VectorBuilder Japan

The founder of VectorBuilder (*2) had a high interest in Japan considering it to be the second largest market after the U.S. The prices of European and U.S. research reagents sold in Japan are two to three times higher than in their home countries. If this price distortion is eliminated and research speed is accelerated by using VectorBuilder Japan, she believed that it could accelerate the original basic research launched in Japan as well as the development of gene therapy drugs focused on Japanese and Asian people.

Initially, the company tried to do marketing through a separate company, but the sales did not grow as expected, so it decided to enter the Japanese market on their own. When it entered the market, what impressed was the unique Japanese agency culture, which is different from that in the U.S. Japanese distributors have their own connections with laboratories of pharmaceutical companies, university laboratories, public research institutes, etc. and they play an extremely important role in connecting manufacturers and end users. However, the distributers have few staff with expertise in science, so that it was difficult for them to accurately understand VectorBuilder Japan's strengths and surely connect the company to the potential users who had the needs. Therefore, Dr. Matakatsu accompanied the distributors to their customers including research institutes, etc., and explained directly to the researchers how to operate its online platform including the vector design function. "By responding directly to specific inquiries from end users, and providing attentive customer support, we have succeeded in gaining the trust of end users and increasing the number of customers while building relationships with the distributors and end users," says Dr. Matakatsu. In light of Japanese business practices, customers in Japan can now purchase VectorBuilder Japan's contract services from distributors across the country using the online platform.

With the increasing number of Japanese customers, the company established a Japanese subsidiary in Yokohama City in April 2019 in order to enhance customer support and establish its position in the Japanese market. Yokohama is an attractive city with good location costs, a concentration of R&D bases, and excellent access to urban centers, airports, Shinkansen, etc. and it is promoting the formation of "Life Science City Yokohama" that aims to foster the biotechnology industry, etc. by attracting companies. In addition to generous incentives (such as various subsidies), the city has established an extensive support system, including joint press releases with foreign companies on the establishment of their Japanese subsidiaries, which helped the company decide to expand into Yokohama. Dr. Matakatsu also says, "With the support from JETRO, we were able to set up our base smoothly in just two months."

The coronavirus related chaos is forcing companies to change their marketing strategies. In the case of VectorBuilder Japan, direct visits to customers became difficult due to COVID-19, and the company began to focus on the use of digital marketing as a new method for acquiring new customers. In Japan, it uses Google ads and Yahoo! ads for display advertising. On the other hand, in the COVID-19 crisis, the laboratories of companies and universities have been required to conduct research more efficiently with a limited number of people and time than before in order to reduce the number of people coming and going. As it started to focus on display advertising in Japan, inquiries and orders from researchers looking to improve the efficiency of their research have increased dramatically. In addition, since VectorBuilder's COVID-19 research reagents are delivered to vaccine R&D organizations in Europe and the U.S. as well, the advantage of being able to purchase the same research reagents and use them for research in Japan is attractive to customers. Dr. Matakatsu says that expectations for the development of vaccines as well as rising demand from the medical community attributable to COVID-19 have worked as an impetus for the significant increase in orders.

VectorBuilder continues to grow as the world's leading service provider of custom vector cloning and recombinant virus production. At the end of 2019, the company began contract manufacturing of GMP (*3)-grade gene therapy vectors in the U.S. As a result, VectorBuilder has become a CDMO (*4) that provides one-stop full-service from preclinical research to drug discovery, and it can now support clinical trials through to manufacturing on a global basis in accordance with the guidelines of not only Japan, but also the U.S., Europe, China, and PIC/S (*5) . The company will further develop its business in Japan with the aim of making the gene therapy one of the affordable medical options.

In closing, Dr. Matakatsu commented enthusiastically on the company's contribution to basic research in Japan, "By providing contract services trusted by researchers, we sincerely hope that it will lead to the careers of researchers in the way that they will be able to reach successful results by making use of the research reagents we provide, and even succeed in publishing papers. To achieve this, we will continue to grow further as a company, grasp the needs of Japanese researchers, and devise and provide the best solutions."

Upon establishing the company's Japanese base, JETRO's Invest Japan Business Support Center (IBSC) lent temporary office space, provided consultations (registrations, tax, and labor), and introduced service providers (administrative scriveners, certified tax accountants, labor and social security attorneys, real estate companies, and banks).