A feature interview series with Shopify merchants.
Sumidaya, headquartered in Higashihiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, is a liquor retailer operating eight stores across the prefecture. While valuing a store built on deep local roots, in recent years it has centered its efforts on an online store to reach fans nationwide.
The person who has singlehandedly built and run that online store is its manager, Yoko Hironaka. Recognizing the potential of an online store, Hironaka took on e-commerce herself at a time when the company had no in-house expertise in it, and built relationships with customers in her own distinctive way.
How can the customer-service spirit that has been loved by locals for so many years be recreated online? Across this two-part interview, we trace Hironaka's journey of grappling with that question, along with her Shopify site and social media strategy.
(Sumidaya Online Store Manager Yoko Hironaka)
Into the Liquor Business at Fifteen: The Story of Building an E-Commerce Site from Scratch
Yoko Hironaka founded Sumidaya's online store and now runs it as its manager. She began working part-time at a liquor shop in her hometown of Hiroshima at the age of just fifteen. Seeing the work firsthand and putting her own hands to it, she says she found herself drawn to just how interesting the liquor business could be.
Recognizing the potential of e-commerce from the company's own situation, she drew on her in-store experience and taught herself from scratch to build the Sumidaya online store. Behind it all was Hironaka's straightforward drive to act — not because someone told her to, but because she felt it was necessary.
—— To start, how did you end up joining a liquor shop, and how did that lead to becoming the online store manager you are today?
Yoko Hironaka (hereafter "Hironaka") Actually, I joined the liquor business as a part-time job at fifteen. A friend asked me, "want to get a part-time job?" and I went along without really knowing what I was getting into — and it happened to be a liquor shop. I just kept working there part-time, and around age 22 I thought, "this liquor shop seems interesting," and ended up joining as a full employee.
—— When did you become a manager after that?
Hironaka I became manager of the physical store about two years after joining. But I was young, so I really couldn't do anything. I couldn't even wrap gifts properly, customers would get angry at me — it was a real blow to my confidence. I thought, "I can't keep going like this," and felt I needed to plant some kind of seed for the future. So I paid 300,000 yen out of my own pocket to attend Aviva, a computer training school.
I went for about two years, and got to the point where I could at least handle a computer at a basic level. I started making in-store POP displays, and since the company didn't even have a website back then, I thought, "well, let me just try building one myself." I taught myself, watching things like YouTube along the way.
—— And that's when you first took on e-commerce.
Hironaka That's right. For payment methods, credit cards weren't approved by the company because the processing fees would put us in the red, so it was bank transfer only. We started our own e-commerce site under those conditions, and, well, it didn't sell at all. Not a single sale in three years (laughs).
Since we also had fixed monthly costs, when I told my boss, "I don't think we can keep this going," he got really angry with me. "Why are you giving up now?" But those words stung so much that later, I made up my mind again — there was nothing left to do but keep going.
From Setback to a Second Attempt at E-Commerce, with Shopify
—— After that setback, how did you go about giving e-commerce another try?
Hironaka The company never once told me anything about giving e-commerce another shot. At the time, we had seven stores and were really well-supported locally. I thought this number of warehouses had to be an absolute strength for a liquor retailer, and that we really needed to build an e-commerce operation.
By then our website had also gotten outdated, so I felt I needed to do it properly and enrolled at Digital Hollywood. But almost as soon as I started, I realized I didn't actually like coding. Still, I found I was good at making creative work, and my instructor told me, "with Shopify you can do it without code" — and that was it, that was the one. I considered things like Rakuten too, but selling through a marketplace raises prices in a way that doesn't benefit the customer, so I decided against it. There was no hesitation about building the site on Shopify.
—— After launching the online site on Shopify, did you start seeing sales?
Hironaka Our very first month's sales were 30,000 yen. I'll never forget that. Shopify plays a little "cha-ching" sound when something sells, and the moment it went off, everyone around me was like, "wait, what?! Did we actually sell something?!" (laughs)
(Sumidaya Online Store)
A Winning Streak from 30,000 Yen in Month One — Champagne Was the First Hit Product
—— Once you seriously threw yourself back into e-commerce, did growth come steadily?
Hironaka Yes, our first month was 30,000 yen, the next month 80,000 yen, then 150,000 yen — it kept growing steadily. I was just throwing myself into it with everything I had. I figured it was fine to fail, but if you don't actually act, nothing comes of it.
