Tebura Toen, Japan’s first subscription diaper service, reducing the burden on parents and daycare centers
In 2015, women’s participation in society was one of the pillars of the “Society in Which All Citizens Are Dynamically Engaged” launched by the Abe cabinet. In efforts to achieve it, the daycare problem was an important key. An anguished cry from a mother raising a child, posted on an anonymous blog lamenting being turned down by daycare and being unable to work despite wanting to, swept the country in no time.
Six years have passed since then. Thanks partly to the efforts of local governments, the number of licensed daycare centers has increased, capacity has expanded, and the number of children on waiting lists has gradually decreased. As of April 1, 2021, the number of children on waiting lists nationwide had fallen to 5,634* (down 6,805 from the previous year), the lowest for the third year in a row. Looking only at the numbers, Japan’s childcare environment has made great progress and seems to be approaching the government’s goal of “a society where women shine.” However…
“In fact, serious problems are occurring in actual daycare settings.”
So says Koji Ueno, Representative Director of BABY JOB Co., Ltd. and also head of Nukumori no Ouchi Hoiku Co., Ltd., which runs about 50 daycare centers across Japan.
“When leaving children aged 0 to 2 at daycare, disposable diapers are essential. And in many cases, parents have to prepare them. To make them easy for the center to manage, parents write the child’s name on each diaper, bring them in, and take the used diapers home when they leave.”
With infants and toddlers, there is already a lot to carry. Working parents add work-related things, and shopping at the supermarket adds even more. Carrying used diapers in a bag is not only a nuisance but unsanitary, and storing and managing them is also a big burden for daycare staff. The reality is that daycare centers, which should be places that support childrearing and women’s participation in society, have become very stressful places.
The service born to solve this problem is Tebura Toen (“hands-free daycare drop-off”), developed by BABY JOB Co., Ltd. in partnership with Unicharm Corporation. It is Japan’s first subscription diaper service, in which parents pay a fixed monthly fee and diapers and wipes are delivered directly to the daycare facility. Diapers are unlimited regardless of size or number, so parents no longer have to prepare diapers and are freed from writing names on them. Daycare facilities also save the trouble of managing them individually, solving problems for both parents and childcare workers.
In 2020, the service won the Grand Prix at the “Japan Subscription Business Award 2020,” and its number of users grew rapidly. It is attracting great expectations from many quarters for contributing to building better social systems.
The enormous problems that must be solved for women to work in society, and the challenge of solving them, create business
Ueno studied in the national science track at an academically oriented high school. But feeling unable to “see an image of the future,” Ueno did not go to university after graduating and instead spent a year in Australia on a working holiday. Meeting all kinds of people, Ueno vaguely began to imagine starting a business, wanting “to do work that involves people.”
“I had caused my parents trouble by spending a year doing what I liked, so I chose a night course at university and studied business administration while working during the day,” says Ueno. Making use of programming knowledge learned from a father who was a programmer, Ueno got a job as an instructor at a computer school. In the third year of university, Ueno opened a school and began offering one-on-one instruction.
“I thought about starting a business right then, but a business owner I knew advised me, ‘Since you’re a new graduate, you should join a big company once and see the upstream processes.’ So I job-hunted at IT companies, consulting firms, and major manufacturers.”
Ueno chose Unicharm Corporation, a major manufacturer of hygiene products such as sanitary products and disposable diapers, which would later become a business partner. Ueno joined in 2003 in sales, and from 2009 spent a year at overseas headquarters in the global marketing department. Later, while handling “recommended sales,” selling diapers with demonstrations at children’s specialty stores, Ueno noticed that among the saleswomen dispatched by staffing agencies, homemakers achieved especially outstanding results.
“Many new moms and moms-to-be come to specialty stores. Experienced homemakers (mothers) introduce products while giving them all kinds of advice, so it is extremely persuasive. That was when I thought, ‘Let’s create a staffing agency made up only of mothers!’”
In 2012, Ueno realized the dream of starting a business held since student days and founded S.S.M (Super Strong Mother) Co., Ltd. At first, the plan was a business using human resources: “mothers contributing to society by using the power of being mothers.” But as market research progressed, it became clear that because of the shortage of daycare centers and children on waiting lists, many mothers could not leave their children anywhere and so could not work in the first place.
