Transcript
Speaker: Hey y'all, got a fun episode today that's going to be a little bit different than our usual discussions about Japanese property. Today we talk about buying a small business in Japan.
Speaker: That's right. We're trying something a little bit new. Oh yeah. And we also discuss our new merch store where you can buy our limited release t-shirt. Take a look at the show notes for the link to the store and we hope you enjoy the episode.
Speaker: Welcome back, everybody. Episode, I'm going to take a guess. i so I was going to say 96. Episode 97. Okay, we're very close to 100 episodes. This is the Buying a House in Japan podcast.
Speaker: I'm your host, Joey, joined by co-host Take. We've got some cool stuff to talk about today. A lot of cool stuff. But if you are new here and listening for the first time, again, Joey and I are college friends. We studied abroad in Tokyo. We got laid off from our tech jobs 10 years later and decided to buy ah a cheap abandoned home in Japan, in a city called Beppu.
Speaker: That started this whole adventure where we made a website, Akiyamark.com. Hopefully that's where you found us. And yes, we can now help people through the purchasing process. And we're also doing a couple more cool projects, but that's a quick snippet on us.
Speaker: Quick snippet that one, Akia ended up ballooning into six properties total over the course of two years. We're now trying to consolidate a little bit and Ding, ding, ding.
Speaker: Topic of today's conversation. Something cool coming up that we're hoping to do. Yep. This podcast is called Buying a House in Japan, but we're going to do a little bit of a tangent wildcard episode today.
Speaker: Joey and I are considering buying a used business. I'm not sure what the right word is. Like an old business or small, medium business. Yeah, used business. yeah like what What is an akioh business?
Speaker: It's a good question. I'm not actually sure what to call it either. But yeah, this is like it's like a mergers and acquisitions website is what we've been looking at. And it's where people are selling small, medium sized businesses. That really interesting thing. Everyone probably listened to this podcast knows about Japan's declining population and its effects on the housing market. There's an oversupply of housing in Japan right now. And that's why some of these properties are incredibly cheap.
Speaker: The same thing is happening with small businesses in Japan. There's just no but no successors. Picture a small business in a countryside town in Japan.
Speaker: Most young people have left for jobs in bigger cities, and these business owners don't have anyone who is even interested in buying these businesses. So again, prices are ah reflecting that as well. And there's an oversupply of these small businesses in Japan.
Speaker: We're not experts on this subject. We are just getting started. We are not experts. We're just getting started down this path. But I have had a few conversations with other people that do this kind of thing. I know i got one guy in particular from New York who um is like,
Speaker: His business purchases a share. They don't buy the whole business. They purchase a share and then they are transform it so that the employees eventually become owners. But yeah, interesting space.
Speaker: Yeah. And like, again, it really parallels the Akiya problem in Japan, you know, with the aging demographic, there's a lot of elder owners who don't, their kids don't want to take over at that supermarket coins or supermarket corner store or something like that in the middle of Inaka. So I think there's a really, really big opportunity for foreigners, but it's also going to be, I think, very, very difficult and have a lot of friction.
Speaker: And just like, you can't just buy a business and and operate it without knowing Japanese and being there. First thing I noticed too, so in particular, Taki and I have been looking at a coin laundry near um near where we purchased one of our properties.
Speaker: And first thing that's stood stood out to me, you know is well, one prices are pretty good. So, you know, we're looking at purchasing a business for about $30,000 us.
Speaker: The other thing that sort of stood out to me, looking at a few different deals on these websites we've been looking at is like a lot of these businesses are kind of like just breaking even, um, some are profitable, but it's like, you're making six grand.
Speaker: 6,000 US dollars a year profits. So like barely profitable, some are in the red and they're still selling. Some are just barely profitable, but a lot of them appear to have lots of leased equipment or leased property. So you're buying these businesses. Again, we're new to this. Maybe this is normal for someone buying small businesses, but You're buying these businesses, but it's coming with the air conditioner leased.
Speaker: The again, coin laundry business, the dryers are leased, the washing machines are leased, the properties leased. So like you're buying a bunch of debt essentially that you got to pay each month. And this is a disclaimer, like we are, do not know what we're doing here. So if you are a listener and you have experience doing M&A on small businesses in Japan, please reach out to us.
