Case Study Interview
Tamachan Shop (Kunan Service Co., Ltd.), based in Miyazaki, Kyushu, sells nutrient-rich natural and health foods nationwide. The company had been struggling to gather reviews on its own e-commerce site, but after implementing U-KOMI, it succeeded in obtaining a significant number of reviews. We spoke with 西郷様, who is in charge of U-KOMI’s implementation and operations at the company, to learn about the background of the U-KOMI implementation, the results achieved since its launch, and future prospects.
Sells natural foods, health foods, and cosmetics. In addition to e-commerce, the company also sells products through franchise stores and drugstores.
First, could you tell us about your business?
We are a company based in Miyakonojo City, Miyazaki Prefecture, that primarily delivers natural foods nationwide. We originally started as a shiitake mushroom farm, but through our work with agriculture and natural ingredients, we became captivated by the wonders of food and its power. Driven by a desire to share the appeal of food even more widely, we develop our own products to highlight these qualities and share information about food.
Currently, our main sales channels are our official online shop and e-commerce platforms such as Rakuten and Amazon. In terms of physical stores, we have our main store in Miyakonojo, as well as franchise locations in several other areas, including Kagoshima. Recently, we have also begun expanding our product lineup to drugstores and other retail outlets.
What kinds of products do you mainly sell?
Our flagship products include "Osakana," a snack line made with fish and nuts, as well as health foods like protein supplements and superfoods that support health and beauty while you eat. We also sell cosmetics made with food ingredients. In particular
, "Osakana" and "Protein Otome"—a protein supplement containing over 25 beauty ingredients—are very popular.
To address the lack of reviews compared to e-commerce marketplaces, we implemented U-KOMI
What challenges did you face before implementing the review tool?
We had always placed importance on reviews, but compared to e-commerce platforms like Rakuten Ichiba, it was difficult to gather reviews on our official website.
There were many possible causes—such as the timing and frequency of post-purchase requests, incentives like points, and whether the system made it easy to respond—but there were aspects we couldn’t resolve on our own, so we were struggling to find the right approach. Specifically, our shopping cart system at the time required customers to log in before writing a review, which created a barrier due to the hassle of logging in—a challenge we couldn’t solve alone.
I also believe that our failure to consistently notify customers about reviews after purchase was another factor contributing to our lower review collection rate compared to marketplace platforms.
Could you also tell us about the background behind your decision to introduce a review tool?
As I mentioned earlier, while we placed great importance on reviews, we weren’t seeing many on our official website. We began considering a solution because we wanted to better leverage the posts from customers and influencers that were already appearing on social media.
In that context, what prompted you to adopt U-KOMI, and what was the deciding factor?
We had been considering implementing a review tool, but we had put other companies’ tools on hold due to issues such as cost. In that context, Starks Co., Ltd., a company we’ve had a long-standing relationship with, introduced us to U-KOMI, so we decided to hear more about it first.
After hearing their presentation, we felt that U-KOMI would bring significant value to our entire site—not only in terms of cost and review acquisition rates, but also through improvements in conversion rates (CVR) achieved by leveraging those reviews—so we decided to implement it.
Reviews surged immediately after implementation. We achieved an even higher acquisition rate via LINE
How effective has U-KOMI been?
While we hadn’t seen major improvements up until then, within about a month of implementation, we acquired more than twice as many reviews as we had collected for all products over the previous three years. As for the conversion rate (CVR), although it’s still too early to provide exact figures, it has definitely improved.
Additionally, by integrating with Repeat Line, we’ve been able to collect reviews via LINE. With LINE, the review acquisition rate is higher than via email, contributing to a greater volume of reviews.
*Repeat Line: A LINE Official Account extension tool for direct-to-consumer (D2C) e-commerce provided by Starks Co., Ltd. By integrating with the shopping cart system, it allows for various marketing initiatives—such as step-by-step messaging and segmented campaigns—based on customer and order information, including
purchased items, scheduled shipping dates, and payment methods. Reference: Repeat Line website (https://www.repeat-line.jp/)
Finally, please share your expectations and outlook for our company moving forward.
Currently, when we send requests to customers via email or LINE, customers cannot turn off these notifications themselves, so I think it would be better if they could make these changes on their own.
Also, when displaying Instagram posts as reviews, if a single post contains multiple images, they currently have to be displayed separately. It would be even better if they could be displayed as a single post, allowing us to show more posts even without a landing page.
Moving forward, we plan to increase the points of contact between customers and reviews. By leveraging these reviews, we aim to verify differences in response rates across various ad landing page platforms and effectively utilize this data in future campaigns.
