Leading Edge Health

LEH decided to expand to Japan through Rakuten (the country’s most popular e-commerce platform, colloquially referred to as the “Amazon of Japan”), however, it would not necessarily be a simple market entry:

Both Japanese commercial law and Rakuten’s terms and conditions have strict policies for brands that want to sell supplements and nutraceutical products to Japanese consumers.

Due to nuances in the language, LEH needed to be careful that their product descriptions and advertising did not characterize what was being sold as “medicine”, a significant difference from “supplements” in Japan. Failing to do so would be a major violation of Japanese commercial law. As a result, machine translations and human translators with a poor understanding of the country’s pharmaceutical sector’s laws would not suffice.

Beyond translation, the Japanese supplement industry is heavily regulated, which meant that LEH and WPIC needed to achieve full compliance around: 

-Products sold 
-Ingredients used 
-Manufacturing procedures
-Language used to describe products

Aside from Japanese commercial law, the Rakuten Ichiba platform has its own policies, targeted at any organization that wants to sell supplements online. Beyond the government’s policies, the marketplace has rules around both how certain products are sold, and how they are described. The platform takes product descriptions seriously, as Rakuten staff manually inspect each and every shop before launch.