Jay, an intern, continues to major in food innovation and Japanese in graduate school, with a view to someday serving as a bridge between Thailand and Japan in the food industry. She has indicated a desire to see us again when the pandemic situation eases up and we can be allowed to take a business trip to Thailand.
When we contacted her to update her and ask for permission to provide and use her photograph for this interview, she was really happy to hear that this will be made into an article. When we heard that the marketing and consumer profiles that she learned about through her internship have also been helpful for her current academic activities, we were happy to realize that her internship was beneficial for both parties. Since Jay is still a student, we have not yet discussed her employment or our future relationship with her, but it is reassuring to know that we have a positive supporter in Thailand and would love to continue to maintain good ties with her.

We participated in the internship as an overseas sales group. While our mission is to promote our overseas business, we have not made as much progress as expected. Having felt that the Thai market was attractive, we sought to deepen our understanding of this market by gathering highly accurrate information through this program. We asked Jay to primarily conduct research on the market, logistics, consumers, and sample-sending methods. What we were surprised was the extent of the detail in her research. We believe that this was because she understood the food cultures of Thailand and Japan and was able to clearly explain the points of commonality and points of difference between both countries. Such knowledge and perspectives are important and allowed us to make proposals suitable for Thailand and proposals that took into account Thai perspectives and increase communication with local persons in charge. By strengthening our pipeline with local persons in charge, we succeeded in increasing sales through related business operations by more than 3.5 times on a year-on-year basis.

The food industry is also making moves towards realizing objectives in terms of SDGs. We are working to reduce food loss, facilitate the sustainable provision of raw materials, and engage in ethical practices. We would like to make the benefits of Japanese food culture, which has been recognized as a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage, available around the world through our raw materials business.
To this end, it is important that we seek to study local food culture, understand issues in the food industry, and continue to develop applications and products that are suitable for the local market. Our experience with Jay has given us the confidence to pursue our business online, earned us a reputation for the usefulness of information obtained through research, and changes in our team, and helped to increase a number of supporters within our company. By involving members with different specialties, business will gather steam, which could then lead to an expansion of business in Thailand and around the world down the road.