Founded in 1958, Nissin Foods invented the world's first instant ramen, Chicken Ramen, opening up new markets and revolutionizing food culture. Since then, it have continued to bring unique products to the market, including Cup Noodles, backed by strong brand power.
Nissin Foods, which has always created new value, has recently strengthened its D2C business using online stores. The Nissin Foods Group Online Store, operated by the company, is used not only as a sales channel, but also as a place to connect directly with consumers and promote new business models.
One of these is beauty and health related products and limited edition products that are not available in stores. In 2019, Nissin Foods launched the beauty drink “Hyalmoist” series, and in 2020 it started selling the supplement “Triple Barrier” series. Currently, these new products have grown to the point where categories other than instant noodles account for more than half of ecommerce sales.
Helped by these products, Nissin Foods is steadily increasing sales at its online store. Since opting for Shopify's Plus plan in September 2022, Nissin Foods has accelerated growth towards its goal achieving sales of 10 billion yen.
Since moving to Shopify, Nissin Foods has
- Increased GMV 166%
- Increased sessions 151%
- Increased number of repeat visitors 154%
Generally, for companies that have started as wholesalers, movement into the D2C business is likely to cause conflicts of interest and friction with distribution and retail businesses, making it difficult to enter. However, at Nissin Foods, they have built a style where ecommerce and retail create a synergistic effect.
Now, we get some insight into Nissin Food’s efforts in their D2C business and the history and results of introducing Shopify's Plus plan as the foundation for this. We spoke to Yuji Aoki, manager of the EC Planning Division, which is the business unit responsible for everything from operations to planning for the Nissin Foods Group Online Store.
Background: Why Nissin Foods chose Shopify's Plus plan
Nissin Foods started its mail-order business in 2000, but in September 2016 it began offering more convenient services such as “You can purchase instant noodles from just one meal” and “Same-day shipping”.
Since then, the number of orders and members have steadily increased, but along with this, some issues have also emerged.
Mr. Aoki says, “At the time, mail-order sites were all built from scratch (in-house development), from product pages to payment systems to shipping coordination. Even if we wanted to introduce new services or purchasing methods, we would have to incur huge costs each time. As it took a lot of time, we were unable to respond immediately, and more often than not, we were giving up on realizing our ideas," he says.
Furthermore, as the amount of data increased, there was a limit to the number of orders that could be processed simultaneously. When the campaign was a big hit and a large number of customers accessed the site, something happened that made it impossible to proceed to the order screen at all. Every time I did this, I was worried and started thinking about replacing the ecommerce system. After comparing and considering various services, we ultimately chose Shopify's Plus plan for the following three reasons.
- High order processing capacity: The ability to process a huge number of orders at the same time, and the ability to remain unaffected even when a large number of orders arrive in concentrated bursts was attractive.
- Ease of feature expansion: The features we wanted to add could be selected from a wide variety of apps developed around the world, and could be implemented quickly and at low cost.
- 3. Reliability and security: Our goal is to remain secure and responsive and we can trust Shopify because it’s been proven by many large companies around the world.
Mr. Aoki says, “There will continue to be campaigns that cause bursts of orders, and the number of features and services that we want to leverage will continue to increase. Shopify’s Plus plan makes these things both possible and secure,” he said.
Results: The site was rebuilt in 4 months and various challenges were overcome with extensive support.
After deciding to adopt Shopify's Plus plan, he says, “I was surprised by how extensive the support system was, even more than I expected.”
What was particularly impressive was that the migration was completed in just four months after the decision to switch to the system. "We had a planned campaign and needed to complete the replacement in time for implementation. We were able to do this thanks to the cooperation of our partners and Shopify's flexibility and support system."
I also experienced the large-scale task of integrating services and recurring orders from separate ecommerce sites into Shopify. Large-scale data migration, including customer data, was required. By using the "Professional Services" provided by Shopify's Plus plan, we were able to complete the complex migration task in a short period of time.
“In our case, even two years after switching to Shopify, there are still many cases where we need to quickly expand functionality. In such cases, our support team will say, ‘You should use this app.’ Sometimes, an app doesn’t meet all of our needs, so we work together to make some improvements to the front end. Through this type of collaboration, we are able to realize our requirements much faster than before, and at lower costs. We've also been able to reduce the costs," (Mr. Aoki).
Looking forward: Shopify supports the path to 10 billion yen in sales
The introduction of Shopify's Plus plan has significantly increased the speed and flexibility of Nissin Foods' online store, which has had a significant impact on day-to-day operations.
Mr. Aoki says, “One of the great benefits of Shopify is that you can freely add various apps. Shopify's Plus plan is very flexible and can accommodate people like us who want to try many things.”
These effects are reflected in sales and business growth, with sales of Nissin Foods' direct to consumer business continuing to grow at double-digit percentages every year.
Regarding future prospects, he says the following. “Currently, we are aiming for sales of 10 billion yen, but we are pursuing even higher goals. To achieve this, we need to develop a new product lineup. This will require innovation in sales strategies. I want to create an environment where people can freely try what they really want to do, depending on the moment.'' (Mr. Aoki)