Two Tokyo-based startups, social commerce site Flutterscape and human translation platform myGengo, have announced a partnership that will make it easier for Japanese Flutterscape users to post product discoveries on the site. The way Flutterscape works is that the site lets any individual living in Japan sell any cool product they have seen somewhere to people living outside the country.
Once a product is purchased, Flutterscape takes care of much of the heavy lifting for the seller (shipping from Japan, payment etc.). So far so good, but since those international buyers usually don’t read Japanese, sellers must explain their product discoveries in English: in other words, sellers with no command of English are left out.
Through the partnership with myGengo, these sellers can now order translations of product titles and descriptions into English when they post new items – right on the site itself (through myGengo’s human translation API). One character costs $0.03, with myGengo saying that most product listings should be priced at around $4.
Both companies have apparently been doing pretty well well in recent months. Flutterscape, which launched in January last year, currently counts 1,500 sellers and around 50,000 international buyers. myGengo says it has has doubled revenue each quarter over the past year and boasts a number of big-name investors from Japan and the US.
Serkan Toto