A Little Magic
By Thomas Boatman
Published in the ACCJ Journal
"He must think I can't read Japanese," says Nicole Triplett of her former competitor and future partner. In the process of leasing out a large portion of the business that she spent the last three years building, she has discovered a sneaky little clause in the contract that doesn't quite sit properly with her. She'll get her lawyer onto it.
Don't let that radiant smile and sunny California disposition disarm you. Triplett is a seasoned fighter. She's survived in the trenches of Tokyo's business battleground. Yet she'll admit that, even today, there are times when negotiators refuse to listen to a foreign woman. You sometimes need a Japanese man to jump-start the process. She gets her lawyer onto it. Maybe Triplett also called on a little magic to single-handedly launch Genie Tsushin, which today employs a staff of five and manages a network of some 200 young artists.
Triplett first tested her management skills while honing her Japanese as a coordinator for international relations in Nikko as part of the Japan Exchange and Teaching program. It was after an unpleasant stint as a product manager for a software distributor in Ikebukuro, in 1995, that she decided to head home to Los Angeles and regroup.
From a friend, she heard about a trend that had started in Spain in the late 1980s and was just catching on in the U.S. Bars and restaurants were displaying racks of free postcards, featuring designs by advertisers. Inspired, Triplett spent the summer visiting restaurants and clubs "anywhere free postcards were available" in L.A. and San Francisco.
Then she wrote a business plan on how to introduce the concept to Japan. Her strategy was to keep the postcards free, make sure the designs were artistic and attractive, and to target active people from 18 to 35. Her vision was to do more than just create an advertising medium. She wanted to be a conduit between art and society, and to provide a canvas for young artists without means to promote themselves.
"My original goal was to display advertising while creating a mechanism to support local artists," says Triplett. Ultimately, she hoped to help connect artists with creative companies that might support them. She founded Genie Tsushin as a limited partnership in 1996 and took $16,000 of her savings to produce the first run of postcards. In the spring of 1997, her frika , or free-card-rack system, debuted in 60 locations in Tokyo's most popular shopping and entertainment districts. Within a year, she was distributing postcards in Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe and Nagoya. Today, her postcard racks and other media appear in more than 600 locations throughout Japan.
Initially, Triplett did all the work herself, including installation. She combed neighborhoods looking for sites. Even when she sold the idea of having the racks, it wasn't easy convincing Japanese restaurant owners to let her drill holes in the wall. Later, by scooter, she delivered the postcards. Then came the competition.
"In the beginning my competitors were sneaky, even vicious, but I think that's what kept it interesting for me," says Triplett.
One interesting tactic was used by a competitor who called her up pretending to be an executive for a major ad agency. He said he'd like to do business with her and asked for a client list. Eager to please, she faxed it off to him. Later, a client told her that the competitor had visited with the fax in hand and had tried to convince them that Triplett was breaking the law.
Another time, she received a letter from a competitor's lawyer claiming that the Genie racks violated a patent. It was all a ruse. After several of these incidents, she called for a summit meeting and suggested an armistice.
"With 80,000 restaurants in Tokyo, there's more than enough room for everyone," Triplett says, admitting she had trouble understanding the motivation for such cutthroat tactics.
So why, after all that hard work, has Triplett decided to lease out her postcard-rack business?
"The postcard part of Genie was never an end in itself," she says. "Now I want to devote more time to building the company in other ways."
Ways such as the Internet. She's currently working on an e-commerce Web site. Triplett is building up the interactive face of Genie at www.genie.co.jp, an on-line art resource. She's also developing new media. One favorite project is a restroom display to be installed in 60 Tokyo establishments. It will show an ad half of the time and an attractive painting the rest of the time. And to think, it all started with free postcards.
