The introduction of U-KOMI has increased the review acquisition rate by 1.5 times! Replies to reviews have also helped to foster a sense of trust.

Ed-Inter Co., Ltd. plans, develops, manufactures, and sells high-quality educational toys tailored to children’s developmental stages. The company was struggling to gather reviews on its e-commerce site and decided to implement U-KOMI to make it easier for customers to post and view reviews. As a result, they achieved significant results, including a 1.5-fold increase in their review acquisition rate. In this article, we spoke with 三木様, who is in charge of U-KOMI operations at the company, to learn about the reasons behind the implementation and the results achieved.

Selling high-quality educational toys that leverage expertise in running preschool classes

First, could you tell us about your business?

Our company handles the planning, development, manufacturing, and sales of the wooden educational toy "GENI." Our business originated from a preschool we established in 1988, and we create toys by leveraging the know-how we gained from running that preschool.

What are the key features of “GENI”?

Its features include the natural feel and warmth of wooden toys, as well as color schemes that spark children’s curiosity. During development, we have teachers from our early childhood education centers in Nishinomiya and Ashiya, Hyogo Prefecture, test the products in real-world settings, allowing us to plan and design toys that are suitable for play at each stage of a child’s development.

Since these products are intended for preschool-aged children, meeting safety standards is a fundamental requirement. "GENI" complies with the Food Sanitation Law and the EU’s strict "CE" safety standards, and is even resistant to alcohol-based disinfectants, ensuring a high level of safety.

Thanks to our commitment to high-quality, safe manufacturing, we have received high praise.

Struggling to gather reviews, we considered implementing U-KOMI

What challenges did you face before implementing a review tool?

When selling products online, our main challenge was that the number of reviews we received wasn’t increasing. We had originally been using a feature built into our shopping cart system, but since customers had to log in, access their order history, and then write a comment, the process of submitting a review was complicated and cumbersome. As a result, our average monthly number of reviews was quite low.

Could you also tell us about the background behind your decision to consider implementing a review tool?

Our target demographic consists of households with preschool-aged children in their 20s and 30s, and a key characteristic is that many customers purchase our products as baby shower gifts.There is a strong desire among customers to “choose something special precisely because it’s a celebratory occasion,” and authentic customer feedback serves as a crucial criterion for product selection. Consequently, we decided to explore a review tool to design our e-commerce site so that visitors could easily post and view reviews, making it a more helpful reference point. Hearing from our wholesale partners that “reviews are effective” also served as a catalyst for considering this implementation.

Ease of posting reviews and reply functionality were the deciding factors

Did you compare and consider tools other than U-KOMI?

Originally, the review function was a basic feature included with our shopping cart system, so it was very simple and did not allow for replying to comments. A particular challenge was that we couldn’t reply to negative reviews, making it difficult to dispel negative impressions.

For example, there were cases where customers posted negative reviews after seeing children younger than the target age—such as a 0-year-old using a toy intended for 3-year-olds—and feeling the product was too difficult for them. However, in such cases, the issue was not that the product was bad, but rather that it was not suited to the child’s developmental stage.We believed that if we could respond to such posts with follow-up messages—explaining that “if you wait until your child is a little older, they’ll be able to enjoy it at a level appropriate for their developmental stage” or providing information on safety—we could reduce the negative perception of the product.

Given that context, what was the deciding factor in adopting U-KOMI?

The main deciding factors were how easy it is to write and submit reviews. The process leading up to posting a review is seamless, which ultimately allows us to collect high-quality content. Another appealing feature was the ability to respond to negative reviews, addressing the challenge I mentioned earlier.

Additionally, the ability to contact you immediately via chat whenever we have questions was a key factor. Given our limited internal resources, receiving such thorough support is incredibly reassuring and has been a great help.

U-KOMI implementation increased our review acquisition rate by 1.5 times! Long-form reviews have also increased