I went to Kakaku.com which operates a price comparison site "price .com"

Previously at GIGAZINE,We picked up "price .com profile" which trends trend is known to users posting on the price .com's bulletin boardHowever, this is the edge, this time "Price .comI was able to interview Kakaku.com which operates Kakaku.com.

When operating the price .com, what kind of stance it operates, how to cope with the operators, the atmosphere of the company, and what was the influence of PC succcess bankruptcy in January this year I was asked a variety of stories.

Behind the scenes of Japan's leading price comparison site, it is thorough dissection.

Details are as follows.
◆ What kind of company is Kakaku.com?

This is a building with Kakaku.com.


The building of JRA is next to it. Both are huge.


A sign like this at the entrance. It is a familiar logo.


There was a saving box for some reason. It seems that everyone coming is going to put money.


Fashionable sofa.


The situation inside the company is like this.


I took a picture of the office in a movie.


conference room.


I received such goods.


About the operation of price .com

GIGAZINE (hereinafter abbreviated as G):
PC Success bankruptcy in January 2007Did you have any influence?

Kai (hereinafter, abbreviated as instep):
I think that it can be said that it is almost nothing from the viewpoint of access to the site. When you look at access in February and March, the number of accesses is rather increasing. We requested improvement requests from users for complaints to the store, but there was no improvement after that, there was no monthly payment, it became a form of bankruptcy. At the price .com, as information for having you shop with confidence, we have added a store evaluation function from the end of last year.

Yuki (hereinafter referred to as "Concluding Remarks"):
I think that I want you to refer to the store selection.

Endo (hereafter, far and abbreviated):
Actually, the shop evaluation was introduced for about six years ago for a moment, but as I did not introduce the ID registration system as it is now, it has flames and it stopped.

Instep:
Price .com does not recommend specific products, I think that there is a significance of existence in the place where neutrality is kept. Although it certainly showed a disappointment at the time of introducing introduction of shop evaluation at the beginning, some shops seemed to be disappointing, I think that it was good to introduce it. By introducing shop evaluation, I think that it became possible to appeal the strengths of service side not only to each shop's price side, and even if the user finds a cheap store, "something is cheap I thought that some improvements were made that I thought that I was going down on net shopping thinking that I had a back side?

G:
How about self-made performances?

Distance:
If there is evidence of self-made performance, it is deleting. However, as I read through all the writings everyday, I can tell if this is self-made performance by experience as it is.

Joint
Regarding the bulletin board, there are many users who say "Please kill more" (laugh) If it is not a breach of regulations, we try not to erase as much as possible.

Instep:
Since 2/3 of visitors to price.com are also looking at bulletin boards, there is recognition that it is a community site. I feel that the importance of the review is increasing more than before.

Joint
I feel that reviews are being emphasized rather than price comparisons before it happens.

G:
Does complaints come from writing from the manufacturer?

Distance:
Is not there one case a year? Even if it says a complaint, it is related to factual misunderstanding, and it is written that bad things are written, so I do not want you to erase it.

Joint
Conversely, it is often said that you are often watching people of manufacturers.

Instep:
"The user ○ ○ is amazing, is not it?", There are also some makers who are evaluating HN. One manufacturer is checking the bulletin board by the direction of development, planning, and promotion and checking the bulletin board, picking up the voice of the user and making use of it in product development. I am very happy to hear such a story.

◆ How many people are there in the staff

G:
How long are the employees?

Instep:
If Kakaku.com is alone, all 130 employees (including part-time workers) have 130 people. 110 regular employees and 110 people. In 2004, it was around 50 people, so it became a large household.

Distance:
When I entered it was about 20 people.

Instep:
The former office was Asakusabashi, it looked like a room in the apartment building. The neighbor was certainly a collection station of corrugated cardboard along the Sobu line, so when the train passed, the voice of the phone could not be heard. Moreover, when I got out of the elevator, the inside of the office was already completely visible (laugh) Even when I talked about relocation, I did not want to leave as far as possible from the Akihabara neighborhood, and there were various candidate sites, but it became a aqueduct It was. It is not simple to change (laugh)

G:
I do not think it is so plain, but why do you think it is sober?

Instep:
Although it seems that the world has a gorgeous image as an internet-based company, I think that it is a direction that we are going to take a steady effort in the steady road, and because there are many adults with employees, we think that it is modest. Is it a place like a farming system rather than a hunting system? Even though we are doing price comparisons, we are also impatient with the money when using external services (laugh) Of course we do not mind investing in what we need.

◆ What is the general general schedule of the day?

