Cosmotec Japan, page-10

Don't expect fast results in the Japan market. The sales cycle is always slow there. It is all about relationships and many meetings. I was a little disappointed in reading the Japanese materials to see the sales push looks to be largely digital versus hands and feet. Relationships are key in the Japan market.

I hope they have picked a good partner with the right connections - the PMDA paperwork being completed by the distributor probably means that a 総代理店 (exclusive distributorship) arrangement has been signed to. These are hard to get out of in Japan - at least in other industries.

Hopefully I will be proven wrong. Market entry can go well with the right partners - perhaps they have chosen well, time will tell.

There is a lot to like about Japan (I enjoyed my 2 decades there), but it is often hard to get penetration due to the way the market is broken up and then mapped to specific supply chains. I might ask a friend in Japan to use a bloomberg terminal to check how M3 fits into the supply chain in the Japan market.