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eBay Japan President Merle Okawara Visits with
JEMBA and CHEMBA Students
HONOLULU — Last Friday the Japan-focused
MBA and China-focused MBA students were treated to a visit from
Merle Okawara, president and CEO of newly launched eBay
Japan K.K.
Okawara, a former Hawaii resident, joined eBay
Japan in February. Later this month she will step down as CEO of
JC Aloha Foods, a frozen foods company she took over from her father
nearly 35 years ago. She will continue as chair of the company.
As a female entrepreneur, Okawara encouraged
the students to "have high goals and network like crazy."
"To be successful in business, you have to devote 120 percent
to it," Okawara said. "You also need to love what you
do and have fun doing it."
Although she does not have a technology background,
Okawara said she was asked to head eBay's Japan unit because she
was bicultural, had entrepreneurial experience and had established
connections in business. And knowing that the Internet would change
the way people do business, "I always wanted to be an active
participant in the Internet revolution," she added.
Okawara talked about the obstacles she had as
a young foreign woman in Japan trying to start her own business
in the 1960s. "I had no credibility," she said. At the
time, she also had the disadvantage of not being able to speak Japanese
and trying to sell frozen pizza, an unknown product in Japan.
But with innovation and creativity, she overcame
those challenges and built her company to the success it is today.
"I was too inexperienced to know it couldn°t be done," she said.
When eBay was launched in Japan, there were
already other personal trading companies in Japan, such as Yahoo!
Inc. and a few local competitors. However, security is an issue
in Japan, a cash-based society where people seldom use credit cards
and do not like to give personal information to strangers. To market
itself, Okawara said, eBay Japan positioned itself as "the
most stable, safest place for our community to have fun." Japanese
consumers currently have access to about half of the 4.5 million
items listed daily on eBay's U.S. site.
The strategy seems to be working. The June issue
of Nikkei ZEROONE magazine named eBay Japan "the best
online auction site in Japan."
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