I tried all kinds of things, but the first thing that really hit was Champagne — it sold incredibly well. At the time, COVID had cut off the supply of Champagne coming into Japan, and it had become scarce at clubs and restaurants in the big cities. But we were out in the countryside, where it didn't move as much, so we had plenty of stock. That's when I realized there was a time lag between the city and the countryside, and that it created an opportunity.
—— Did you do anything special in terms of sales activity to seize that opportunity?
Hironaka No, actually — for the first year and a half or so, our ad budget was zero. So there was no way for us to actively put anything out there. In other words, the whole game came down to whether our site showed up when someone searched. As it happened, at a time when stock had run out almost everywhere else, we were the one place that still had it, and that's how people found us.
—— Were you doing anything you'd call SEO, in terms of search optimization?
Hironaka At the time, I completely ignored search optimization. It's less that I deliberately skipped it and more that, honestly, it was just too much of a hassle (laughs). I left the URL handles in Japanese, exactly as they were auto-generated. I was doing all the product listings and photography by myself, so rather than getting bogged down in the fine details and not being able to list products, I prioritized just getting products up as fast as possible, and let the finer points slide.
—— What's the current sales ratio between e-commerce and your physical stores?
Hironaka In terms of ratio, the physical stores are still much bigger. Each physical store reaches annual sales in the hundreds of millions of yen range, while our own e-commerce is still, by comparison, at an earlier stage of development. But we started on Amazon last December, and even without spending on ads, it's growing quite a lot there too.
—— That kind of initial traction with zero ad spend is amazing!
Hironaka As a way of competing, it's thoroughly high-volume, low-margin. The margins are very thin, but if you sell 100 million yen worth and even a 10% gross margin, that still leaves 10 million yen. We already have the staff and the facilities in place — the resources are already there. As long as we can keep it running with our current setup, I think high-volume, low-margin is just fine.
(A liquor shop's distinctive product range and warehouse capacity are its strengths)
"We Can Build Sales Ourselves Too" — An All-Women Team Taking On the Liquor Business
The team supporting Sumidaya's online store operations today is made up entirely of women. Handling everything from shipping to customer support with an all-female team is an unusual setup in the liquor industry, where the work often involves handling heavy loads. Behind it lies a discomfort with the once male-centered company culture, and the confidence that comes from proving women can build sales just as well on their own.
Hironaka, who says "there are things you notice and things you can do precisely because you're a woman," is herself someone who used to live as a man. Having been on the receiving end of it herself, she carries a real understanding of the prejudice and confusion that comes with that, along with the strength she built by working through it. Behind a team so attentive to care and detail lies Hironaka's own deep commitment to how she built that team.
—— I understand the online store team is currently all women.
Hironaka That's right. Though, having said that, I used to be male myself. So the punchline is basically, "the whole team is women — oh, and the manager is..." (laughs). But yes, we genuinely run everything, including shipping, with an all-women team.
—— Were you already like this — the way you are now — when you first joined the company?
Hironaka No, no, I was just a soccer-loving boy at first (laughs). The change happened gradually, around the time I became manager at the company. Back then, I genuinely thought, "there's no way a store can work with a manager like me," and there was a period when I felt I had no choice but to quit.
—— How did you push through and move past that?
Hironaka Gradually, the neighborhood aunties started telling me things like, "hey, you've gotten so pretty." It became a topic of conversation around town, too — people would come by saying, "I heard that's the shop where that person is." Once that started happening, I felt like it was okay to put this out there as part of who I am — that it could even become a strength. Even in the physical store, whenever anyone runs into me, they always ask, "manager, what are you up to?" So I thought, then let's bring that same energy to e-commerce, just as it is.
—— Is an all-women team unusual for the liquor industry specifically?
Hironaka It really is. Sake and liquor are heavy, so there's long been this idea that you need men for things to run, or that women man the register and can't drive sales. But within that, women had always quietly felt that sense of inferiority. So when we actually built sales with an all-women team, it really was a genuinely joyful moment.
We often get reviews from online customers saying how careful and thoughtful the packaging was. Within the team, things like, "let's arrange it so you can see the little extra gift the moment you open the box," or "this product gets dirty easily here, so let's wrap it in plastic," come up naturally in conversation.
I never told the team to be careful or thoughtful — that kind of care just emerges on its own. We did have men help out at one point, but somehow the packing always ended up a bit rougher. So we decided, let's just do this with women alone.
