Entering Japan Through Local Partnerships: What Finland’s Oldest Bakery Ekberg Shows

For foreign companies considering Japan, market entry is often framed as a question of structure.

Should we establish a local subsidiary?

Should we appoint a distributor?

Should we hire a local team?

Those questions matter. But they may not always be the best place to start.

In July 2026, Finland’s oldest bakery, patisserie and café, Ekberg, opened its first permanent location outside Finland at Isetan Shinjuku in Tokyo. Founded in Helsinki in 1852 and still operated by the same family, now in its fifth generation, Ekberg had spent decades building connections with Japan before making this permanent move. Ekberg official website

What makes the launch particularly interesting from a market-entry perspective is not simply that a historic Finnish brand entered Japan.

It is how different local capabilities were brought together to make the entry possible.

Rather than treating Japan entry as a single decision about one partner or one corporate structure, the Ekberg case suggests another way to think about the problem:

What needs to be done locally, who is best positioned to do each part, and what should the brand itself continue to control?

Japan Was Not a New Market Relationship

Ekberg’s permanent Tokyo location did not appear overnight.

Its connections with Japan go back decades.

In 1987, Japanese supermarket operator Kinokuniya sent a master baker to Ekberg to learn Finnish breadmaking. In 2015, an Ekberg team visited Japan to conduct Finnish baking workshops. Then in 2019, Ekberg operated a pop-up at Matsuya Ginza, working with Japanese bakery company Andersen to reproduce its traditional cinnamon rolls locally. 2019 Ekberg Japan announcement

By the time the permanent Isetan Shinjuku location opened in 2026, Ekberg had therefore already accumulated years of interaction with Japanese consumers, businesses and food professionals.

That history matters.

Market entry is sometimes treated as a launch date: a company announces Japan, finds a partner, opens a location and begins selling.

In practice, a market can begin developing long before a permanent operation exists.

• Who responds to the brand?
• Which products travel well?
• What needs to be adapted?
• Which local partners understand the product?
• Where does genuine demand exist?
• Who might eventually help create a more permanent opportunity?

The path from first contact to permanent market presence may be less linear than a conventional market-entry plan suggests.

The Opportunity Came Through a Relationship

The story behind the Isetan opening is particularly revealing.

According to Isetan, the project was initiated by a buyer who had previously attended an Ekberg baking workshop in Japan and remembered its korvapuusti, the Finnish cinnamon roll. Years later, that experience contributed to a conversation about bringing Ekberg into the renovated confectionery floor at Isetan Shinjuku. Isetan Shinjuku feature

This is a useful reminder that business development does not always produce an immediate transaction.

A workshop in one year.

A pop-up several years later.

A relationship with a buyer.

Eventually, a permanent retail opportunity.

It would be difficult to attribute the Tokyo opening to any single activity. But together, those activities created familiarity, credibility and relationships around the brand.

For companies evaluating Japan, this is worth considering.

Market development may begin before formal market entry.

Different Local Partners Can Solve Different Problems

Another important part of the Ekberg case is the way responsibilities were distributed.

The launch announcement identifies andFika as Ekberg’s general agent in Japan. Ekberg’s products in Tokyo are produced locally, and the store is operated by Metro Seika, under Ekberg’s guidance. The permanent retail location itself is inside Isetan Shinjuku, whose buyer played an important role in bringing the opportunity together. 2026 Ekberg Japan launch announcement

These are different capabilities.

Brand Representation and Local Coordination

A local representative can help connect the overseas brand with the Japanese business environment and the parties required to execute locally.

Production and Operations

For a bakery, the ability to reproduce the product locally is fundamental. Metro Seika handles manufacturing and store operations in Japan under Ekberg’s guidance.

Retail Access and Customer Context

Isetan provides more than physical floor space. Its buyer understood both the product and the customer base, including the department store’s existing audience for Nordic food, design and lifestyle.

Brand Knowledge and Quality Control

Ekberg did not simply hand over a recipe and disappear.

