Nicolas Soergel

Nicolas Soergel (日本語)

Nicolas is the founder of NIHON ICHIBAN, a social business that promotes Japanese lifestyle products to the world.

Although Japan is famous for its rich cultural heritage, it is hard to find genuine and authentic products outside of Japan. Beginning of 2011 Nicolas started a community of Japan fans on Twitter, Facebook and blogs to share information and news about Japanese culture. This community grew to more than 100,000 people within its first year.

With NIHON ICHIBAN he then started a platform to help traditional Japanese businesses as well as Japan designers marketing and selling their brands and products to Japan fans inside and outside of Japan.

Nicolas strongly believes that NIHON ICHIBAN can contribute preserving and revitalizing the cultural heritage of Japan by introducing Japanese traditional and contemporary lifestyle products to people in other countries.

• 1969 - Born in Germany
• 1994 - Started his career at Sony Germany holding various positions in Finance & Controlling
• 1998 - Finance & Operations Manager at Dyson Germany responsible for launching logistics, customer care and finance in Germany, Austria and Switzerland
• 2001 - Finance Manager at Nippon Boehringer Ingelheim
• 2002 - T-Systems (Deutsche Telekom Group), Head of Asia Pacific region and CEO of T-Systems Japan
• 2010 - Executive Vice President Sales at KVH
• Since 2011 - Started the NIHON ICHIBAN project
• Since 2009 Nicolas is also Board Member and Managing Director of Chinriu Honten Limited, a company producing and retailing Japanese fine food since 1871