(Hironaka, who has turned her own personality and identity into her greatest strength and point of differentiation)
How to Build an E-Commerce Site with Real Warmth
—— You've described it in your own words as "e-commerce with warmth." What does that sense of warmth mean to you in e-commerce?
Hironaka It's about being human. Being able to feel that there's an actual person on the other end — I think that's the deepest kind of warmth there is. As one part of that, every reply to an inquiry goes out under my own name, Yoko Hironaka. Email, chat, our official LINE account — all of it is me.
So on X too, I just say, "it's all me!" (laughs). Because honestly, it really is.
—— Were you originally aiming for an all-women setup?
Hironaka No, it just happened naturally. These days, though, I reach out specifically to "women who I think will enjoy this." Working with people who are good at it, who like it, and who find it fun is the best approach. Going forward, I think sticking with an all-women team is what lets us build an even better one.
—— How is this team structure, which breaks with convention, viewed inside the company?
Hironaka At first there was a bit of an atmosphere of "what is she starting now?" but lately, more and more people have started offering, "let us know if there's anything we can help with" (laughs).
(Even the in-store displays carry a touch that reflects the people behind the sales floor)
Becoming the Shop Chosen for "Who You Buy From": A Choice for "the Ultimate in Personal Branding"
—— A liquor shop, by nature, curates and sells commodity products. Why do you think customers deliberately choose to buy from Sumidaya something they could just as easily buy elsewhere?
Hironaka Ever since I was about 23, I've kept thinking about what alcohol's real competition actually is, and it isn't the liquor shop next door. When you think about what people who buy alcohol actually want to become — "I want to relieve stress," "I want to feel happy" — that's really what it's about. Which means alcohol is just one option among many, like, "should I drink this Sunday, or go to an amusement park instead?" So I've come to believe that alcohol has to compete as entertainment.
You're exactly right — it's a product you can buy anywhere. So it's not about which product to sell, but rather about "who should I buy this from, to become happier." And that's exactly where my own larger-than-life persona ended up working in my favor.
—— Your own X account has over 30,000 followers, which shows just how large your personal influence and selling power really are. Was this something you deliberately strategized for?
Hironaka That's the thing — I never aimed for it at all (laughs).
Around the time we launched our own e-commerce site, the whisky boom hit, and whisky we'd always been buying at normal prices suddenly shot up in price worldwide. When I posted a little about it on Instagram, inquiries started flooding into every one of our stores. Since they're all run by people senior to me, I got scolded pretty badly — "why didn't you say something first?"
That's when I realized, "ah, this is the kind of thing that can happen." But I couldn't keep reporting every single thing going forward. If putting things out under the Sumidaya name was what brought in customer inquiries, then I figured, let's put Yoko Hironaka front and center instead, so that the inquiries come only to me.
So I made it clear that I'd only run initiatives through X, and that all inquiries should come to me — and combined with my own personality, my X follower count just kept climbing from there.
—— I see! Normally, when growing a shop, you'd try to avoid becoming too dependent on any one individual. But in your case, it's precisely by taking that individual dependence to its ultimate extreme that you're driving sales.
Hironaka That's right. What actually worked in my favor was not being able to rely on ad spend. With no advertising budget, when I thought about what I could actually do myself, it came down to things like putting myself out there, or always responding carefully and thoughtfully to anyone who made a purchase — there wasn't much else. But I think that ended up being exactly what worked. Even now, we only spend 30,000 yen a month on advertising.
Starting with neither a large advertising budget nor any special background, Yoko Hironaka, manager of Sumidaya's online store, built her e-commerce business from zero using nothing but her own words and actions, steadily building up sales along the way.
Hironaka's way of competing was never about selling cheap — it was about thinking through, exhaustively, who a customer should buy their alcohol from to be happiest. And it meant putting alcohol, a commodity product, up on the same stage as entertainment, alongside amusement parks and movies.
How do you make people want to buy something anyone can sell, from you specifically? Hironaka's own answer to that question is a strategy of taking individual-centered branding to its ultimate extreme. The brand's strength is "the person." The core of how it's delivered is "putting yourself out there." Hironaka's journey of pursuing both of those, without compromise, forms the foundation of the Sumidaya online store today.
In Part 2, we go even deeper into her social media strategy centered on X (formerly Twitter), and how she runs the Shopify store.
