Our "IT x Fashion" series features interviews and reports on venture companies using ever-evolving IT technologies to innovate the fashion industry. In this second installment, we interviewed 23-year-old Yuta Tsuruoka, CEO of BASE Inc., the much-talked-about service that allows anyone to easily operate an online shop for free. While the service was launched in November 2012, it already boasts over 10,000 registered shops. In an era where individuals can open their own shops, it's garnering significant attention from both manufacturers and fashion creators as a new business service. Its greatest features are its free and easy nature. Setting up a shop requires only three simple elements: a shop name, an email address, and a password. Over 800 templates are available for listing designs, and various services necessary for shop management, such as payment, sales, and access analysis, are also available free of charge. The site design is user-friendly, with limited options to help even internet novices navigate. The company was conceived by Tsuruoka as one of the projects of Liberty, a manufacturing group headed by Kazuma Ieiri, founder of paperboy&co. and co-founder and director of BASE Inc. At just 23 years old, Tsuruoka has since led the operation team as project leader. Since its launch in November, the service has generated approximately ¥10 million in gross merchandise volume in the first month. With 10,000 subscribers already, one might expect the business to perform smoothly, but the company is still exploring monetization options. "Lollipop, the hosting service Ieiri started (Ieiri was the youngest person to list on the JASDAQ), was similar, but BASE's approach is to consider monetization only after the service launches," Tsuruoka says with a smile. The business model of first building a community and then monetizing it is a recent trend in IT businesses, such as Facebook and Twitter.

BASE is a service that started in an unconventional way, postponing business planning, and has managed to attract 10,000 subscribers within a month. In the next issue, we will introduce its details.