Members of the Ekberg management and bakery teams traveled to Japan to train the local production and operations teams. Recipes were repeatedly tested and adjusted for Japanese equipment and ingredients while trying to preserve the intended product experience. Training also extended beyond the product itself to Finnish culture and tradition.

That division of responsibilities is important.

The question was not necessarily:

“Who can do everything for us in Japan?”

It was closer to:

“What needs to happen in Japan, and which combination of capabilities can make it happen properly?”

Localization Does Not Have to Mean Dilution

The production process also illustrates another common Japan-entry challenge.

An overseas company may want to preserve authenticity while operating in a different market. But authenticity does not necessarily mean reproducing everything exactly as it was done at home.

Ekberg’s team found that local equipment and ingredients required adjustments. The response was not simply to change the product for Japanese tastes, nor to insist that the Finnish production process be copied without modification.

Instead, the teams worked through repeated testing to reproduce the intended experience under local conditions.

This distinction matters well beyond food.

For foreign companies entering Japan, localization is often discussed as though there are only two options:

Keep the original model unchanged, or
adapt the product for Japan.

In reality, there is often a third task:

Preserve what is essential while changing what is necessary to execute locally.

That requires knowing which parts of the brand, product or service are non-negotiable—and which parts are simply the way the company happens to operate in its home market.

A Distributor Is Not Always the Whole Answer

Foreign companies frequently begin Japan discussions by asking:

“How do we find a distributor?”

A distributor may indeed be the right solution when the market, product, customer, pricing and sales process are already sufficiently understood.

But Ekberg’s case illustrates why market entry can involve a broader ecosystem.

• market development
• local representation
• retail relationships
• production
• logistics
• operations
• regulatory knowledge
• customer service
• brand stewardship
• marketing and communications

One company may provide several of these.

Or different partners may perform different roles.

This is why identifying a distributor and building the market are not necessarily the same task.

As discussed previously in HMC Insights, the more useful first question may sometimes be whether the company needs a distributor or a business development partner—or whether it needs a combination of capabilities before committing to a particular channel structure.

Build the Market Before Building the Infrastructure

There is a broader lesson here.

Companies sometimes treat infrastructure as evidence of commitment to a new market.

Establish the entity.

Hire the team.

Secure the office.

Build the distribution network.

Then begin developing the market.

But depending on the business, there may be another sequence:

Learn ? Test ? Build Relationships ? Assemble Capabilities ? Scale

Ekberg’s history in Japan is useful precisely because the permanent store came after years of market contact.

That does not mean every company should spend decades testing Japan. Nor does it mean a local subsidiary is unnecessary. Depending on the industry, regulations, hiring requirements, economics, required level of control and expected scale, establishing a Japanese entity may eventually be the right decision.

The point is different:

Corporate infrastructure should support the market opportunity—not substitute for understanding it.

Before deciding what organization to build, it can be useful to understand what the market actually requires.

The HMC Perspective: Start With Capabilities, Not Labels

Japan market-entry conversations tend to rely on labels.

Distributor.

Agent.

Representative office.

Subsidiary.

Joint venture.

Retail partner.

Each describes a potentially useful structure.

But the label alone does not tell us whether the business can actually perform the work required to develop the market.

A more practical starting point is to map the capabilities.

What needs to happen before the first sale?

Who will create market access?

Who understands the target customer?

Who will manage local relationships?

Who owns execution?

What must remain under the overseas company’s control?

What can be performed better by an established local partner?

And what still needs to be learned before a long-term structure should be chosen?

Ekberg’s Tokyo opening provides a useful example because the brand did not arrive in Japan as an isolated foreign company simply looking for a sales channel.

Its permanent entry was built on years of contact, local knowledge, buyer interest, production expertise, retail access and direct transfer of brand know-how.

For companies considering Japan, the lesson may be simple:

Do not begin by asking how to reproduce your entire home-market organization in Japan.

Begin by asking:

What capabilities does this market require, which of them should we own, and who can credibly provide the rest?

Sometimes, the most effective first step in entering Japan is not to build everything.

It is to build the right relationships around the opportunity.