Why We Took on the U.S. Market on Kickstarter, and What Comes Next

Miaomada, a small company in Itabashi Ward, Tokyo, launched the U.S. model of the ALENNE Protein Dispenser on Kickstarter in May 2026. Could a household measuring tool born in Japan reach homes overseas too? As the first step toward answering that, we chose Kickstarter.

On this page, I want to set down, as plainly as I can, why we chose Kickstarter for that first step into the U.S. market, what the attempt showed us, and where we’re headed next. For the company’s broader thinking and how it came together, I’ve covered that in Founder Keiichiro Honda’s Vision: The Kind of Company Miaomada Is Building and Who Is Miaomada? The Story Behind the Name, and Why a Small Workshop in Tokyo Is Going Global. Reading those alongside this should fill in the background.

Why Crowdfunding

There’s a reason we chose Kickstarter for our first step into the U.S.

Miaomada’s protein dispenser first reached the world through the Japanese crowdfunding platform Makuake. Across two projects, many people backed us, and we refined the product while hearing directly from them: “This is the kind of tool I wanted.” I’ve written about that in detail in Inside Two Successful Makuake Crowdfunding Campaigns.

Crowdfunding isn’t just a place to sell things. It’s where a product the world doesn’t know yet first meets the people who’ll find it interesting. You can share the thinking behind the product directly, and the reaction of the people who back you comes back to you unfiltered. For a small, little-known company like us putting a new product out into the world, it was a good fit.

Because we got that response in Japan, we wanted to test the same approach in the U.S. The culture of drinking protein at home is most deeply rooted there, and we saw it as a market well matched to our theme of making household powders easier to handle.

We Didn’t Just Export the Japanese Product As-Is

In taking on the U.S., we didn’t simply translate our Japanese product information into English and export it.

We switched the materials to grades compliant with the FDA (the U.S. Food and Drug Administration), passed SGS safety testing, and prepared a new English manual and packaging. We also rebuilt the spec to meet U.S. standards. Rather than attaching English instructions to a product made for Japan, we sent it out as a model whose supply chain we rebuilt from scratch for the U.S. market.

It’s a route that takes more effort and expense. But if you’re serious about delivering to homes overseas, properly rebuilding it for that market is the right way to do it.

What the Attempt Showed Us

To be honest, the launch on Kickstarter didn’t reach as many people as we’d hoped. We learned firsthand that a track record in Japan doesn’t automatically translate overseas, and that conveying this product’s value to U.S. households is harder than we expected.

Still, the attempt left us with a real sense of what the U.S. market responds to and what you have to say to get through, the kind of insight you can’t get from research alone. It came from standing in the market ourselves and making our case directly. Without trying, we wouldn’t have had that learning.

What Miaomada values is learning from failure and adapting to what the market tells us. Not looking away from what didn’t work, but thinking about what to do differently next time. I take this attempt as one of those.

The Next Move

We haven’t given up on the U.S. market. We’re changing how we deliver.

Building on what we learned from a single all-in crowdfunding push, we’re going to approach the U.S. market more steadily from here. We’re currently developing a lighter, lower-cost next dispenser, and an electric dispenser that measures the dose for you. We want to bring the product back to U.S. households in a price and form that’s easier to pick up.

The thinking on how we proceed hasn’t changed. Rather than spreading everywhere at once, we start in the U.S. and expand the markets we reach on our own, one step at a time. A small company from Itabashi, Tokyo, taking on an overseas market on its own. That experience, I believe, will become part of what Miaomada is.

In Closing

Take on a new market, and things won’t always go as you hoped. Even so, holding onto the root idea that we make it ourselves and sell it ourselves, we intend to keep moving forward, repeating the cycle of attempt and learning.

A household protein dispenser born in Itabashi, used naturally in homes overseas one day. That’s what we’re building toward, and we’ll get there one step at a time.

The ALENNE Protein Dispenser

The ALENNE Protein Dispenser is Miaomada’s flagship product: pour straight from the bag or tub into the hopper, slide the lever to measure a set dose, and keep it on the counter as part of your daily routine.