Sunny Side Up Inc., a Tokyo-based public relations agency, announced Friday it will purchase Bulbous Cell Media Group, which publishes the English-language magazine Tokyo Weekender.
Sunny Side Up, which manages athletes such as Hidetoshi Nakata, plans to acquire all Bulbous Cell Media stock and incorporate the company as a subsidiary by mid-October, according to its press release.
Bulbous Cell Media Group, founded in 2007 by expatriate entrepreneur Raymond Pedersen, is a digital media agency whose leading product is Tokyo Weekender, a lifestyle magazine for foreign expatriates. With the purchase, Sunny Side Up hopes to boost its revenue from services targeted at foreign people.
The company plans to leverage BC Media's existing media products for foreigners and the foreign network they have created over the last 40 years to increase its revenue and realize its medium- to long-term goals, called "Road to 2020 and Beyond," which was released in 2014.
The impact on consolidated sales for June 2016 is expected to be small, according to the press release, and the group is not planning to change its sales plan in the near future.
The driving force for the acquisition was the growing number of foreign visitors in the run-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
According to the Japan National Tourist Organization, 13 million foreigners traveled to Japan in 2014 — an approximate 30% increase over the previous year that is predicted to increase to 20 million by 2020.
Such an increase is expected to double their spending power from ¥2.2 trillion in 2014 to ¥4.7 trillion by 2030, suggesting rising demand for companies and municipalities to market goods and services for overseas visitors.
Fuji Media Holdings group, of which Fuji Television Network and the daily Sankei Shimbun are affiliates, acquired GPlus Media Co., which runs several English-language websites, including Japan Today, in April.