Chapter 314: Taking the Osaka Market

In all of Japan, there are three very important cities, namely Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto.

And the status of these three cities in Japan also changes with the changes in history.

In the mid-7th century, after the Taika Reform, the Japanese government at that time built the Naniwa-Nagara-Toyosaki Palace in Osaka and designated Osaka as Naniwa-kyo.

Therefore, Osaka was once the capital of Japan.

But in 794, Emperor Kanmu moved the capital to Heian-kyo, and Naniwa-kyo completely lost its status as a political center.

For thousands of years afterwards, Heian-kyo, that is, Kyoto, had always been the capital of Japan.

But after 1868, with the beginning of the Meiji Restoration, Emperor Meiji issued an edict to rename Edo to Tokyo, and visited Tokyo from October to December of the same year.

This made Tokyo replace Kyoto's status and become the capital in the true sense.

However, after World War II, Japan reset its constitution and instead canceled the specific settings regarding the capital.

Making Tokyo, the center of Japan's politics and economy, only the capital in substance rather than in law.

And Osaka and Kyoto also ushered in different changes.

The former became Japan's second-largest economic center city, and the latter became Japan's cultural center.

Therefore, for Tsutaya Bookstore's commercial map, the importance of the Osaka market is beyond doubt.

As Japan's second-largest city, although the number of bookstores in Osaka is not as good as the 1,600 in Tokyo, it completely exceeds 1,000.

So in order to open up local channels as soon as possible, Nishijima Sota entrusted the newly hired Kuda Kenichi to immediately take the order form to the local bookstores.

Osaka City, Chuo Ward.

Kuda Kenichi wore a thick overcoat and walked in a hurry to the door of a large bookstore with the sign "Dadai Bookstore."

And this bookstore was his goal today.

When he worked at Tokyo Hanbai, he clearly knew the comparison of purchase volume between large bookstores.

For example, for the same bestselling book, large bookstores occupying more than 1,000 square meters can often easily sell more than 1,000 copies in a week.

But if it is a bookstore occupying only 30 square meters, it can often only sell dozens of copies.

So in his view, as long as he can persuade the owner of this Dadai Bookstore to establish a direct sales relationship with Tsutaya Bookstore Publisher, it would be more effective than him finding more than 30 bookstores.

He thought for a while, walked inside, and through asking the clerk, met the bookstore manager named Dadai Masami.

In fact, during his time working at Tokyo Publishing Hanbai, he had quite a lot of business exchanges with the other party.

After the two exchanged simple greetings, Dadai Masami asked politely: "Section Chief Kuda, what is the matter today?"

She was a bit puzzled for a while.

For distributors, bookstores are often customers, so someone will visit customers regularly. But she vaguely remembered that this Kuda-san was not responsible for the Osaka area business.

Kuda Kenichi waved his hand with a smile, "Manager Dadai, just call me 'San', I have already resigned from Tokyo Publishing Hanbai."

Resigned?!

Hearing this news, Dadai Masami was even more puzzled.

The two were just strangers who had met a few times. If the other party resigned from Tokyo Publishing Hanbai, why did he come to find her again?

She thought for a while and tentatively asked: "May I ask what your purpose is?"

Kuda Kenichi nodded, smiled and took out a business card from his pocket, and handed it to Dadai Masami's hand, "I am now serving as the Minister of the Market Department at Tsutaya Bookstore."

It is a minister, but he actually has less than 10 people under his hand, which is about the same as when he served as a section chief at Tokyo Publishing Hanbai before.

However, with this title, it will be much more convenient for him to deal with others.

After stating his position, he said politely: "My company hopes to establish a direct sales business with your bookstore."

Direct sales? Dadai Masami was stunned.

Dadai Bookstore is not without publishers cooperating with direct sales, but these publishers are generally located in Osaka, and communication is relatively convenient. But she vaguely remembered that the Tsutaya Bookstore Publisher where the other party is located should be in Tokyo.

With this time and energy, it is better to entrust it to the two distributors, Tokyo Publishing Hanbai and Nihon Publishing Hanbai, to sell on their behalf.

However, to be honest, she didn't intend to agree to the other party's request.

Japanese society is a society of human feelings, and cooperation between enterprises often pays more attention to human feelings, and she still holds a lot of doubts about the strength of Tsutaya Bookstore in her heart.

You know, the book ordering business involves finance, logistics, promotion, etc., not to mention that the other party is far away in Tokyo, and communication is more troublesome.

But just when she wanted to politely refuse, Kuda Kenichi took out an order book from his briefcase, opened it and placed it on the table, "This is the book we are selling now, please take a look."

Dadai Masami saw this and was embarrassed to refuse directly, so she had to look through it.

She found that on this order book, besides *Snow Country* which had been out of stock recently, there were also *All She Was Worth*, *The Devotion of Suspect X*, *Memories of Murder*, *Death of a Detective*, etc., all bestselling books this year.

However, what surprised her a bit was that compared to the order book on the distributor side, the order price of these books was on average 10 percentage points lower.

Seeing this price, Dadai Masami hesitated.

10 percentage points, it looks small, but Dadai Bookstore, as a large bookstore, often orders many books at one time.

Accumulated over time, it cannot be considered a number that can be ignored.

Why not order a batch to see first.

But having said that, what form should the order payment and book delivery take?

Kuda Kenichi saw this and took out his trump card.

He smiled and said: "If Dadai Bookstore has concerns, my company can waive the advance payment in the early stage and change it to a monthly settlement method. And the logistics cost is also borne by my company."

Hearing these two preferential conditions, Dadai Masami looked directly at Kuda Kenichi with surprised eyes.

According to the rules of the publishing industry, within a certain period, books that cannot be sold can be returned to the publisher, so the advance payment method is also a protection of the publisher's interests to avoid the bookstore ordering too much.

But if the other party doesn't need advance payment and adopts monthly settlement, Dadai Bookstore can be said to have transferred all business risks to Tsutaya Bookstore, and it doesn't need to bear any risk!

However, what she didn't know was that with the increasing depression of the publishing industry, more and more publishers would adopt similar forms in the future.

And Tsutaya Bookstore's approach just let this "involution" come one step earlier.

Kuda Kenichi further persuaded: "Manager Dadai, our publisher plans to build our own distribution system, so the source of goods on the distributor side will decrease in the future, but you should know the market situation of Teacher Akiwara's works."

Dadai Masami was silent, she admitted that Kuda Kenichi was right.

Judging from the market in 1993, Akiwara Yuto's detective series ranked at the top of the entire bookstore.

Although it is not as good as the sales of popular manga and romance, it also pulled the average sales of books in the literary area up by 20 percentage points.

If she didn't stock up while other bookstores did, it would undoubtedly lead to a loss of customers.

"Kuda-san, I know, please entrust your company to provide 400 copies of *Snow Country*, and 100 copies of each of Teacher Akiwara's other works."

Hearing this answer, Kuda Kenichi showed a satisfied smile.

As long as he can talk down a few more large bookstores, he can use their banner to talk to medium bookstores!

Under the driving effect, other medium bookstores will also order one after another! To avoid being left behind by large bookstores!

So, the Osaka market is almost taken! ===== CHAPTER 315 =====