Japan’s Sumally Interviewed by Wired Japan [TRANSLATION]

This article about Sumally was written for WIRED Japan, and I had the opportunity to translate it to English. Sumally has been covered before on PO, so consider this an update of sorts to the previous article. Sumally is an encyclopedia of all products. People can Want or Have any product that they come across online and archive them in a single unified format. The total number of Wants and Haves on Sumally has exceeded one million, and the number of items archived has surpassed 200,000.

Here is the article below, with comments from me indicated by italics.

Sumally: The Vision and Processes Behind the New Social Platform for Connecting People and Products [In-depth Interview]

Sumally, the new online service where Tokyo’s top creative talent are sharing their Wants and Haves, started from a desire to create an all-encompassing online encyclopedia of products. Here is what the four leading members of this exciting new service have to say.

Sumally is a new social networking service aiming to become the “Encyclopedia of Products.” Kensuke Yamamoto, the CEO of Sumally, left his position as a magazine editor to become an entrepreneur and to pursue his vision of creating a place where users can catalog every product they ever wanted or had. He was joined by well-known web designer Yugo Nakamura, and together with Nakamura’s employees, design director Hideki Oowa and software engineer Keita Kitamura, they are working hard to create an online experience that will be successful at an international level. As the team prepares to release the next milestone for their service, which will allow users to buy and sell products on the site, our WIRED editorial team sat down with the Sumally team to share and discuss their ideas, hoping to find out how Sumally will help shape the technology driven future.

The entire interview lasted more than an hour, split between serious discussions about Sumally’s vision, hardships the team endured, creative solutions to get around them, and plenty of laughter.

Kensuke Yamamoto (left center, see Wired photo)
President and CEO of Sumally. Graduated from Hitotsubashi University. After starting his career at Dentsu Inc., Mr. Yamamoto joined Conde Nast Publications Japan as an editor for GQ JAPAN. Resigned in September of 2009 to found Sumally in April, 2010.

Yugo Nakamura (right)
CEO and Designer of tha*
. Web designer, interface designer, and screen image director. Graduated University of Tokyo graduate school with a degree in engineering. Associate professor at Tama Art University. Became involved in interactive design in 1998, and founded design studio tha ltd. in 2004 to direct, design, and develop websites as well as video art. Won the grand prize at Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, and has received the Tokyo Interactive Award, the TDC Award, and the Mainichi Design Award.

Hideki Oowa (right center)
Design Director for tha*. 
Born in Tokyo 1972. Received a BFA degree in the United States. Participated in design projects of all sizes in various locations, including San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London, and Sydney. Returned to Japan in 2002, working at Business Architects, as well as a freelance web director. Went back to the United States to become senior art director at Method and AKQA. Became design director for Yugo Nakamura’s design studio “tha ltd.” in November, 2010.

Keita Kitamura (left)
Programmer and Technical Director for tha*. Born in 1983, Kitamura dropped out of high school, and started working at Business Architects, Inc. After studying abroad, he joined design studio “tha ltd.” as a founding member in 2004. Built an image bookmark service called “FFFFOUND!” in 2007, which remains very popular among designers all over the world. Won awards for Japan Media Arts Festival, Tokyo Interactive Award, and ARS Electronica.

Can you tell us what Sumally is about, and the concept behind it?

Kensuke – While I was an editor for a magazine, I started thinking about creating a “Wikipedia for Products”. Not only am I in love with products of all sorts, but I also realized that even mainstream products, such as Leica cameras, Nike sneakers, Louis Vuitton bags, Comme des Garcons clothes, are not cataloged in an openly available format. This is a serious loss for our society, and it was clear to me that I had to create a universal format for archiving product meta data.