Speaker: I think Joe and I talk a lot about this, you know, at the end of the day, we are trying to earn some revenue. where're But the core of it, I think we're trying to have a lot of fun. you know this This investment doesn't really make sense. I'd say if you look at what we've been doing, but I think it sounds like a lot of fun.
Speaker: And I think we're just kind of following our nose on this one. Yeah. Like buying a business that's generating six grand a year. It's probably probably the fees just to get this in our name and get the leases transferred over. It's going to be more than $6,000. So, um, not, not worth it, but I think it's just like, we bought six Akias and I think we were talking recently, i think two kind of trends going on with where we're at is we're trying to consolidate the properties and just kind of like where it's a one. Yeah. You know, maybe sell a few more properties and and consolidate into one. flagship property.
Speaker: But the second thing is i think like when we're looking at real estate now versus businesses, I just found the excitement. We had so much more excitement looking at the businesses versus ah property. Maybe that's because we've already got six under our belt. So I think we're just kind of following what is exciting to us to like, like I said, you know, keep having fun.
Speaker: My argument for someone who is scrutinizing our investments is we're trying every asset class here. you know we bought a sure We're trying to use short-term rental, mid-term rental, long-term rental, demolition, flips.
Speaker: And i yeah things we we still want to try are land purchases, condo purchase. um But yeah, small, medium business, I think is definitely on that roadmap, especially with We just did a podcast with Nick in Japan remotely. The business manager visa is changing a lot.
Speaker: This could be a partial solution to get you there. Buying a business that already has an employee that has a business plan. I don't think you can avoid the capital injection needed, but that's kind of ah um my rationale if someone is going to press us press on this. But real talk, I think this is going to be really fun, Joey.
Speaker: Let's do it. Yeah, I mean, honestly, like the smart financial decision is just like put it on an index fund. So it's like, all right, given that that's... Yeah, we didn't get here because of smart financial decisions, you know? exactly.
Speaker: So the kind of giving a little bit of context, again, we are navigating a website that's very, very hard to navigate to try to find small, medium-sized businesses, maybe a business opportunity for us to make a better website. But...
Speaker: We have found a coin laundry or a laundromat near our house in Tama. It's about like eight minutes away driving. So we're like, oh, okay, this is a good proximity. We have a home base at least.
Speaker: um Desired listing price is 5.5 million yen. What does that translate to? thirty 30,000 bucks? and Around 30, I'm going to guess. Yeah. 30,000, yeah. Let's see. Yeah.
Speaker: ah You know, ah they they on this website, they don't like show where the location. It's even for people that are aware of Japanese. If you've looked at Sumo or at home, Nifty, et cetera, you know the pain points on those websites and why we built Akiya Mart in the first place.
Speaker: This website's even worse. um Pretty bad. Pretty bad. A lot of times it just says the prefecture where the business is. So it's it's like hard to understand even from like a domestic Japanese purchaser's perspective, like you know If you're on one end of the prefecture, why would you even consider a business on the other end? But you have to like literally reach out to the seller through this website to even get more information about, like all right, some hard red lines for someone purchasing businesses would be like, is it even in my town? And you can't figure that out until reaching out to these sellers. So yeah, pretty um not a great user experience.
Speaker: Friction is opportunity though. So as we go through this process, we will be documenting the friction and process of us trying to buy this. Again, it's 5.5 million yen. It's in Tama City. Tama City is located where about 30-40 minutes west of central Tokyo.
Speaker: It's known as like a bed town, which is like a commuter town. So you'll see that reflected in Tama all the commuter trains. But I think with that, it has a pretty high population density and people need to wash their laundry. So what better, I think it's a sound in theory investment.
Speaker: Yep. Like remember, we toured one of our earlier clients, one of the first clients, I think that we helped through our Akimart Direct process. Quick plug, we can help you buy a house in Japan through our Akimart Direct process. And we also have a new a system coming out soon, Akimart Care, which is post-purchase partners. So getting you set up with utility, tax representation, site visits, et cetera.
Speaker: Damn, heard it here first. What I did want to say on that topic is one of our very first Akimart Direct customers bought a place in Tama and we went to go, you know, our first customers. So we went to go see her place.
Speaker: I don't think she had space for a washer dryer. So I think given that's the condo sort of situation in this area, I think that coin laundry, lot of people probably go into coin laundries.
