digital Marketing Course I was asked to take on Marketing Fundamentals
as well.
The lectures are for doctors, pharmaceutical manufacturers and doctoral students who will be the dentists of the future.

② iU, the Professional University of Information and Management for Innovation

We came to run a seminar at iU, the Professional University of Information and Management for Innovation, called Virtual Lab: Digital Marketing.
We work hard to convey the depth of digital marketing to current students with strong entrepreneurial drive.

③ University of Tsukuba, Human Biology degree programme, business leader lecturer

As a business leader lecturer for doctoral and international students, I teach entirely in English under the seminar title How to Start Up and Digital Marketing.
Combining the language skills from graduating a US university, the experience of founding four companies and my knowledge of digital marketing, I pass on the drive it takes to become a global professional.

④ Japan Insurance Claims Foundation

We ran digital marketing training for osteopathic clinics.
The talk covered how to win new customers through improvements to Google Maps listings and websites.

⑤ All Japan Hotel Federation, Kinki Branch

We delivered twelve lectures on digital marketing for the tourism industry, where inbound demand had shrunk, and for the hotel industry in particular.
In workshop form we pulled apart the customer personas at each hotel and the claims that lead them to book, then had participants learn marketing methods and put them into practice.

⑥ Zao Town, Miyagi Prefecture

In Zao, about an hour from Sendai, we gave four lectures for local business owners with the aim of revitalising the area.
Herb growers, dairy farmers, accommodation providers and many others took part, and we worked through how to present themselves on Twitter, Instagram, Google and their websites.

⑦ Ikata Town, Ehime Prefecture, and Sadamisaki Tourism Corporation

Ikata in Ehime is about an hour from Matsuyama Airport. It is rich in resources, with sea urchin, octopus, abalone and other seafood. Compared with neighbouring municipalities it has no standout tourist attraction, accommodation or restaurant, and the lecture covered how to approach visitors in that situation.

4. Where we will focus next year

[Better quality]
That is the one thing.
Winning new clients is essential if we are to grow.
But in the industries and services we work in, referrals by word of mouth are a very efficient way to win work, and rather than clumsily pushing up the number of clients we serve, tripling the performance of the companies already under contract gives a far better return on our time in every sense.

You can pull a company’s state apart with all sorts of quantitative lenses, clients served, revenue created, our own fees, but that is not what NowVillage should be doing at its current size.
Think through the problems of the client in front of you together with them, do the work, draw the strategy on their behalf and be trusted with carrying it out.
That stance is what comes back as numbers.
We are still third rate. Let us at least become second rate in year three.

That is the warning I give myself; we will face the year quietly, without conceit.

5. In summary

Performance is strong, the organisation is strong, our skills are firmly in place and customers are starting to value them.
But our presence in the industry is still weak, and the marketing work we are entrusted with is still limited.

The purpose we have set
[ Make It Possible – widening choices, enriching lives]
will guide us: for our customers and for our people, we will focus on widening the possibilities for decisions in business and in life.

We ask for your continued support for NowVillage.

Thank you, everyone, as always! I am looking forward to Guam on the company trip! (A week after writing this I should be raising a glass in Guam.)

Kuniyuki Imamura, President and Representative Director