Notes from Chris

Episode 2012

Despite the naysayers, Ulyses Arechiga always knew that one day, his career would be related to anime in some way.

During college, he had dreams of opening his very own anime store one day. Upon graduation, however, Ulyses found himself stuck in office jobs.

A couple of years in, he needed a change. He quit his latest office job and moved to Japan. For three years, he taught English to students.

Eventually, Ulyses moved back to the United States, and found himself missing all of the awesome anime goodies in Japan. America was sorely lacking a supply of cool anime items and merch. One might say, he felt the need to catch ‘em all. (And by all, we mean as much cool anime gear as possible.)

This got him thinking about one of the friends he made back in Japan, Ann. She had a side hustle selling products from Japan in the United States. The two decided to team up to sell more products. She shipped her excess supplies to Ulyses and he got to work.

His strategy was to look for upcoming anime conventions and searched for the one with the cheapest price to set up a booth. This happened to be at the Pacific Media Expo, and to have a booth there it cost $350. He took the risk and booked it. At this time, they considered creating a website. Ulyses’ brother, Saulo, had one called PikaDude.com. Years earlier, he’d set it up to sell more of their collectibles, but it never went anywhere.

While the event attendance ended up being smaller than expected due to another conference being in town the same weekend, the PikaDude team still had some promising sales numbers! They were able to pay for their booth and supplies, and had some profits on top.

Ever since, Ulyses and Ann have been refining their business. In 2019, PikaDude had a booth at 20 different conventions. Then, in 2020 it hit a snag due to the pandemic, but they still managed to attend 9 events. In 2021, it bounced back up to around 13, and the team hopes to surpass that number in 2022.

Since Ann is still located in Japan, she has great perspective on what products they should invest in. As Ulyses notes, “Japan tends to be the trendsetter when it comes to the anime industry, so I rely on my business partner to pay attention to what is newly released and becoming popular based on merchandise that’s selling well at the source.”

Once Ann identifies the series, characters, and styles that she believes are best, together they figure out which ones will work with their budget and purchase them. Rather than buying items in bulk, their philosophy is to focus more on acquiring a smaller amount of in-demand items and exclusive Japanese releases.

PikaDude brings in about $5,000 in profit every month. In the future, Ulyses hopes to double the events that they attend. In addition, he wants this to become his full time job and create his own “collectors emporium.”

He describes it as a place where vendors can come together and share their content. After growing up with the dream of building a business out of anime, Ulyses has made it a reality.

 

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  MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Learn more about Ulyses and checkout his product lineup at, Pikadude.com/.

SEE ALSO:

• Subscription Box Service Delivers Candy from Japan: An expat living in Japan packages candy twice a month and sends it around the world to hundreds of people who pay $29/month.
• Woman Uses Language Skills to Import Moroccan Jewelry: Knowledge of local culture—and an extended Moroccan family—help an IT manager set up a side business importing and selling jewelry.
• Nomad Family Cooks Up $40,000 Profit With Houseware Import Business: A traveling family creates a houseware reselling business using the Fulfillment by Amazon model, with profits going straight to their travel fund.

Inspiration is good; inspiration combined with action is better. Now get back to work!

Yours in the revolution,

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