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The images show in this feature are some of the
concepts and designs that were used in the development of the design that
you see today, from April 2002 until July 2002 when the new design was finalized.
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Snow Japan and Iponics, the company behind it, live in a sparsely furnished
office on the 5th floor in a building within the precincts of Yuzawa
station. Front and back windows look out onto snow resorts – in front, Yuzawa
Kogen and GALA Yuzawa Ishiuchi Maruyama in the distance, and at the back,
Iwappara, Yuzawa Nakazato, and NASPA. I spoke to Andrew Lea, founder of
Ski Japan Guide, CEO of Iponics, and now the guiding hand behind Snow
Japan.
Andrew, how did all this get started?
I come from near
Manchester in the UK. I studied marketing and worked in marketing for a subsidy
of General Motors in the UK after graduating. I
planned to come to Japan for 1 year as a year out, but I’m still here… I’ve
been in Niigata for over 10 years now (coming here as the Yuzawa AET on the JET
Program) and....
I understand you actually worked at a resort?
5 years ago I got back
into business working at NASPA New Otani, a hotel and ski resort in Yuzawa town
– my job was to try and develop the "foreigners market" for the
resort. We did really well getting guests in the thousands to the resort. I’d
always been surprised at the lack of info in English on skiing in Japan,
considering the size of the industry, and I started a simple website called Ski
Japan Guide. At first it covered just Yuzawa, then Niigata resorts. Yahoo very
kindly listed the site and suddenly it was getting some traffic. As I continued
working for NASPA I decided to spend some of my own money on the site and
develop it from being a "very-home-made-looking" thing to something a
bit more professional. This was all 3 seasons ago. I splashed out on getting it
designed professionally and did some promotional work - it continued to
increase in traffic. I made the decision to leave NASPA and went out into
business on my own designing websites and running SJG.
Then I was contacted by the
Iponics Group who were looking to invest in a small business in Japan. Cutting
a long story short, Iponics invested in my small web design business (and SJG)
and Iponics Japan was born – our business being web design and the running
and development of SJG.
Design development ideas - April-July 2002
What is Iponics?
Iponics is a group of
internet business related companies, with over 60
employees worldwide including professional designers and programmer specialists
in the UK, India, Bangladesh and Thailand as well as here in Japan. While the
company in Japan is small, we have the worldwide resources and talent at our
disposal to make quality stuff.
Have you always been interested in skiing? Have you tried snowboarding?
I’ve always been
interested, but I never really had the chance until I came to Japan. I was
placed in Yuzawa, so that was it – skiing every day and night. I went out an
average of 70 days a season the first 4 years here. Recently it’s become less
due to work getting busier and having to run Ski Japan Guide, but I’m
determined to go back out more this coming season and continue to try
snowboarding – which I took up last season for the first time. Time to enjoy
it again!
Do you have a favourite resort or area?
My favorite resort in
Yuzawa – Kagura. Also I like Myoko, Nozawa and Shiga. Anywhere really - as
long as a place isn’t busy and the snow is good, anywhere’s fine by me. Its
sometimes great to find a hidden gem that not many people know about…
How many people are involved in the direction of Snow Japan all told? Where
are they located?
It’s hard to put a
number on things as many people are contributing volunteers, but there are 8
people I would say are "involved" as such. The core of that, here In Yuzawa,
is just 3 of us.
Basically the direction of Ski Japan Guide has been guided by
users/comments/requests but the decisions as to the direction are made by me.
While there are a number of people helping out with different aspects of
content and editorial, as the site is part of my company, I have the final say on everything.
Who are the other people involved, monitoring the
forum, and reporting on snow conditions?
We have 2 publicity shy colleagues, one in Gifu
the other in Yamagata looking over the Forum. We have correspondents in Niseko,
Shiga Kogen, Nozawa Onsen, Hakuba and in Gifu – a few who are Japanese –
who provide reports straight from the regions.
I understand the Guide aspect has been reinforced with some new hard data.
How much of an improvement is that going to be for users?
The community/interactive aspect of the site has been a key to it’s success over the last
season – after all, if it were just sheets of data there would be no reason
to keep on visiting every day, like lots of people do - and we have spent a lot
of time and thought (and money!) trying to concentrate on how to improve on
what we already have and build on it without spoiling any aspects. The obvious
way to do that was to give the site more interactive elements that people can
enjoy (not just read it like a pamphlet). I’ve always thought that having an
information list on a website is wasting the fundamentals of the media and what
it offers. Of course information is the base of things and extremely important,
but for the site to be successful it needs for people to come back to it
regularly, contribute and enjoy it. Have fun. So that’s why we’ve developed
the members section where you can do all sorts of stuff and bolstered the
community / interactive aspects of the site in as many ways as possible.