Speaker: Okay, so let's get, after subscribing to the site, having our Japanese representative director help us navigate and try to find some more details, I will drop some high-level numbers here.
Speaker: The revenue, to do let me try to find it. Okay, the sales per year, last fiscal year, was about 7.4 million yen, um which translates to like 50K-ish US. Okay.
Speaker: fifty kishsh u s Annual profit, 1.1 million yen, Joey. Yeah, 1.6 grand. 6 grand, so that's 500 bucks a month, I guess.
Speaker: Imagine, like... You are like, I'm curious about the owner. Like, is this their only source of income? Like this person can't be living on $6,000 a year. It must be a side business.
Speaker: Yeah. Actually, yeah the post does say that. So the post does say like, great for stay at home moms, side businesses. Like it does say that kind of thing. So maybe it is a side business for the owner.
Speaker: Says reason for selling. A successor was planned to take over the store, but the plan has now fallen through. So the owner wishes to sell. Pretty good reason. Remember that? Actually, remember when we didn't have our laundry machine in Tama and we drove and laundry at that one spot near Seiseki Sakuragaoka station?
Speaker: And that guy gave us potatoes. He's like the owner. He just gave bag of potatoes. i was like, thanks, man. yeah I still park there from time to time actually. Sometimes around Seisekisakaroka Station, there's paid parking, but sometimes it's full and there's this coin laundry that some guy, the owner gave us potatoes there once, but he has like four parking spots that are usually empty. So sometimes I will.
Speaker: Sorry, owner. I do park there sometimes. Bad boy, Joey. Anyways, okay, store opened up in 2002. The three washers and dryers were placed in 2020. So there are existing washer and dryers there. They seem to be the ones that actually use coins and they are on lease. So I think we're going to have to navigate how to release machines. We definitely, well, I think we should release machines that do Suica or Pasmo.
Speaker: or Apple Pay. I know we were excited about a cash business, but like if we are getting more serious about this, I think increasing cash flow is part of the game we're trying to play here. And i agree, like Suica or yeah, the easiest way to pay is the way to make more money.
Speaker: I'm personally stoked about the Jito Hanbaiki, the vending machine outside. It looks like the business comes with a vending machine. That's pretty cool. All right, listeners, what drink do you think we should put in the vending machine to get returns? I'm voting we get some wildcard American drink, but Joey has his vision of, ah take it away, Joey. What do you want in the vending machine?
Speaker: i don't know. It's like, a I mean, half serious, half like, if push comes to shove, would I really do this? But the dream the dream would be, you know, those the the most boring canned coffee you can get, the black,
Speaker: Boss, small can coffee. That's what I buy when I go to the vending machines because I just like the black coffee. Only that in the vending machine because the most boring. Anti-sato-san coffee.
Speaker: Yeah, no choice. Okay. All right, Taki. One other thing just to kind of hype listeners up about small businesses in Japan. I think there are some other really cool ones that i sent you this morning. i don't know if you had a time to look through. yeah Again, just kind of browsing and brainstorming.
Speaker: I think like an unmanned virtual golf kind of small business somewhere in downtown Tokyo, i think is really cool. I think unmanned businesses are really cool.
Speaker: Yep. The second one I saw was buying a real estate brokerage with a token holder. And on the thing, it said willing willing to stay on staff. I don't know how that works either. You know, a lot of the Japanese is difficult for me to read, but.
Speaker: That was my understanding someplace in Toyama. So just to like give a lot of nail salons I'm seeing as well. So just to give listeners an idea of the properties that you know they're selling for 50 grand, 30 grand, these businesses.
Speaker: In the US, I would be kind of hesitant to buy of these unmanned businesses, but in Japan, you know, I think the trust in society is so high that I don't think someone's going to come and mess up our coin laundry. Or if you do an unmanned golf kind of course thing, i don't think someone's going to mess it up. So that's why I feel like this is a lower risk type investment for us. Right.
Speaker: Does making it, so this place is 6am till midnight, does making it open. Let's say we do become the owners. Do we just make it 24 hours? Like why why even close? I don't know. we can get There's like huge strip lights and change that change the color at night. it becomes a little mood at mood light.
Speaker: That's cool. Okay, a couple, you know, for listeners, people are going to be like, what are the additional costs? We don't fully know, but on the listing, there are a couple things that are going to be needed. So security deposit or guarantee fee, we have to pay two months rent.
