A Japanese rock musician who later became an e-commerce entrepreneur, Yusaku Maezawa (43), promised to give away 100 million yen or Rp. 12.9 billion to netizens who retweeted their uploads on Twitter. Nobody expected that tweet would break the retweet record throughout Twitter.
The number of retweets reaches 5.6 million. Then how did this story begin? Maezawa is the founder of the largest online fashion retail in Japan called ZOZO. He feels he needs to be grateful because his business has soared this year. Therefore, he wrote tweets in Japanese, which promised to give a gift to the person who retweeted the upload.
He wrote his tweet using Japanese characters which more or less if interpreted into Indonesian are as follows.
“ZOZO sales at the end of 2018 are the most in history, reaching 10 billion yen. I thank you by giving 100 million yen [the total amount is shared with 100 selected people] in cash. To register, just follow my account and retweet this upload. Registration is open until January 7, after which I will DM immediately the winner, “he wrote.
Before giving away worth billions of rupiah, Maezawa’s figure was once a big international news. He is rumored to have bought a ticket to travel around the moon using SpaceX’s spacecraft in 2023.
Based on data from Forbes Real-Time Rankings, Maezawa’s net worth of US $ 2 billion comes from 36 percent of its shares in ZOZO which is traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. However, in the second quarter of 2018 shares experienced a significant decline reaching 57 percent.
There was a decrease in company profits and a delay in production at that time. So there is speculation that the Maezawa tweet is a marketing gimmick to increase ZOZO sales.
Maezawa is known as a person who likes to spend his money on vacation and doing fun things, such as randomly distributing money and planning trips to the moon. That’s what distinguishes Maezawa from other richest people in the world.
However, this gave him a special advantage, because his name was often published by various major international media.
ZOZO is a business that he started in 1998 and has grown to this day. He did this after his efforts to become a drummer for the punk rock band in California did not go smoothly.
