and factory, inc, a Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed company, is built on a mission of “bringing ‘and’ which means moments of connection, enrichment, and serendipity into everyday life.” Its business comprises three main segments: a manga app service with nearly 10 million users; an entertainment business that provides a fortune-telling service "uraraca" in collaboration with leading practitioners; and a hostel business, which maintains a consistently high occupancy rate by offering a cozy and welcoming environment for guests from around the world. Among these, the manga business serves as the company’s core operation, driving 70–80% of total revenue and anchoring its overall growth trajectory.

With domestic e-book growth slowing, Japan’s manga industry faces a pivotal shift toward global expansion. The success depends on transforming manga for a global audience, which requires sophisticated localization, including full-color adaptation tailored to local cultural expectations and reformatting into vertically scrollable layouts optimized for smartphones.

The industry’s key challenge lies in enhancing technical capabilities while simultaneously optimizing costs, enabling faster, more affordable product releases and broader service delivery to an ever-growing global audience.

As and factory, inc accelerated its global expansion, optimizing costs was a significant challenge. At the same time, flexibility to rapidly develop the business was also required. Alibaba Cloud’s ability to deliver a scalable infrastructure that simultaneously meets both demands with high performance and cost-effective infrastructure made it the natural choice as a strategic partner.

● Rapid cloud migration enabled significant cost reductions, substantially outperforming alternative cloud providers.

● Manga production tasks that previously required 3 days were now reduced to just 1 day, freeing creators from repetitive, time-consuming workflows and enabling them to focus on storytelling and creative expression. This represents a transformative leap forward for the industry.

Operational stability was equally essential. To ensure a seamless and trustworthy experience for end users, the cloud platform must be highly reliable. Alibaba Cloud’s proven track record in delivering resilient, high-availability services provided that assurance. Just as important was the strength of the technical support, as engineering teams remained readily accessible and responsive, enabling prompt consultation and rapid issue resolution whenever needed. These capabilities collectively underscored why and factory, inc chose Alibaba Cloud as its technology partner.

Today, only a very small amount of Japanese manga reaches an international audience. Bridging this gap and bringing Japan’s rich storytelling heritage to readers worldwide is the defining goal for and factory, inc.

Collaboration with Alibaba Cloud and the strategic application of AI cut the cost and time of once-prohibitive localization tasks such as high-quality translation, color adaptation, and transforming barriers into scalable advantages. As a result, countless titles once considered unviable for overseas release due to profitability constraints now gain a real opportunity to thrive in global markets. A manga that struggled domestically could now find passionate international fans or even become a breakout global success. Such outcomes could reshape the entire landscape of Japan’s content industry. Armed with this technological partnership, and factory, inc aims to maximize creators’ potential, not by replacing human ingenuity but by freeing it from technical and economic constraints. Together, and factory, inc and Alibaba Cloud will co-create the future of Japanese manga.