Speaker: Key money, which we kind of discussed last with Robert, one of our agents. When you rent a place, you need to give key money. It's a gift. It's a gift to the landlord. Guarantee bribery. Yeah.
Speaker: Guarantee company fee one month, real estate agent fee one month. Okay, so it looks like we're in the hole potentially for five months now. of rent yeah which i don't know how much that's front and like i think only two months of that is security deposit so only so we pay for five months of rent up front and potentially at the end of the lease we get two months back it Okay, this will be cool.
Speaker: Joey and I are going to Tama in October. We're trying to line up a visit. we Joey's been looking on Google Maps and we think we maybe have found the spot. um It actually comes with seven parking spots, which is also big, big plus. Yeah, big deal in Tokyo.
Speaker: It is interesting... Sorry, it's not, and I didn't want to say it is interesting. We have only reached out to the seller through this website as of yesterday. So we've got big, big dreams here, lot of excitement, but we don't even know if the seller is going to get back to us.
Speaker: You can see on the website, there's like five other people that have reached out to the seller so far. So who knows if we get it or not, or if the seller even replies, but we'll keep you guys posted. Our strategy with this is, again, we have a Japanese KK, which is kind of like the equivalent of a USC Corp.
Speaker: So we are approaching this, I think, with like it seems very Japanese company. Strong, yeah. my My name is Japanese. Ryan, our rep director, is kind has a Japanese name. So we are reaching out. out I'm not mentioned anywhere. Please stop.
Speaker: mentioned anywhere maybe i just i hit him up like hey my family's graveyard is actually in tama this is this is where i need to be you know i think worth it fought with a follow-up message to the seller so yeah we're we're shooting a shot here um i think the idea is we have also reached out to our property manager linda she is open joey to uh helping us do operations Puzzle pieces are falling in place here, buddy.
Speaker: We just need this guy to respond. Or we just approach directly. I believe we know where the store is. so Okay. do I mean, that's that's aggressive. We just go in there and we call the number like, machines now machine's not working. By the way, do you want to sell you know your business to us?
Speaker: ah I would do it if I was spoke perfect Japanese and was on the ground. I just don't know who who has the most tact in a situation like that. rob and you got You got a lot of a lot of charisma, though. you know I think Japanese people really like you.
Speaker: You hang out with them. Gung-ho. Nihongo gumbatte. You got this. Thank you, Choudes. Okay, so let's say we do get this house. Just dream in here. Business.
Speaker: Yeah, or sorry, we get the house. Oh, sorry, business, blah. I've been saying house too much. We're going to swap out the machines. What else do we do? Are we going to do a redesign of the inside? i think Philip Hughes, like that was genius. I think just changing the, change that there is some, if you, if anyone's out there and you Google, like, think it's Setagaya. can't remember. Google like Tokyo Setagaya nighttime laundromat and then just go to Google images.
Speaker: There's like a really nice, I think like some Tokyo weekender, like magazine did a shoot once. I could only find the Instagram. post when I Googled it the other day, but it's like a nice, and don't know, there's something pink neon sign, i think, out front. It's very aesthetic.
Speaker: it's very aesthetic And I don't know, some something like that at night could be really cool, just at least for the photo opportunity. I know a lot of people have been making like hybrid laundromat coffee places. You know, when you leave, when you do your laundry, you have a coffee coffee spot.
Speaker: don't know how that works, but it could be cool. You know, do we just get a, bring an espresso machine and just rip shots for people? Wi-Fi. yeah fire Wi-Fi is a must. so this We're going be leaning on Linda here mostly, so...
Speaker: Chotto musica. She. Yeah. And the reality is this is not going to make us money. but like Put a lot of money into this. It's fun. I think it's just fun. Like if it can just break even including like Linda's management fees, I think worth it just to have.
Speaker: Yeah, but I'm sure someone's going to do something stupid and be like, oh, you know, there's sand in the machine. ah we I guess we need to clear that with Linda and roles and responsibilities. It's going to happen. You know, some idiot's going to put something in there that's going to explode. and like yeah Yeah, I mean, you have some Airbnbs and it does sound like you have kind of ah unsmart tenants from time to time.
Speaker: I'm looking at Google right now. There's actually quite a few laundromat coffee places. They all look really, really upscale. Pretty good, actually. and wonder if this is the move.
