Lcafe Toyko

After midnight, it’s "Cinderella Time" at the Lcafe in Tokyo’s Shibuya district, reports Miho Inada in the Wall Street Journal (8/24/09). Men are not allowed inside the cafe during "Cinderella Time," which stretches until 4:30 a.m. However, women, mostly in their 20s and 30s, eat and drink to their silver-slippered content, earning points toward free samples as they go. It’s all part of an experimental approach to sampling new products and getting the women’s feedback — "a marketing cafe, a first of its kind in Japan." Men can participate, too, just not after midnight.

So far, some 2,000 women have signed up to participate by registering on their mobile phones. Registration requires providing "personal information including age, birthday and marital status" but participants can use nicknames instead of real names "and needn’t give their exact address … Registered members get a bar code that shows up on their mobile phone, which serves as a membership ID." The thinking here is simple: "Women take an initiative in shopping, they spark a trend," says Kouhei Nishida of Sample Lab, which runs the program. "Those young women can serve as influencer."

Misako Minami, 22, likes the idea: "I feel value for money because I can get samples of new products while having a meal," she says. Sample Lab follows up with a survey, also delivered by mobile phone, afterwards. Respondents get more tokens for more samples. Sampled products typically include food items and cosmetics, although a mobile phone operator recently completed a one-month promotion for an e-reader handset where product icons were printed on "tables, napkins and even the uniform of the staff. A special menu was created and the phones were placed on all the tables." Sample Lab plans to expand throughout Japan, and eventually "become a promotion and marketing research firm focused on young women."