profile
name : Jun Tamura
division : VP of Corporate
“Numbers” that I continued to face throughout my career
Tamura oversees the entire back office as VP of Corporate at want.jp.
I joined Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, an auditing firm, where I was in charge of auditing and IPO preparation. In 2011, I decided that I wanted a new career outside of auditing, so I moved to Rocondo, a fashion e-commerce company. I chose an business company for my new job because I wanted to work with real numbers.
「In an audit, we check whether the numbers issued by a company after closing its accounts are correct. In other words, we deal with past figures. On the other hand, at a business company, you are dealing with live, ongoing numbers. This is why I chose to work for an operating company, because I wanted to deal with figures from a different angle than I had in my previous careers.」
At Rocondo, which was in its infancy at the time, “I was able to work with live figures on a daily basis while putting in place internal structures and flows” Six years later, in 2017, the company achieved an IPO.
I want to try an IPO again. want.jp has given me the opportunity to share the experience I have.
In 2021, after 10 years of working at Rocondo, Tamura wanted to choose a new career and chose want.jp. Tamura says he was aware of two main points when choosing his new job.
「One is that the business is unique and the company has a competitive edge. The other is that the company has a good match with the management team. I was conscious of these two points in my previous job change, and I set them as criteria in my own decision-making process. want.jp is a unique and attractive business with a vision of ‘creating the next standard for global distribution’. After I was approached, I had several opportunities to speak with the representative, Tae-sung, and I was impressed by his personality and felt that the company matched my criteria.」
Another reason Tamura gives for choosing want.jp is the IPO.
「I wanted to try IPO once again, as I had experienced in my previous job. I decided to change jobs because I thought that with want.jp, which is growing in the future, I would have the chance to return my experience and take on the challenge of an IPO.」
Making 1 into 10 and 10 into 100 rather than zero and one.
Tamura says that these are the “two wheels” of the IPO process: “to continue to grow profitably” and “to have governance in place to match this”. Tamura’s job from now on is to ensure that governance is in place to withstand the latter.
「There are a wide variety of issues to tackle, such as visualising workflows, transparency of management and double-checking that the figures handled are correct. At the beginning of a start-up, the company’s structure and systems are inevitably messy. It is my role to structure them and make them more efficient.」
On the other hand, having experienced IPOs in the past, he says that a balance is needed when building governance.
「If governance is too tight, the burden on members will increase and operational efficiency will decline. A company is a ‘living organism’, so it is important to have a certain amount of fun while creating a structure that suits the company. It is important to find the right balance between these two, and I believe that this is where I can give back my experience and know-how. Want.jp is full of potential to grow to 10 or even 100. I would like to encourage that and work to contribute to it.」