Speaker: Yeah, what's that one around there? Pilgrim or Pioneer? think I brought you there once. Yeah, there that was a haircut place, right? Yeah, and they have a barber shop and like a jewelry shop inside. And and they brew beer there.
Speaker: Oh, really? Okay. Let's see what we can do. I do think laundromat with Wi-Fi and good lighting, maybe some plants and like an espresso machine. could be I think if we don't hear back by next week, Take, we hit them with the second message like, hey, your family, your grandparents are buried just around the corner. do Gotta build urgency. Like we, the spirits are telling me I got, i got to buy this.
Speaker: they It's either now or never business owner. Mm-hmm. Like that lady in Yakushima whose husband was like, we have to move to Yakushima there. They're in Dusseldorf and move from Dusseldorf to Yakushima.
Speaker: The spirits told her husband to move there. Okay. so we what do we want to name this place? You had some ideas. It's currently, we think it's ah it's just called Coin Laundry on the sign from what we think is the business.
Speaker: Eco Clean. i it it it's unclear whether franchise or not if the one we found on google maps is the correct one the signage appears to be a franchise eco clean because there's some other eco clean laundromats in in and around tokyo but the listing itself says not a franchise it says franchise and then not a franchise so it's a little bit difficult but we were talking to ryan last night and we were looking at the listing and and ryan thinks it's not a franchise but
Speaker: but little bit kind of like signals going in both directions so there may be some restrictions on signage and naming if it is truly a franchise and and we have to pay franchisees fees that kind of sucks but if it's not and we do and we can change the signage i think we had some ideas One, I've always liked the name Akahige Red Beard. Akahige Laundry had this friend, Neil, in college who had like a red mustache and he wanted to be a rice farmer in Shikoku.
Speaker: And we're always like, no, no, no, no. Fruit is very expensive in Japan. So I was no, grow mangoes. you can sell them for like 100 bucks each and call it Akahige Mangoes. yeah never no Neil is now like a rocket scientist. So he didn't go down a mango path or the rice farming path.
Speaker: but damn i Damn it, Neil. Akihige laundromat with like guess a gaijin face with big red mustache could be cool. ah The other idea, Daba Daba, which is our U.S. business, the yeah the legal name of our U.S. business, means like splish splash in Japanese. Kind of an inside joke from, again, college time.
Speaker: But it could be good. Daba Daba Laundromat, at least it like he makes some sense. Daba Daba Laundromat. to To peel back the layers here, on the inside joke is Joey and I, we attended college at ICU, International Christian University in Tokyo.
Speaker: I was only there for a year. Joey was there for four years. But we were in this like really, really frat-like dorm called Second Men's Dormitory where they had this tradition that every... It was really dirty. It was like the dirtiest. was disgusting. Wow. I lived in.
Speaker: we have a lot of stories, we whole but this one I think is, is pretty, pretty clean. on On your birthday, the, everyone in the dorm would find a way to get you. And I think they would just like strip you naked and then throw you in a cold bathtub.
Speaker: We have like a communal bath, bathtub area in the, in the dorm. And like, while they would do it, they would chant. Daba, Daba, Daba, D
Speaker: uh yeah try to trick you at it like all right we're not doing it man like let's go to dinner and kind of thing like that try to trick you out. And then, yeah, they'd pick you up and carry you down. like It's like 20 dudes picking you up and carrying you down to the first floor.
Speaker: Oh, fors now take my cell phone out. Take my cell phone. Don't throw me in with my cell phone. oh Jump you in the water and chant Daba Daba. So that was kind of it the inside joke for the naming of our first business. But those onomatopoeias are cool. Takei has some other businesses in the U.S. also named with Japanese onomatopoeias.
Speaker: Daba Daba Laundry makes a lot of sense, but it could get confusing with with everything. something It might. It might. Okay, Akihige then. Let's see.
Speaker: What if we make this a franchise? I think this is there is ah there's a model here where I know people in the United States are buying a lot of like car wash places, and it's like a pretty tried and true kind of model.
Speaker: I think there's an opportunity with coin laundry. You know, it's like coin laundries are necessary. They seem to be almost self-running. You got new machines. I think it really comes down to marketing, advertising and like getting people in there.
Speaker: How do you like cancel a franchise? How do you like just be like, all right, we're not doing this franchise ransom anymore. like just We'll figure that out. I mean, we definitely don't want to be part of their franchise.
