Crossdoor Inc.Yoko Odate

Tell us about ”Crossdoor”.

Crossdoor provides a service that allows users to control their home appliances through the internet away from home. In other words, if you put a Crossdoor terminal in your home, you can control any infrared remote control home appliances (air conditioners, lights, TVs, etc.) no matter where you are on the globe.

The overall service plan of Crossdoor is to offer various kinds of services, from terminal design, production management and shipping, and server design and development, to the development of iOS and Android apps and user support, as necessary.

When the service was first launched in 2011, the company sold the terminals directly to end users. In recent years, however, we have given up direct distribution to end users; instead, we concluded partnership agreements with other companies, which sell Crossdoor terminals to end users along with their own products or services. Since most of our partner companies are large leading companies and have excellent support systems, I believe such way of distribution gives a greater sense of security to users when purchasing the terminals.

The merits for our partner companies to work with us include that they can obtain records of the home appliance control, etc. of households. Such data is useful for developing and offering new values and services. We are also working on research and development with our partner companies to plan various services.

Tell us what made you start your own business.

Crossdoor started in 2011 as a college venture, and I myself was not one of the founders. As the founders left the company one by one as years passed by, we could have chosen to close down the company; however, we decided to make a fresh start with the creator of the company, Shito, for the sake of our users and because of our passion for continuing the company.

I wonder if it was because I had worked as an engineer, I had a great attachment to the products I developed. So, I wanted to make products that would be appreciated by people and wanted to sell them at reasonable prices. In addition, I was an admirer of home appliance products, but I had a feeling that IoT products at the time were too costly. As the days went by feeling like this, I finally came across the former company of Crossdoor and joined the company in support of their business plan.

Due to such background, Crossdoor most values product quality and customer compatibility. For us, technological capability means problem solving capability; technologies mean nothing unless they can solve customers’ problems. Based on this policy, our company provides many opportunities for the engineers to directly hear customers’ opinions.

Tell us about the future developments.

For the future, we hope to expand our business so that our products can serve more people. I believe our products can be used not only for enhanced household services, but also for the management of hotels and buildings that consume massive electricity. I also wish to create more time for the board members to work on development plans for new products, etc.

In order to realize these objectives, I believe it is necessary to establish a system that can effectively communicate the company’s business philosophy and passion for engineering to our employees, which in turn will help to ensure customer satisfaction with our services, even as our business and organization sizes keep scaling up.

We would be so glad if our users could make their time, even if it is just one minute, by using Crossdoor services, so that they could use that spare time to do other enjoyable things and live in a convenience life. We hope to contribute to users’ lives through our products.