Selling via e-commerce to Japan

Steve established his first company in Japan 20 years ago, and this experience helped identify the opportunity to support other international companies to enter this complex market. Business Link Japan was then incorporated as a vehicle to do just that. The business enjoyed rapid growth under Steve’s leadership, resulting in the award of “Entrepreneur of the Year” at the British business awards in 2015.  Steve was also recognised in 2011, with the award of “Person of the Year” in response to his tireless voluntary work to support various fields including education and political relations between the UK and Japan.

In 2013 Steve established Export to Japan, an NPO (Non-Profit Organisation) online digital platform. This operation was recognised for unique innovation and has gone on to support thousands of UK businesses to sell their products and services in Japan.

Throughout his career, Steve has worked tirelessly and passionately to promote trade and commerce between the UK and Japan, generating tens of millions of pounds for the UK economy.

In January 2021 Steve was recognised in the Queens New Year Honours with the award of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), for his service promoting international trade between the UK and Japan.

Rupert Sutton is a Management Consultant with 30 years’ experience in Japan and Asia of market entry, M&A and business rejuvenation with FMCG and Healthcare clients. He was previously a senior executive with Nestlé. He has worked on market entry and growth projects with Associated British Foods, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, Dole, Johnson & Johnson, Kowa Pharmaceutical, L’Oréal, Mondelez and many others.

Rupert’s company Weben Partners works with clients on consumer, shopper, category & channel insights, Go-to-market and portfolio strategy as well as developing and running bespoke capability programmes including shopper marketing, eCommerce, key customer and distributor management.

Please see https://www.webenpartners.com and Rupert’s blog and learning programmes on https://exportandexpand.com

Rupert is originally from Norfolk and now lives in Osaka.

Kevin is Vice President, Global Business Development at LF Logistics, the leading international e-Commerce and omni-channel logistics provider in the Asia Pacific region. Kevin works with organisations to help them design, develop and implement their optimum supply chain solutions that enable them to connect with their customers across Asia and the Middle East where he has lived and worked for over 20 years.

Maria Arteaga is a Business Development professional with over 15 years of experience in advertising sales and digital marketing in the EMEA and APAC regions. Her education in marketing and extensive experience working in the media industry has propelled her success over the years.

She is fully trilingual in English, Japanese and Spanish with the capacity to work in multicultural environments. Throughout her career, Maria has worked on international accounts from all industries, helping to create, scale and optimise accounts.

Maria is confident that she and the DMFA team at SB Telecom Europe can offer the best skills and capabilities to support stakeholders that have an interest in entering the Japanese market.

Barney Willis is currently Senior Vice President of eCommerce at THG Ingenuity (The Hut Group), responsible for DTC projects primarily in the UK & Europe but also into the US, Asia and MENA regions. THG is best known as a highly significant brand owner with global number one nutrition brand MyProtein.com and number one online beauty retailer LookFantastic, famously having bought them as niche, unknown brands 9 years ago. Ingenuity, the division Barney represents, offers the same extremely successful digital playbook and end-to-end ecommerce ecosystem which grew these businesses to other brands to help them grow. 

Prior to THG, Barney led the commercial organisations for ChannelAdvisor, the leading global online Marketplace integration business, Anatwine, the fashion focused brand to retailer integrator, now owned by German powerhouse Zalando and most recently Pentagon, a marketplace technology and operations business based in the UK. He's very familiar with all of the challenges associated with expansion out of the UK, and developing strategies to help brands and retailers dominate in their field, be that demand generation, or setting the infrastructure and technology in place to provide a best-in-class experience for a brands customers.