“There’s Nothing Like a Taste of Home”

When Chuck GRAFFT, CEO and Founder of the Kobebased Foreign Buyers’ Club (FBC), wants a taste of home, he doesn’t have to buy an air ticket and fly there. In fact the San Francisco-native doesn’t even have to go shopping. All he needs do is visit the FBC warehouse and take whatever he likes from the more than 50,000 product lines on offer from nearly 40 countries that his Web-based mail-order grocery business sells to a growing number of foreign and Japanese customers.

Launching business not a piece of cake
“We are a small family business that has been trying to help our friends here in Japan get the fun and familiar things from home that we miss while living overseas,” says Grafft about the business he and his wife Kelly launched from their living room in 1987. “We now have about 25,000 family memberships, a roughly 50:50 split between Japanese and foreigners, across Japan.”

“There was about two years of research, negotiations, finding suppliers and deciding how we would operate,” Grafft explains about the behind-the-scenes effort required to get FBC off the ground. “I kept my day job for nearly five years ? which I highly recommend ? and so altho ugh we grew rapidly and I was busy beyond belief, I was young and it was fun so we survived!”

Faced with an increasing demand for not only American products, but also goods from 39 different countries, FBC have in the last few years added a catalog and Web service that ships goods from Australia (“The Aussie Shop”) and from Britain (“The Brit Shop”) every week. Depending on the products ordered, FBC can deliver to anywhere in Japan in between 5~33 days.

From FBC’s General Store Web page, customers can buy many favorites from home, such as Kellogg’s cereals, Shake’n Bake Chicken and Campbell’s Chunky Soup. Buyers with a taste for British fare can order HP Baked Beans, Yorkshire Pudding Mix and Branston Pickle, while Australian food lovers can enjoy Arnotts Barbecue Shapes, Burger Rings and the very popular Sanitarium Weet-Bix.

However, it’s not all food all of the time! The biggest product FBC has had delivered to a customer was a huge above ground swimming pool shipped all the way from the U.S. And while FBC receives many requests for various products, one of the lighter moments came when a member ordered KY Jelly, “Our staff member who took the order was from the UK and so understood the word ‘jelly.’ The staff member then asked what flavor the customer wanted. This conversation went on for a while until the staff member finally understood,” Grafft says with a smile. (KY Jelly is a personal sexual lubricant).

Kobe quake dealt shattering blow
The list of problems and hurdles Grafft’s team has experienced while running FBC is long, as it is with most businesses. “In the beginning we faced very basic problems based on logistics, importing, and surviving as a small business,” he says. “Then came the challenge of managing staff and keeping the heart and soul in place.”

Structural business issues aside, FBC has also faced far more earthshaking problems. “The Kobe earthquake in January 1995 was tough,” Grafft recalls. The heaving earth wrecked chaos in the FBC office and the resulting damage to Kobe city’s infrastructure prevented staff from reaching their workplace. “And one year we lost a lot of money because we simply grew and over expanded too fast ? that’s tough.”

On the other hand, high points have come when FBC overcame obstacles, such as rebuilding after the Kobe earthquake, getting systems working again, and when the company received large orders such as the request for 4 x 40-foot containers (over 10,000 cases) of products in December 1999.

“Be right, then do right”
As if food wasn’t enough to fill their plate, FBC also has a Learning Centre that supplies most of the International schools and hundreds of small English schools across the country with authentic U.S. books, magazines, videos, board games and teaching materials for school kids.

What keeps Grafft motivated? “For me it’s always been about the relationships,” he says. “I love the connection and common bond one feels when seeing another foreigner abroad. Also the feeling we get when we receive letters and e-mails from members saying how much it means to them to get some small item from home.”

“My main goal has always been to ‘be right, then do right’ and remember that this is all about being in relationship with customers ? if we listen and care and respond well, we will be doing the right things the right ways and do well.”

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