Speaker: i think we I agree. We got to make our own franchise Daba Daba Laundry or we'll come up with a Akahige Laundry. And, um, I've been listening to a lot of Alex Hormozzi. He just released a book that's beat JK Rowling's sales on the first day, but he talks a lot about these money models and like, how do you attract customers? What kind of marketing are you doing?
Speaker: i think this is a really cool exercise to do with a business like this. Like how do we draw foot traffic in, in a primarily Japanese neighborhood to encourage people to do laundry here versus somewhere else?
Speaker: Yeah, and the added twist of like, all right, in a Japanese, to attract Japanese customers, which do, I believe, who do respond to different signals than an American customer would. So I think it's like, it's interesting to, um yeah, apply Hormozy style strategies to Japan.
Speaker: He's a big like gym membership guy. and What if we do like a laundry membership kind of thing? i have I have a car wash membership and I like don't use it enough, I think. So I i think there could be something there.
Speaker: had a car wash membership when I lived in Santa Fe too. I definitely didn't use it and enough as much as I should. It was great. well yeah It feels good when you pull up and you and you're a member and you like you know you don't have to pay anything. but yeah yeah we get laundry membership and We get them with the free laundry, then hit them with the co good coffee after that cost money. I think that's like the Hormozy strategy.
Speaker: so Get their foot in the door somehow. All right. So this coin laundry, let's try to see what happens. Like, I think if we get it, we have to throw a party, a launch party in the, in the laundromat though.
Speaker: That's the, that's my only requirement. Launch laundry, launch party. Everyone has to bring some clothes to wash. Everyone gets free washed clothes. Maybe we get like unique smelling soap or something. I'm not sure. Oh, yeah. That's a good idea.
Speaker: Cedar or something like Hinoki soap. no I do think like, again, people are like, what are these guys doing? that You know, it's not a great investment. i I still believe that there's a lot of like Kind of exactly what we did with Akimart, the website, like we didn't reinvent the wheel. All we did was kind of take an existing business kind of model, you know, these Japanese real estate websites and i in in our view, improve it for a specific type of audience.
Speaker: And I do think that there's a lot of Japanese businesses, whether e-commerce online sassy commerce or brick and mortar like a coin laundry that like could just use a fresh pair of eyes a little bit of energy poured into it and maybe i mean i was gonna say and it'll be profitable i don't know that for fact but like i just It'll be more efficient.
Speaker: I think we can make it much more efficient. I think so too. the Just right now, the only I'm looking at the pictures of the laundromat that we state suspect it is. It's only coins. like You can't pay with Pasmo. You can't pay with the credit cards.
Speaker: I don't know how Japanese people have such good... I've probably lost at least 100, 500 yen coins, I think, over my time in Japan. So coins are out. I think I will argue that.
Speaker: For sure. Japan is probably the strongest coin and bill country that I know of or that I visit frequently right now. But even still, like... Nobody likes coins. Nobody likes it, yeah. i Maybe the maybe old folks, just because they can hold, like, but... Who do you think the customers are?
Speaker: The customers are commuters, people who are coming into Tokyo. Or sorry, like stage range, I mean. So you think they're working age? It's not retirees, I guess is my real question. Is this going to be old people customers or young people customers?
Speaker: I think this is going to be stay-at-home moms in the area is is my bet. Or maybe I'll live in apartment that doesn't have a coin laundry. I was going to say Mamachati parking, but this is on a main road. i don't know if this is such a cycling-centric part of Tokyo.
Speaker: We are very close to Pudoland. Sanrio, Hello Kitty's home. I mean, maybe we lean in that way, dude. Just... Pudo Laundry.
Speaker: Pudo Laundry. That sounds dirty, dude. and I actually saw it written in Katakana the other day. It's Pudo. It's Pudo Land. It's not Pudo Land. It's Pudo.
Speaker: Learn something new every day. It's like P-Y-U and then the long Pudo. Yeah, Pudo. Okay. Yes. i I mean, I'm curious if there's anything else we can do. Listeners, I'm i'm sure there's someone here who has looked at a line coin laundry business before or even a vending machine business. I would love just to gamify and like understand like how do we make this one small vending machine very, very efficient? like What do we need to put there?
Speaker: How do we increase traffic there? think that's like a video game. Things like...
