More than Ten Years Devoted to “Telling.” But That Alone Wasn’t Enough to Reach People | Episode 2: “Facing the Challenge of KURA ONE®” by Katsunari Sawada, Founder of KURA ONE®

Since our founding, we’ve confronted the theme of “highlighting and communicating regional appeal from an international perspective.” We polished words, selected photographs, and distilled what we wanted to convey onto single sheets of paper. After years of this practice, many people began saying “that’s wonderful.” But that alone doesn’t make products appear before consumers — we witnessed this reality countless times. Excitement was generated, yet nothing reached people’s hands. Our focus naturally shifted from “telling” to what lies beyond it: “reaching.”

Why “Telling” Alone Wasn’t Enough

The friction of “can’t buy” and “can’t take home”
At trade shows, people would ask “Where can I buy this?” They’d hold leaflets introducing regional products and artisan dedication, saying “I want this.” But most stopped there. Limited inventory due to small-scale production, payment barriers both domestic and international, shipping costs due to fragile items and weight — storytelling alone doesn’t begin the experience.

Our principles
Through the years since founding, we’ve treasured “a future where regional character moves people to action.” To achieve this, we established three principles:

1. Lower barriers: Make the first step small.
2. Room to choose: Compare differences and get closer to personal preferences.
3. Delivery structure: Reach people’s hands unbroken, whether far away or in small quantities.

These principles are also the very “mission” of our company.

From storytelling to “pathway design”

Connecting Know → Choose → Receive into a single line
“Good stories” create encounters. But what generates action is the “pathway.” Where do people learn about it, what criteria do they use to choose, how do they receive it — we need design that connects these three elements. That’s when we began confronting pathway friction with the same weight we gave to storytelling. Size, weight, payment, shipping, storage, experience recording — we realized that aligning these real-world pieces one by one was the shortest path.

The meaning of “starting small”
Making “the first sip” small isn’t simply a tasting method. It standardizes comparison units, accelerates the speed at which discoveries become words, and reduces failure costs. As a result, experience frequency increases and memories form layers. We emphasize “quantity design” because it expands the freedom to choose.

The small-lot air shipping experiment

One bottle at a time, unbroken, to the world
To resolve even a little of the “can’t buy” and “can’t take home” problems, we embarked on testing small-lot air shipping — delivering individual bottles internationally. Documentation for each country, packaging tests, label requirements, customs conditions — in a field where specifications fluctuated with each case, we acquired necessary rules one by one. The confidence from reaching 50 countries with zero breakage became our conviction that “reaching” could be designed.

What fuel cost waves taught us
However, when COVID-19 caused air freight fuel costs to skyrocket, per-bottle shipping fees were dragged up by total weight. Even good stories stop when they’re heavy. Here, for the first time, we adopted the perspective of questioning weight itself. Redesigning not just content volume but “total weight” including containers and packaging — this quietly connected to the “container” considerations that KURA ONE® would later explore.

What we learned from international perspectives

“Want it, but it’s heavy” and “Love it, but it breaks”
At negotiation tables, certain phrases invariably came from international buyers and friends: “Want it, but it’s heavy.” “Love it, but it breaks.” Right after words praising quality, physics would stop the conversation. That’s when we decided to place story (meaning) and logistics (physics) on the same table — because action rarely emerges from just one or the other.

Conditions for “tasting regions”
What resonated internationally wasn’t complex technical terminology but understandable comparison axes and small steps. Being able to confirm taste differences over short distances, being able to take things home, having something speakable on the label. Witnessing KURA ONE®’s promises (for anyone, anywhere, small-scale, comparable) function on-site, our design direction transformed from hypothesis to conviction.

For more about brand promises, please see KURA ONE®’s official page: https://kuraone.com/pages/brand

Making “promises” function in the field

Labels as “reading material,” QR codes as “gateways to more”
Even though a can’s surface area is small, 360° provides narrative space. Creating anticipation before drinking, confirming differences while drinking, deepening memory after drinking. Beyond QR codes, we connect to craftsmen’s techniques, seasonal work, and regional dining tables. It’s a quiet mechanism for taste and memory to run parallel.

Speaking our mission without clarity
We uphold certain promises: — Toward a future where regional character moves people to “buy” and “visit.” — Creating sustainable revenue circuits for industries called declining. — Shouldering practical work to cross barriers through both words and systems.

While we haven’t publicly announced these in words, we’ve conveyed their outline through KURA ONE®’s design and behavior.

A humble scene

There are nights when I pull the final tape across the packing table and sign delivery slips. Thinking “this will cross the ocean,” I check the box’s weight once more. I imagine the moment when the recipient tastes their first cup from that region. Here, the story reconnects with reality once again.

What we want to share going forward

In this series, we’ll further unravel the space between telling and delivering:

• Design of quantity and comparison (actions generated by “the first sip”)
• The reality of total weight (reconsidering containers, packaging, storage)
• The role of labels and QR codes (editing that connects taste and memory)
• KPIs visible in international markets (how to reduce “want it but it’s heavy”)

We’ll examine past decisions and convert them into future behaviors — sharing this process as openly as possible.

To our readers

Please tell us about your “didn’t reach me” experiences. It broke, I gave up because it was heavy, payment was troublesome — small voices illuminate design improvement points. Rather than showing correct answers first, KURA ONE® wants to be a place where we create solutions together.

[Editor’s Note / Next Episode Preview]

The small metallic sound of the tape dispenser and the smell of cardboard — I wrote this while remembering that other quiet work that continued alongside the work of telling.

Next time: The reason things “don’t sell” wasn’t quality but “structure.” I’ll discuss how we converted concrete barriers of payment, shipping, lot sizes, and distribution channels into design problems.