We celebrated our 10th anniversary on April 1, 2024, with a commemoration party. At the celebration, speeches were given by our CEOs and employees. In our fourth post, we will introduce a speech from one of our employees, Hidaka Koichi from our export division.

I am greatly honored to be able to give a speech at this memorable occasion celebrating ZenGroup’s 10th anniversary. I joined ZenGroup, known as ZenMarket at the time, in January 2016, over eight years ago now. Back then, I believe there were only about 10 to 15 employees, and the three-story Suita Warehouse was our warehouse and office. If I remember correctly, the third floor space was barely used.

Fortunately, I was hired, and my first job was translation work for the release of the Japanese version of our homepage. We didn’t have specific departments as we do now, so besides translation, I even handled tasks similar to our current customer support division. On busy days, I would go down from the second to the first floor to help with packing. Coming from a much larger organization in my previous job, the differences in my role here felt new.

I remember one day when we either shipped or packed 100 boxes in a single day, and everyone, including the CEOs, celebrated together. Eventually, shipping 100 boxes a day became more and more frequent, and the once spacious third floor of the Suita Warehouse started to feel cramped. As the number of employees grew, we moved our office to Honmachi in Osaka and established a new warehouse in Kadoma, steadily expanding our scale.

Of course, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. We’ve had our ups and downs. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic from 2019 to 2020, a lot of international shipments decreased, and we couldn’t ship to many countries. It was absolute chaos, with shipments to some countries being held at local airports for weeks and then returned to our warehouse because flights to those destinations were canceled.

However, since we already had courier shipping options, we weren’t completely stuck; we could still ship to countries that couldn’t receive international mail via couriers. The famous saying “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket” really resonated with me during that time.

We’ve faced many challenges and adversities, I am grateful to be able to celebrate our 10th anniversary. I look forward to continuing to grow and building success with everyone.

In the third speech, Sugahara spoke about ZenGroup’s growth and the importance of logistics in business. In this fourth speech, Hidaka Koichi shared his experiences from when he joined ZenGroup eight years ago until now. Next time, we will present a speech by Suzuki from the Public Relations Division.