Speaker: things like I mean, what are they doing in the U.S. right now with laundry? Like living in New York, I remember around the time I left, there was a lot of like laundry delivered. Like you just kind of leave it out and like someone comes, picks it up, does laundry, brings it back, like folding. Like there's these extra services right now that I think you can pay for, at least in the U.S. And I don't know if any of those are something we want to do. But there there is like, you know, people are thinking about the laundry game.
Speaker: This could be a huge pivot. It could be buying a laundromat in Japan is the new podcast name here. Rebrand. Pivot. Let's go. Should have named the Japanese business Double Double, but it's okay.
Speaker: Yeah. Okay. Enough about the coin laundry. We are proceeding with this, and it just happens that we are releasing a new T-shirt and a merch store that happens to be aligned with this laundry business.
Speaker: Joey's wearing the shirt right now. We're now recording video, but we have a merch store up. We got a merch store up Shopify. We got a new Shopify store with some cool t-shirt design. So there's the back of these is a coin laundry.
Speaker: The inspiration for this was, oh, you can buy an Akiya or a house in Japan and do whatever you want with it kind of because the um the financial cost to get in and own property in Japan is much lower than it is in the US or the rest of the world. So the idea was Start something small, buy some real estate in Japan and and try something that you wouldn't otherwise likely wouldn't be able to try where real estate is much more expensive. So we have a shirt with a Japanese style house on the back that has been converted to a laundromat and it says coin laundry on it.
Speaker: and kind of in the style of like a vintage shop style t-shirt. And yeah, we a lot of people have liked it so far. So far, we've just been giving them out for free um to friends and family. And we have created the Shopify store. It's taken us a while. We had some quality quality issues in the t-shirts, but I think that we've reached a level that we're happy with and we're going to open it up to everybody. So check it out. I think they're about 30 bucks a t-shirt right now. We also have stickers.
Speaker: from our old kappa design. I don't know if anyone out there has seen the kappa design. I think that was just a small batch of t-shirts we gave out as gifts, but there are some stickers left over from the kappa design.
Speaker: Hats off to Joey. I think with the design, we designed another shirt and and I'm always like really hands off, just like, okay, let the designer cook and we'll just go with it. Joey was very, very hands on. and We worked with a designer out in Dubai for this design. And I think it really shows.
Speaker: Qatar. So the design is, I think, very, very good. i think Joey wanted something that he would wear. I think it was, that was the the main thing. And we met this designer through, we went on my bachelor party, went to Indonesia. They, they got a design from this designer. So we contacted her and here we are six, actually three, three months later with a new design shirt. So congrats, Joey.
Speaker: Yeah, she she was quite quick and she was a legend. she was She designed the t-shirts and got us like the first draft of the design that day when like Iran fired a bunch of missiles at an American racing guitar and she was like there were rockets flying overhead. and She still delivered on the t-shirt. So yeah, she she did a great job.
Speaker: So the on the t-shirt, just kind of for listeners here on the back again, it's like a coin laundry. We actually... But Joey was making this shirt before we knew we were going to pursue this. We had discussed this as an idea. And it's kind of weird that we are talking about this at this. We're launching this store as we talk about us actually buying a coin laundry.
Speaker: Do we want to change the address on that or just keep it? Um, you know that Japanese word, new Japanese word of the day, fate. but Destiny, fate. I think Joey put a random address, right?
Speaker: It's a random address, the town in Kanagawa where me and my brother and my dad used to go surfing when I was in high school. Yugoara. But um yeah, I mean, if we get this coin laundry, we should definitely change it and and maybe change the image to look more like the actual coin laundry.
Speaker: Hell yeah. So we will drop the link in our podcast summary. Note, we really don't make that much money on these t-shirts. I think we currently make $2. So it is a lot of it is eaten up by providers, but we just wanted to get something out for for friends and family.
Speaker: No, we're only going to sell a hundred of these. Uh, we want to try to create some limit limitation because we want to do another design. So I think starting from now, limited a hundred shirt quantity, and we'll have a little countdown on when it, when it sells out.
Speaker: Small batch. Maybe we'll even do something someday if you join the Akiyamart Direct program. Like you mentioned before, we can help you buy a house in Japan. This might be a welcome gift that we give to all Akiyamart Direct clients at someday. so We might put up our also our old shirts. So this is our second iteration.
