Chuo Eiga is a 53-year-old Japanese company with deep roots in the video production industry, now helmed by its fourth-generation president. With decades of expertise and a reputation built across generations, the company has long understood the power of visual storytelling, but as Japan’s television industry entered a period of significant decline and the yen continued to weaken, Chuo Eiga faced a defining crossroads: adapt or stagnate.
Rather than retreat, its leadership made a bold pivot, channeling the company’s video heritage into an ambitious new vision, a live commerce platform, Doki Doki, that would bring Japan’s most extraordinary rural products to consumers across Southeast Asia. Essentially, Doki Doki was built for the parts of Japan the world hasn’t discovered yet.
The path to achieving their vision was anything but straightforward, and that’s part of what makes this story worth telling.
When Chuo Eiga’s president first set out to build Doki Doki, he approached three established Japanese technology firms. The responses were discouraging: the development costs were hefty and pricey in Japan. The vision nearly died before it had a chance to breathe.
But the president refused to let it go. He turned to ChatGPT and searched for Singapore-based live commerce solutions. BeLive appeared in the results, and seemed trustworthy because of its strong track record and growth. He sent his business plan, written entirely in Japanese to BeLive’s leadership. BeLive’s management team replied promptly, and expressed genuine enthusiasm for the concept. That responsiveness, at a moment when Chuo Eiga had nearly given up, changed everything.
A QUICK SNAPSHOT
CUSTOM PLATFORM
modifications delivered including landscape orientation and live banner integration, tailored to Chuo Eiga's unique use case.
90%
cost savings compared to similar solutions in Japan
EXPANSION IN PROGRESS
now actively exploring short-form video and vertical drama solutions to accelerate Asia market penetration.
KEY OBJECTIVES
- Make live commerce financially viable. After receiving quotes averaging ¥100 million from Japanese development firms, Chuo Eiga needed a technologically capable partner who could deliver a world-class live commerce solution without making the project financially impossible before it began.
- Build a platform tailored to their vision. Chuo Eiga wasn’t looking for an off-the-shelf product. Their platform, Doki Doki, required specific customizations, including landscape-oriented streaming to match the way they intended to present premium Japanese products to international audiences.
- Connect Japan’s rural “hidden gems” to ASEAN buyers. The company sought to address a genuine market gap: exceptional, high-quality products from regional Japan that command premium prices but lack international visibility.
- Lay the groundwork for a commerce-to-travel ecosystem. Beyond transactions, Chuo Eiga envisioned a platform that could inspire customers who buy a product from Niigata to eventually visit Niigata, turning commerce into cultural connection and tourism.
- Transform Chuo Eiga’s own identity. At its core, this project was about reinventing a traditional video production company into an IT solutions provider, a transformation that required both the right technologies and the right partner.
THE SOLUTION
From the outset, BeLive approached the partnership as a true collaborator rather than a vendor. When Chuo Eiga explained that the standard portrait-orientation of BeLive’s LORA live commerce solution didn’t quite fit their use case, BeLive’s team listened and built. A landscape-mode modification was implemented, along with banner display capabilities during live sessions, giving Chuo Eiga the branded, broadcast-quality experience they needed to showcase premium Japanese goods with the gravitas they deserved.
Over the course of their three-year relationship, BeLive has provided something that no amount of money could mandate: genuine attention. Chuo Eiga describes the team as consultative, accessible, and willing to take on requests that other platforms would have simply turned away. For a company navigating a complex business transformation while simultaneously educating an entire market about live commerce, a concept still early-stage in Japan, this kind of partnership has been crucial to keep them moving forward. With BeLive, they launched their custom Live Commerce platform, while saving over 90% in development costs.
Today, Doki Doki is live and operational, generating revenue through exclusive live commerce sessions for partner merchants, and quietly building toward a grander vision: a platform where buying artisanal miso from a small producer in Niigata is just the beginning and where that same customer, inspired by what they’ve tasted and seen, one day books a flight to meet the maker in person. With BeLive’s technology as its backbone and its sights set on ASEAN markets, Chuo Eiga is no longer just a video production company with a long history. It’s a company writing a new chapter, one live stream at a time.
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