G:
What is the average daily schedule for employees?

Instep:
For exampleAkiba Research InstituteAlthough it is a staff, I go to work at 10 o'clock and I am going to Akihabara by checking sending and receiving mails and blogs in the morning. And check the part shop in the back street of Akiba. Yamagiwa, Sofmap and so on, checking the station in front because there may be a sudden event at the end. Then it started working on article creation at the company around 17 o'clock, finished making around 22 o'clock, sending a trackback to other site, etc. It is over.

G:
It is really walking around Akihabara (laugh)

Instep:
By the way, On February 10, 2004, Yamagiwa Soft was unfortunately hit by a fire,The staff who got in the interview shot and called the topic. Actually, it seems that the fire soon began to be put off by this fire, it seems that TV stations trying to take a picture using a helicopter or a major newspaper company could not take a picture of a fire. When the staff of Akiwa Research Institute upgraded the image to the site as a breaking news, we received inquiries about the image transcription from various places, and the next day, there was a case that the image photographed by that staff decorated one morning edition on one side.

Yamagiwa soft shooting fire


Distance:
I write systems specifications one day, sometimes I write a design rough, it is scattered by day.

Instep:
As a sales staff, you are doing aroundtime every day. Also, the director and officers have quite a lot of meetings and visitors.

Joint
As a person in charge of categories, I check the daily interactions and update the page with a predetermined schedule.

Instep:
We are not a top down company, so it is left to the discretion of the site considerably. Because the site has authority.

Joint
On the contrary, those who can not move without being told "Do not be afraid of this" will be troubled (lol)

Instep:
Basically there are many people coming in because it likes the price .com site, so there are places where you can communicate with each other without confirming with too much taste. Most of our employees are mid-career hires. A new graduate child enters full-scale from this year, but I think that it is a good place for me to have people of various values, so I hope the common consciousness will penetrate naturally instead of pushing think.

◆ How is lunch and so on?

G:
How are you having lunch?

Instep:
I am using a lunch box shop coming to a road marketing. Many people go out to Iidabashi and Suidobashi area and eat out, and we also use the delivery service of lunch box.

Joint
It is said that you can eat around 11:30 to 13:30, so everyone is shifting the most crowded time and eating it. The convenience store is far from the office so it is inconvenient. Recently, I got a new building nearby, so I expected to get a convenience store on the first floor, but it did not enter (laugh)

Distance:
Regarding the environment of lunch, many of the shops in Asakusabashi office days were delicious and it was fulfilling.

Here is the office Grigo.


There is also a vending machine of cup ramen.


◆ Pride of the company

G:
Is there something to be proud of?

Instep:
Well, honestly I do not come up with too much (laugh) Would it be useful to say something to the world ... I often say to people who are meeting for the first time, "I always use the price .com, it is convenient." That is the most pleasing.

Joint
I am glad if prototypes are sent from the manufacturer, but not at all (laugh)

Instep:
I think that it is less of people to unite and work on something outside of work, but it seems that IT companies won the IT league in baseball game playing against each other (lol) Futsal section and basketball section , And there is a Mahjong section. I think there are many other informal ones. Recently, as the number of employees has increased, it is becoming more difficult for everyone to do something together, but in the past we used to do bowling tournaments that we borrowed lanes. It seems there was a one-time employee trip before I joined the company.

Distance:
By the way, what happened to that time saying "Next year's employee trip is Las Vegas ...".

IT league winning flag.


◆ Legendary episode

G:
Episodes that struggled, and events that can be described as legends?

Instep:
The biggest thing was that in May 2005 I closed the site with unauthorized access. I thought that the site would be gone as it was. I was also concerned that even if I return to the user it might be headed to the user. It was strict that the unlawful access incident occurred two months after listing a part of it in March.

G:
That was tough, huh.

Instep:
Because I bothered the user who actually used it and the store that I am posting, I apologize to take this opportunity, and still thank you for using it unchanged and saying "Thank you" from the bottom of my heart I want to say. While I was out of service, I was also prohibiting alcohol and asking for resumption. Many encouragement mails sent from users at that time are still treasures of our company.

Joint
In my case, I checked all of the programs and checked security related to each server and restored it, so it took half a year to return to normal. Also, when I was in the midst of recovery, I was canned at a data center in some place in Tokyo.

Distance:
It is to check the writing on the bulletin board 24 hours a day, 365 days. When all the management staff traveled to Okinawa, I brought a terminal for check properly. It was a legendary episode that I got praised for by the president who happened to be on the same plane by chance. (LOL) Also, although it is not a hard story, when checking the bulletin board everyday, It is a kind of trouble to buy some. It is not an overstatement to say that we have a lot of well-reputed items at a price .com (lol) I think that it is a fate of the bulletin board charge.