Thinking that “if only there were daycare centers, mothers could work,” Ueno set out to open daycare centers. And while actually running them, Ueno ran into the reality that daycare centers, the very facilities meant to help working mothers, were placing far too many demands on parents.
“One of them was preparing and taking home diapers. There were also demands for all kinds of items, such as baby food with detailed conditions, daily laundry, and bedding, so rather than having their burden reduced, working mothers were exhausted, carrying an enormous number of tasks.”
“Unless daycare centers change, we cannot become a society where everyone can work energetically.” What cast a ray of light on this was a request from Unicharm Corporation, which wanted to build a new sales channel in the childcare market. It was truly the moment when both sides’ problems matched at the perfect time. Ueno combined the payment system for parents and the inventory management system for daycare centers that the company had built with Unicharm’s product strength and its ability to deliver products nationwide, creating the prototype of Tebura Toen. Then in 2018, Ueno founded Nukumori no Ouchi Hoiku Co., Ltd. and BABY JOB Co., Ltd., making a fresh start with a business built on two pillars.
To realize the corporate philosophy “a society where everyone finds raising children enjoyable”
In 2019, Tebura Toen, Japan’s first diaper subscription service for daycare centers, launched as a prototype. Because it was a completely new service, awareness was low, and at first daycare centers would not listen when approached; the appointment rate was under 1%. Staff struggled in a situation where 100 phone calls might or might not produce a single appointment.
What broke through was winning the Grand Prix at the “Japan Subscription Business Award 2020” in 2020. Media attention made awareness soar, and the number of users grew almost in proportion. From 200 to 300 users at the start of the service, it reached 6,000 in April 2020, and as of 2022, more than 30,000 children at more than 2,000 facilities nationwide use the service. “That said, there are about 40,000 childcare facilities nationwide. The adoption rate is only 5%. We want to spread it much further, and there are many challenges in doing so,” says Ueno, looking further ahead.
“Our philosophy is to realize ‘a society where everyone finds raising children enjoyable.’ Raising children should have been enjoyable to begin with. Yet in the face of the rapid social change of women’s participation in society, people have not adapted and remain bound by old common sense and attitudes, which seems to be blocking the creation of social systems suited to the new era. Our goal is to remove those obstacles one by one and create a society where everyone can enjoy raising children. Tebura Toen is one business toward that, and we intend to create more new services.”
What supports Ueno, now and always, is a passionate wish to change society for the better
In 2021, Ueno raised a new 500 million yen. Ueno says this reflects a wish to quickly strengthen the business and management foundations and accelerate the growth of the service.
“What we want to gain through fundraising is speed. With Japan’s serious aging, government policy will likely tilt overwhelmingly toward measures for the aging population. While childcare issues are in the spotlight, we want to remove society’s inconveniences with our services as quickly as possible. We want to raise Tebura Toen’s adoption rate at daycare centers nationwide from 5% to over 70% in three to five years.”
Of course, that is not all Ueno has in view. Preparations for creating new businesses are steadily under way, and a new service was launched just recently. Ueno describes the service, “Ensagaso♪,” as “an information site like a daycare version of Tabelog” (Japan’s restaurant review site). It plots daycare centers across Japan on a map and provides rich information that parents want to know. On the site, parents can get all kinds of information and find daycare centers that meet their conditions while comparing them.
With children on waiting lists and daycare centers in short supply, children from the surrounding area come to daycare centers anyway, so centers hardly need to recruit. As a result, many still do not even have websites, and very little information about them is available online. But as the birthrate falls, daycare centers may end up with vacancies. If the site grows, it will be a great place for daycare centers to promote themselves, and it will also give local governments hints for building better social infrastructure. It could truly be called a platform that is “good for all sides.”
Whether a diaper subscription or an information site for finding daycare, what they have in common is Ueno’s passionate wish to “change society for the better.”
“Public services inevitably lean toward the majority. That is exactly why I think our reason for being is to carefully support minorities and create welfare that leaves no one behind. And I would be happy if, through why we create these services, people notice the problems society faces and it leads to even a small change in awareness,” says Ueno.
— Toward a society where everyone finds raising children enjoyable —
Ueno is looking not only at Japan but overseas as well, and the challenge will keep expanding.
*From a Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare survey
Interview date: May 23, 2022
(Interview and text: Mitsuko Yamashita)