Design development ideas - April-July 2002
The people using the site make
it what it is, so we try to give them what they want. A big thank you to
everyone who has made it what it is now….
What do you think has contributed most to the success of the site?
- A very targeted
subject that is of considerable size;
- Community/interactive aspects;
- Filling a need niche;
- (Hopefully) doing it with a bit of style;
- Some good marketing of the site as well both in Japan and overseas!
How much did SJG give away last year?
We gave away over 200
lift tickets, a holiday at Club Med, a holiday at NASPA, a couple of
snowboards, some skis, 12 sets of goggles, a Freebord, a Dirtsurfer, ….worth
more than 2 million yen total. We plan to do more this coming season.
How do you manage that?
By building
relationships with resorts / advertisers – it takes a lot of time and effort
(too much!!) but is good for everyone. Our users are getting presents, we are
getting more traffic and loyalty, and sponsors are getting exposure.
SJG responds with great alacrity to requests and comments from users. But
you must have to balance some requests against others, and keep the site
focused. What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced with that?
We have our main
Q&A section, and we try to get back to everyone promptly if they send in a
question not already covered, even if its just to say thanks and point them to
the right page on the site. We try to say on the Q&A that we can’t answer
specific questions about hotels business etc, but we do keep on getting them.
Last week we got a mail asking us: "Please send us your brochure, with a
full listing of all resorts and how much snow each one gets in winter in Japan.
Please send by Word file before Friday". Requests like that are rather
difficult to answer!
Have you ever been tempted to broaden the focus? I’ve done some pieces on
off-season boarding – did you ever have to think twice about that?
No, because I really
believe the success of the site lies in its focus. I don’t want to water it
down. Off season boarding fits in with snowboarding and is of great interest to
snowboarders – they have to do something when there’s no snow! - so that’s
not a problem.
Design development ideas - April-July 2002
The Forum’s been a merciful outlet for snowfans over the off-season. Do
you read it? Do you ever feel tempted to throw off the armour of impartiality
and dive in?
I read it almost every
day. There’s 3 of us who look over it all the time to make sure nothing
untowards is going on up there. Sometimes it is very tempting to join in as
"Ski
Japan Guide", but we’ve decided not to go that way – it could cause more
problems than it is worth – and we have to spend our time in the best way for
the interest of the site. If we want to make a personal remark, it will be done
under another personal handle, not the "Ski Japan Guide" moniker.
Tell me about the Japanese site. Won’t that dilute the English side of
things?
Not at all. In fact, I
believe quite the opposite. There may only be a few SJG users who use the J site,
but if they do that’s great – but I very much doubt that in doing that they’ll
abandon the English site. But at the same time the Japanese site will bring more users to
the English site – more Japanese people interested in the global aspect and more
foreigners finding out about SJG from their Japanese friends who will
undoubtedly tell them about it. Whether the Japanese site will take off is a different
matter, we’ll have to wait and see! Of course we hope it will, and hope
that current Snow Japan users will tell their Japanese
friends about the new Japanese site. But I really don’t think there is any
possibility of any dilution – only enhancement and growth.
The new site must have involved a lot of effort.
We started planning for
the new site you're looking at in April of this year. The first 2 months was spent getting the
design fixed and also throwing around ideas about how we wanted to change the
functionality / programming aspects. Over that 2-month period, the design went
through about 40 changes until we fine-tuned it to what you see today. At that
time it was still Ski Japan Guide, but we were thinking through the prospect of
re-branding to another name.
Programming of the new
functionality started around June of this year and has been going on ever since
with most of it coming together around the middle of September. Basically
October has been spent fine-tuning, debugging and adding a few last things. But
it’s been really busy. Hopefully people will think that it’s been worth it.
So we’ve had 1 main designer,
other designer and 2 programmers on the project for nearly half a year now,
as well as myself.
Design ideas
Are you going to sit on your laurels for a bit now?
I wish! No, that's not
possible. There's still a lot to do, and apart from running Snow Japan – which takes considerable effort,
ask my wife – there’s the small issue of us being a web design and
development company, so we have other projects to look after and new business
to gain. No rest unfortunately!
What’s Yuzawa like to live in?
I actually live in
Shiozawa now which is the next town, about 20 minutes away, but it’s a great
area to live in. Quiet, beautiful and loads of snow in winter. What more could
you want? - apart from free tickets to all resorts which we don’t have
unfortunately.
Do you like the summer?
Not in Japan, no.
I like it if I can get back to the UK. But in Japan? No, thanks!
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