International Business

Practical playbooks for Europe ↔ East Asia expansion. Real costs, real timelines, real lessons.

10 articles

AI Adoption in Japan: A Practitioner Guide for European AI Vendors

How European AI vendors actually sell into Japan in 2026. Covers the Japan AI Promotion Act, the EU AI Act as a procurement asset rather than a compliance burden, the 9-to-18-month enterprise procurement cycle, the SIer route through NTT Data, Fujitsu, NEC, and Hitachi, the specialist tier of PKSHA, ABEJA, and Stockmark, and three viable entry patterns.

International Business

The EU-Japan EPA for Marketers: REX Self-Certification, Tariff Savings, and Where to Reinvest Them

A practitioner guide to the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement for European marketers and CMOs. How REX self-certification works, where the tariff savings actually land by sector, and how to redeploy that recovered margin into Japan-specific marketing budget rather than letting it disappear into corporate gross profit.

eu japan trade agreement

eu japan economic partnership agreement

+5 more

International Business

EU SaaS in Japan: GDPR/APPI, Stripe and PAY.JP, JCT Qualified Invoices, and a Pricing Stack That Japanese Buyers Recognise

A practitioner guide for European SaaS founders selling into Japan. Covers GDPR-to-APPI personal data flow, Stripe Japan against PAY.JP and Komoju on payment, JCT qualified invoice obligations, JPY pricing tier design, and ISMS over SOC 2 as the right security signal for Japanese B2B procurement.

International Business

Ringi: The Japanese Approval Process European Sales Teams Keep Misreading

A practitioner guide to *ringi*, the Japanese internal approval system, written for European sales teams selling into Japanese B2B accounts. Covers the *ringi-sho* document, *hanko* stamp chain, reading the routing list, the relationship to *nemawashi*, and the document trail European sellers should be providing at each stage.

International Business

Yahoo!Japan vs Google for European Brands: A Per-Segment Decision Matrix

Yahoo!Japan still controls roughly a fifth to a quarter of Japanese search and a meaningful share of display, despite running Google's organic index since 2010. This guide gives a per-segment decision matrix for European brands deciding where to invest, covering B2B, SaaS-SMB, D2C-millennials, luxury, travel, pharma, and consumer-electronics.

Apr 30, 2026

Patric Sawada

18 min read

yahoo japan vs google

yahoo japan seo

yahoo japan display

+6 more

International Business

Japan Market Entry for European SMEs: A 3-Chapter Framework

How European SMEs actually enter the Japanese market, entry models, customer acquisition channels, and cross-cultural marketing, based on the Silkdrive × EU-Japan Centre webinar framework.

japan market entry sme

european smes japan

+5 more

International Business

The Netherlands-Japan Business Corridor: Why the Bilateral Relationship Matters for Your Company

The Netherlands is Japan's #1 EU investment partner and Japan's largest European investment destination. Here's what that $190B+ bilateral corridor means for Dutch and European companies.

Apr 26, 2026

Patric Sawada

14 min read

japan netherlands business

doing business in japan

japan market entry

+4 more

International Business

The Real Cost of Entering the Japanese Market

Budget breakdown for European companies: setup costs, marketing spend, timeline, and the hidden expenses most guides skip.

International Business

The Complete Guide to Japan Market Entry for European Companies [2026]

A comprehensive 2026 guide for European companies entering Japan: sector breakdowns, entry-mode taxonomy, EU-Japan EPA mechanics, GDPR-APPI adequacy, sales-cycle architecture, and the 12-month operational checklist.

International Business

International Business Expansion: A European Company's Honest Playbook

What European companies consistently get wrong when expanding abroad, and the cultural, financial, and operational mistakes that kill deals before they start. A practitioner's guide from Silkdrive.

Jan 05, 2025

Patric Sawada

11 min read

international expansion

global business

market entry

+3 more

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