Large Leap of Faith to Set up Specialized Ski Site

Neil RILEY,
Managing Director of Japan Worldwide K.K.

It takes a lot of courage to give up a good job and follow a dream, but that is exactly what Neil RILEY did when he swapped his finance job in Tokyo for an entrepreneurial life in Echigo-Yuzawa.

Riley is Managing Director and co-founder of Japan Worldwide KK, the company behind WeLoveSnow.com, an online travel agency set up in 2005 that promotes Japanese ski and snowboard holidays to overseas markets and which offers real-time online booking for everything from trains and hotels to ski passes and equipment.

Among its achievements, the company can boast being the only Western-owned member of the Japan Association of Travel Agents to have attained a Category 2 Travel Agents license, while in recognition of WeLoveSnow’s work Riley has been elected as a spokesperson for tourism in Niigata on behalf of the Japanese government.

From the 2007/8 ski season, WeLoveSnow will be expanding its operations to cover the Hakuba and Nozawa onsen resorts, making it the only company of its kind covering both Niigata and Nagano. Now that the business is bearing fruit, does Riley think all the effort and risk has been worth it? “Without a doubt, yes,” he says. “Apart from the professional experience gained, there is a great feeling of personal fulfilment in having taken a project from the planning stages to a fully fledged company.”

“The first time I ever went skiing or snowboarding was December 2003, whilst I was working at a bank in Tokyo,” Riley says of the New Year’s holiday in Yuzawa spent with friends from his time studying at Fukuoka University. “I was hooked and went every weekend after that.” By the summer of 2004 he had bought a resort apartment in Yuzawa and was regularly taking friends to the area.

As Riley explains, this was where the initial business idea was born. “Many friends loved Yuzawa — the ski resorts, beautiful countryside, and snow — and were amazed that it was so close to Tokyo,” he says. “This made us think that we should set up a company and introduce the area to customers, rather than just bringing friends.”

Setting up a company is exactly what he and the four other co-founders of WeLoveSnow did, but the process was not entirely a smooth one. “There is a lot of red tape involved in setting up a business in Japan — particularly if any directors are resident abroad. It was also very difficult to navigate the bureaucracy involved in acquiring our Travel Agents license,” Riley says. “For the company establishment and licensing, we were lucky that a co-founder could take on this part of the business preparation — I don’t think that I could have done this by myself, and certainly not on time.”

By way of advice, Riley points to the importance of hiring the right people and having people around you who can lend support, and says that without the support of the other founding directors and the company’s hotel and ski resort partners, WeLoveSnow would not be enjoying the success it is today.

WeLoveSnow.com and skiing/snowboarding in Japan
www.welovesnow.com

Text: Rob GOSS

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