ビビッドガーデン

株式会社ビビッドガーデン (vivid garden Inc.) develops and operates "食べチョク" (Tabechoku), an online direct-sales marketplace through which producers across Japan sell foodstuffs and flowers directly to consumers. Unlike earlier direct-from-farm services, producers themselves ship the goods to buyers, and contracted producers set their own prices. The company was established on 29 November 2016 and is headquartered in Hamamatsucho, Minato-ku, Tokyo; an earlier address was Yoyogi, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo. Its stated vision is a world where producers' particular care is fairly valued, and its philosophy is to solve problems of the primary industries together with producers, citing an average age of roughly 67 for agricultural workers.

Beyond the consumer marketplace, the company runs a corporate service (食べチョク for Business) used for promotions, employee benefits and gifting; 食べチョク ふるさと納税 for hometown-tax donation return gifts; a public-sector service supporting regions in promoting local food, primary industry and tourism, including regional-product e-commerce, retail channel expansion, product development and branding; a subscription delivery line including 食べチョク ドットミィ (regular delivery of everyday and farm-direct produce); the first private brand Vivid TABLE (ビビッドテーブル), a frozen prepared-meal subscription reheated in about five minutes; and the food lifestyle media 食べチョク&more.

The founder and president is 秋元里奈, born to a vegetable-farming family in Sagamihara, Kanagawa, who joined DeNA in 2013 after graduating from Keio University's Faculty of Science and Technology and founded the company in November 2016. Other listed officers include director and head of administration 松吉賢三 (appointed January 2026), outside director 成田修造, full-time auditor 西尾秀樹 (appointed August 2024), auditor 高原明子, executive officer and CTO 西尾慎祐 (appointed May 2022), and executive officers 伊藤勝吾, 田中幸規 and 松浦悠介.

Founding story

Founder 秋元里奈 grew up on a vegetable farm in Sagamihara, Kanagawa; the family business closed while she was in junior high school and her mother discouraged her from succeeding it. After graduating from Keio University and joining DeNA, where she worked as a web service director, sales team leader, new-business builder and smartphone app marketing lead, a visit to the family's idle farmland prompted her to investigate why farms were unprofitable. Visiting farms around the country, she repeatedly heard producers say they did not want their children to take over, which led her to found 株式会社ビビッドガーデン in November 2016 at age 25 with about JPY 2 million of her own funds plus consulting revenue and a loan. She identified the distribution structure — intermediaries leaving farmers roughly 30% gross margin on fixed prices with shape-based product standards — as a root cause of the succession problem, and built Tabechoku so producers could set their own prices. Recruiting was the hardest early challenge: the company had no employees for the ten months from founding to full launch until a COO (大河原) and lead engineer (西尾) responded to a project posting on the "インスタントチーム" service.

Business model

The company operates a marketplace connecting producers with consumers, businesses and public-sector clients. Producers list and price their own goods and ship directly to buyers, while the platform handles demand generation and charges a commission — reported at 20% of sales in a 2019 interview. Adjacent lines add corporate gifting and benefits plans, hometown-tax return-gift fulfilment, paid support programs for municipalities and ministries, a private-brand frozen meal subscription and an advertising-supported lifestyle media property.

Commission on marketplace transactions (20% of producer sales as described in a 2019 interview), plus subscription products (vegetable subscription 食べチョクコンシェルジュ, ドットミィ regular delivery, Vivid TABLE frozen meals), corporate plans for gifting and employee benefits, hometown-tax return-gift sales, and project-based support for local governments and government agencies.

Traction

As of May 2022, about five and a half years after launch, Tabechoku had more than 7,200 registered producers, over 650,000 users and more than 44,000 products listed, with transaction volume growing 128x over the preceding two years. Earlier figures show 260 contracted farms about 18 months after launch (with a target of 1,000 in 2019) and 500 registered producers as of October 2019, when the team numbered about ten people (11 members at the time of the Hiroshima Starters interview). The company had 57 municipal collaborations as of June 2022, and cumulative disclosed funding reached at least JPY 2.14 billion after the June 2022 Series C. It obtained a Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries certificate for contribution activities to rural revitalisation in March 2026.

Latest developments

Reported activity in 2024-2026 includes a partnership with Shizuoka Prefecture (October 2024) to expand sales channels for primary producers and processors, a second consecutive year of collaboration with Sendai City on hometown-tax return gifts (May 2026), a Chiba City initiative around the food brand "千" (August 2026), support for the Kagoshima tea brand (March 2026), and acquisition of a Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries certificate related to rural revitalisation contribution (March 2026). Governance and organisational changes include a full-time auditor appointed in August 2024 and, in January 2026, a director/executive officer heading administration (with responsibility for corporate functions, internal audit and M&A) plus two additional executive officers, one focused on data- and AI-based new business development.