Japan

Current Distributors Profiles

Our network of distributors includes companies that specialize in niche life science products as well as general labware and consumables. Some specialize in capital equipment such as NMR and Live Cell Imaging instrumentation. Others have specialized equipment for QC for Pharma.  They represent brand names in the NGS and Gene Editing field as well as in the IVD world.

All of the distributors employ a technical savvy sales staff, some with field application specialists.  Their marketing teams generate material in the local language and have various lead generation sources such as direct contact with Key Opinion Leaders, End User on site Seminars, digital marketing and product training for the subdealers.  These distributors add value by stocking most product locally to offering quick and easy sales and delivery service.  Their major customer segments include well-funded government and academic research units, both Pharma and biotech companies, and have a network of Key Opinion Leaders in various Life Science fields.

Japan’s distribution system is unique as it has a system of sub-dealers that all the above distribution models use.  b2b connect has over 20 years of experience in this market and can help navigate your business in this confusing network.

b2b connect has a number of niche distributors in Japan.  This includes small niche distributors that have a large pharma and academic customer base and a large sub-dealer particularly strong in the Kanto region.  We can contact a variety of sales channels to see which one may be a good fit with your product portfolio. 

Market

Under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s “Abenomics” economic policies, Japan has identified regenerative medicine as a biopharma specialty for future expansion, with plans to grow that market to ¥26 trillion ($231 billion) by 2020—in part by cutting regulatory red tape to create the “world’s fastest approval process,” and by creating “National Strategic Special Zones” for cardiac, neurologic, and ophthalmic treatments. Ten such zones have been created between 2013 and June 2018.

Yet Japan’s heritage pharma industry remains formidable, as seen in Takeda Pharmaceutical’s two global acquisitions this year—the €520 million ($602 million) purchase of collaboration partner TiGenx, and especially the planned £46 billion ($60.7 billion) acquisition of Shire, expected to close in the first half of 2019—the second-largest biopharma M&A deal so far this year. In 2018, R&D spending by the top 20 Japanese pharma companies totaled over 13 billion USD.

Notwithstanding its number-two ranking in Asia, Japan leads the continent in biotech and pharma patents (14,414 listing at least one Japanese inventor, according to WIPO), as well as a firm number-two in R&D ($168.645 billion in 2016, according to OECD). Japan remains second in jobs (most figures since 2010 have continued to range wildly between 210,000 and 878,000, though IFPMA last year put the number much lower at 91,529) but is third in companies (1100+, including 591 biotechs as of 2015, according to the Japan Bioindustry Association), and third in IPOs (six companies raising a total $162.54 million).

Japan funding for science ranks third in the world, after the United States and China.