What especially recommended items you bought?

Distance:
It is a home bakery. Really tasty bread can be made (laugh) Also, minus ion drier really makes my hair shiny. I am a man, but I also bought a facial instrument as a result of the high evaluation of the reviews. It is a product called estheticienne, but dry skin in the winter has been relaxed considerably and it really became urulu (lol) Thank you very much for all the users.

◆ Which audiences actually use price.com?

G:
What is the user base of Kakaku.com?

Instep:
Of the 8 million monthly users, 70% are men and 30% are women. As there are many people who are willing to buy at price .com, there are still many people who actually have purchasing power, and there are many 30s - 40s. For other generations, those in their 20s and 50s are about the same. There are also many people in the 50s and 70s who have gone up a little with camera related. In addition, housewives often check white goods. By the way, we do not interact directly with the user, BRD, the top user who wrote the bulletin board, who is writing 30 thousand items, is a person who retires through retirement through the Asahi newspaper coverage I understood that. In addition, there are users who will be written by other users, "I am happy if you answer this person." It is an image that a user who has knowledge of professionalism in each field has distinguished that knowledge to everyone.

G:
Then it is interesting as a reading.

Instep:
It is overwhelmingly funny than reading a strange novel. I often study.

Joint
The home appliance category is also the best as a community atmosphere. Since PC parts, mobile phones, cars, and games have high hobbies, there are many places where discussion is incandescent. In the game, PS3 and Wii camps are fighting (lol)

Tips for viewing and using the site (points and features you want to pay attention to)

G:
Are the categories arranged in the order of access?

Joint
Generally it is such a feeling. PC-related, household appliances, and access per camera are still many, but communication field, mobile related, car related are also very popular.

G:
How about the system?

Joint
It is about 200 units when all together. There are over twenty Web servers, application servers, database servers and others.

Instep:
The monthly PV exceeded 400 million, so the expansion of the server had been a problem all the time.

Joint
Recently the system reinforcement has finally caught up. Especially when the bulletin board was heavy, I was kept being told about for about two years, but now it has been able to increase beyond user growth.

Instep:
Recommended content that may not be known unexpectedly is "Price .com Magazine" which looks like a special page of a magazine. There are articles creation units inside our company, and everyone is a reporter or editor of a magazine only, but recently we have started a section to review the items of merchandise they are interested in without permission. Some people actually tried the beard trimmer and lost half of the pimples (laugh)

◆ Future policies (We plan to develop such feelings, etc.)

G:
What is the future perspective?

Instep:
Actually, in April this year, Kakaku.com will celebrate its 10th anniversary. It's a memorable year, but since it's a price .com I think that you should do a solid project on the site. I want to do something that users can join and enjoy.

Joint
Until now, there was an image of "PC, consumer electronics, camera price .com"I started to handle foods. Not only appliances but also beef can be bought (lol) This shopping search is a convenient service that you can search across Yahoo! Shopping, Rakuten, Livedoor Department Store, Bidders products. By launching this service, the number of items to be posted has dramatically increased from 260 thousand points to about 7.5 thousand points.

G:
That's a terrible number. Is there any interesting way to use it?

Joint
Simply searching for high objects is also fun. I am surprised that "this is such a price". Although it is still in beta now, in the end it will integrate with the product search form of the price .com top so that we can buy anything. I want to continue to do things without model numbers such as food. I also like to add some kind of community function like home electronics bulletin board about them. There is still plenty of room for service and function improvement, so please look forward to the future!

Instep:
We will continue to increase the range of handling materials and services from now on. The final goal is to become a service that you can see first when you think about shopping. In April, we are also planning to start a new apartment search site "apartment DB". Kakaku.com seems to be focusing on database construction and has a rich search axis of more than 80 items. In the story of charge, it seems that it takes two hours to input one property, I think that it is considerably hard for people to enter data. A gourmet reviews site "Eating log. ComAccess is also growing dramatically. I think that it was good for this site to start daringly in another domain than price .com. When the person in charge in charge called "price .com gourmet, there is a possibility of being misunderstood as a cheap gourmet site, and it may not be able to cover a wide range of information," I thought repeatedly and thought of it as my present name. This site has also been really supported by heavy users from the beginning. Kakaku.com will continue to pursue consumer-oriented services that will continue to please everyone.

G:
Thank you for today.