Chizu Nakamoto says, “I think Tokyo offers an environment where, if you make the effort, you can find the people and information that make it easy to start a business.” She should know. In 2015, Nakamoto started Ricci Everyday, a fashion brand that creates colorful and playful batik products made of African prints. When Nakamoto was looking to establish a company that make full and proper use of women, she opted for an African prints business. By establishing a workshop in Uganda, a country familiar with the fashion industry, she believed that she could provide jobs in that area. Since then, Nakamoto has been back and forth between the workshop in Uganda and the store in Tokyo, and the business is thriving.
When you start a company, you need a certain amount of support, Nakamoto says, such as a place to acquire business-related information. She also believes that when women launch a business, they need to network with women in similar positions. That is where the Tokyo Metropolitan Government stepped in. It has responded to those needs and, in a big way, by establishing Acceleration Program in Tokyo for Women (APT Women), a support and training program specifically tailored to the needs of women entrepreneurs.
APT Women aims to foster and educate fledgling global business leaders like Nakamoto. The program has already seen many of its participants take the wealth of knowledge APT Women offers and apply it in their newly formed companies. And these women are taking their rightful place on the global stage.