Speaker: The design definitely better than last one, but the last one is pretty cool too. I think a lot of people liked it. I do like ah Yeah, sometimes when I come back to it, I do like i like the front. the the front is what we're selling is the stickers right now i like the front less than i like the back i actually like the back a lot it's like this kind of cut if you've ever been to the fujin raijin gate in tokyo i think it's asakusa whatever that temple was called in the sakusa and there's like the lightning god and the thunder god there it's like the kind of like in that style like big muscly ripped kappa with like a hammer in his hand kind of thing that was our first design it's pretty sick
Speaker: And a kappa is like a what? ah A god or like a demon god in Japan that drags children underwater and then drowns up or something. It's like a half duck, half frog turtle.
Speaker: I'm not Yeah. And like he's some kind of relationship with cucumbers too, like kappazushi. I'm not sure why. Maybe it eats cucumbers. I'm not sure. And it has a ah bowl of water on its head that if it dries out. It dies.
Speaker: yeah Strange. They put the cup on every like Japanese textbook. I don't know. It's like a recurrent When learning Japanese, they always put the cup by in there. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just a, it's easy to pronounce.
Speaker: Frog turtle. Yep. All right, Joey. I think that's ah that's the news for this week. Again, coin laundry business and a new merch store. ah We will be screaming out the merch store in a little bit.
Speaker: Please buy a t-shirt if you are so inclined. Send us a photo. Small batch. Only 100 made. Small batch. We don't want to make too many more. Other than that, yeah, Joey, we'll be in Tokyo in October.
Speaker: ah We are planning to do Tokyo. We're going to go down to Kyoto. We're taking a hero image for our photo. We're going to get my friend Carly to be the model. Joey, maybe if you want to be the model too, we can take a photo image of you.
Speaker: Yeah, new website. You know, when you go to a website and there's that big banner image at the top, that's what we're aiming to take a photo for. him Yep. After that, we're going to be headed down to do Kumano Kodo. I think we talked about this before. We're going to do that hike.
Speaker: Going to no phones, digital detox and and deep dive on where we go with this business. Maybe we pivot to coin laundry franchise though. Is this something we, like, okay, thinking Kuma no Kodo, is this something we pre-plan the Ryokans or you kind of just figure it out on the day or do we?
Speaker: I want talk to Brett, who's my old roommate. He's just like, just hire a company. I think we just do that. hire a company. Sweet. I think it's probably the, yeah I mean, we could definitely do it ourselves at the same time. don't want to.
Speaker: I think I'll find a company and we'll just book something out. and then i i did a little research on kumano koda because i was like okay what kind of shoes do i need and i found a blog post of someone that like It seems like they're like a pro hiker because they pro ah had a full website about doing these long treks. And like they did have a bunch of good suggestions, but one was walking poles. Do you think that's right? Yeah, definitely.
Speaker: I'm bringing them. Definitely? Okay, okay. I'm just going to buy what this person suggested then. yeah yeah And then wild card, we might go down to Tokushima area where we are, again, still trying to buy a surf house.
Speaker: um Again, on our last podcast, we talked about consolidating our properties and trying to get a cool surf house. There are some risks. I don't know if this is a good idea, Joey, but I think we should check it out.
Speaker: Yeah, landslide risks is the is the big one. Although it does sound like the government, they poured $2 million dollars and in like reshoring or whatever it's called, retaining walls and that kind of stuff, according to the seller, which is a lot of money to spend on retaining walls.
Speaker: Good chunk of cash. Sounds like they probably did a good job. But yeah, landslide risk is real. And I think most landslides are in Kyushu. And typhoons hit there hard. And so they get a lot of rain. Yeah, lot to think about with that house.
Speaker: Okay, a lot going on, Joey, but I'm excited. We are about a month out from our Japan trip. And then, um yeah, let's see if we get this coin laundry business going. This could be the first episode of a new series, the coin laundry series.
Speaker: Aki-sha. Sha means like company. like but that Is that what they call it? Aki-sha? Aki-sha. I saw someone on LinkedIn call it that. i don't know if it's been coined or not. Maybe it's just that one person. Aki, open company.
Speaker: I don't like that. Maybe we come up with something else. Aki, but. I'm just saying like that could be a term that gets used as more people learn about this space. Okay. You heard it here first or second, maybe. Aki Shah.
Speaker: Let's go. let's go
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