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Kamikoto grows its business with Amazon Pay

Amazon Pay’s Curator program helps Kamikoto acquire new customers.

Kamikoto: Handcrafted traditional Japanese steel knives made to last a lifetime

Kamikoto was founded with the goal of providing chefs and knife enthusiasts traditional Japanese steel knives that would make them feel proud and exclusive. Kamikoto manufactures knives using a 19-step process that take several years to complete. They are handcrafted with utmost care by experienced craftsmen who have a combined experience of 100 years and hail from an ancestral pedigree that boasts 1000 years of knife making. With an intent to make these knives accessible to more customers and avoid costs associated with selling through third party retailers, Kamikoto decided to sell direct through its e-commerce website in 2017.

Business Challenge: Acquire new customers and improve customer satisfaction

Having decided to go the ‘direct-to-consumer’ route, Kamikoto was seeking new ways to boost customer acquisition. It also sought solutions to make it easy for new and existing customers to purchase knives of their choice from its website. Adopting Amazon Pay was a way to achieve both these goals. Amazon Pay enabled Kamikoto customers to use their familiar Amazon login and the payment information stored in their Amazon account to pay on the Kamikoto website.

Kamikoto typically attracted new customers through print and social media but it was now seeking innovative solutions for acquisition beyond those channels. Having observed early positive results with Amazon Pay, it sought to learn and use other Amazon Pay capabilities to further boost customer acquisition.

We are always excited to try new and innovative ways to acquire customers. Especially with a company as important as Amazon Pay!

Tsuyoshi Inagaki, Business Development Manager, Kamikoto

Amazon Pay Curator Program: Risk and cost-free customer acquisition

Amazon Pay’s account manager recognized Kamikoto’s challenge and introduced it to an exclusive invitation only program called ‘Curator’ that used Amazon’s advertising capabilities to drive customers to the Kamikoto website. Amazon Pay Curator identified Amazon customers who fit the profile of a Kamikoto customer and displayed relevant online advertisements that drove them to the Kamikoto website. Customers could take advantage of exclusive Kamikoto offers on their preferred knives if they purchased using Amazon Pay.

Outside of sponsoring the customer offers, Kamikoto did not have to pay for impressions; it only had to work with Amazon Pay to optimize the placement of the Amazon Pay button in the shopping journey on its website. In this instance, Kamikoto chose to add the Amazon Pay button on all its product pages.

Business Impact: Improved customer acquisition, Higher sales and revenue

The Curator program was a win-win for Kamikoto and its customers. Not only did it drive new customers to Kamikoto, more importantly, it drove relevant customers with intent to purchase. Amazon Pay’s campaign managers used granular targeting to ensure customers saw an advertisement that was relevant to them. This granular targeting ensured customers saw an advertisement that was relevant to them. For Kamikoto, the Curator program and the associated optimizations yielded a 22-percentage point increase in transaction volume and 24-percentage point increase in revenue.

The Curator Program has been a great new acquisition channel that has helped us reduce our dependency on other channels. It allowed us to reach customer groups that we could not have reached using other channels. We were delighted to work with a highly capable and proactive team to manage our campaign under the Curator Program.

Tsuyoshi Inagaki, Business Development Manager, Kamikoto

Such is the level of success Kamikoto has observed with the Curator program that it plans to grow this engagement in future.

As we seek ways to expand audience size, we believe Curator can be one of our main customer acquisition channels.

Tsuyoshi Inagaki, Business Development Manager, Kamikoto

With customer trust being the central focus of both Kamikoto and Amazon Pay, this natural association is bound to grow.

Visit Kamikoto.com to learn more. You can also follow Kamikoto on Instagram and find it on Trustpilot.