A Bilingual B2B Site for a 70-Year-Old Japanese Manufacturer
Sapporo Nishiyama has made ramen noodles for seventy years and supplies over 3,000 ramen shops in Japan. Expanding into Europe meant a completely different brief from an ecommerce build: no cart, no checkout — a bilingual credibility and lead-generation site whose single job is convincing European restaurateurs to request a free noodle sample.
Visit the live site
The Challenge
This project had no cart, no products, and no checkout — which made it harder, not easier. The entire site exists to convert a specific, sceptical audience: a European restaurateur deciding whether to trust a Japanese noodle supplier they have never heard of with a core ingredient on their menu.
The company’s credibility is enormous in Japan — seventy years of history, over 3,000 ramen shops served, one of the highest concentrations of certified noodle masters, FSSC 22000 food-safety qualification — and almost entirely unknown in Europe. All of that authority had to be translated, literally and culturally, for an audience with no prior context.
It also had to work in both Japanese and English, serving the parent company and the European market with equal fluency, while carrying craft storytelling that a generic corporate template would flatten into nothing.
Our Approach
One conversion goal, relentlessly
Every section drives toward a single action: requesting free noodle samples. With no cart to optimise, the entire information architecture exists to build enough trust for a restaurateur to raise their hand.
Craft as the credibility engine
Scroll-driven storytelling covering the 60 flour blends, Hokkaido snowmelt groundwater drawn from 200m, certified noodle masters, and FSSC 22000 — because in B2B food supply, provenance and process are the product.
True bilingual architecture
Japanese and English built as first-class parallel experiences rather than a bolt-on translation layer, serving both the parent company and the European market without either feeling secondary.
Proof over adjectives
Concrete, verifiable facts — 70 years, 3,000+ ramen shops, 45 years of frozen export experience — instead of marketing language, because a sceptical B2B buyer discounts adjectives and weighs evidence.
Static build for speed
A lightweight static architecture rather than a heavy CMS, because the site is a credibility instrument that must load instantly for an international audience on any connection. No ecommerce weight it does not need.
De-risking the first step
Free samples plus free recipe development and cooking training, presented prominently — removing the cost and risk from the first move so a curious restaurateur has no reason not to make it.
Inside the build
What We Delivered
- Custom bilingual (Japanese / English) B2B website architecture
- Scroll-driven craft and provenance storytelling across materials, manufacture and export
- Company and 70-year history sections translating Japanese authority for a European audience
- Sample-request lead generation as the site’s single conversion goal
- Credibility framing around FSSC 22000 certification and noodle master craftsmanship
- Frozen-export capability narrative (45 years of cold-chain experience)
- Consulting and recipe-development offer presented as a risk-reducer
- Lightweight static build optimised for fast international loading
- Full Open Graph and social metadata for both language versions
- Corporate site and social channel integration
The Outcome
The site does one job and does it deliberately. A European restaurateur arrives knowing nothing about a seventy-year-old Sapporo institution and leaves with enough evidence — provenance, process, certification, export track record — to request samples. That single conversion is the entire brief, and every section serves it.
The bilingual architecture means the same asset serves the Japanese parent company and the European expansion without either audience getting a second-class experience — an outcome that translation bolted onto a monolingual site never achieves.
The strategic decision was refusing to make it a generic corporate brochure. In B2B food supply, craft and provenance are the product, so the storytelling — 60 flour blends, snowmelt water from 200 metres down, certified noodle masters — is not decoration. It is the argument.
Stack & tooling
The service behind this build
Not every business needs a store. B2B credibility and lead-generation sites are a distinct discipline — this is what that looks like done properly.
Explore Website DevelopmentProject FAQs
Why build a static site instead of Shopify or WordPress?
Because the requirements demanded it. There is no cart, no checkout, and no frequently changing catalog — the site is a credibility instrument that must load instantly for an international audience. A static build delivers exactly that with none of the weight an ecommerce platform or heavy CMS would add for features this project genuinely does not need.
What makes a B2B site different from an ecommerce site?
The conversion is a relationship, not a transaction. Nobody impulse-buys a wholesale noodle supply contract, so the site’s job is building enough trust for a qualified buyer to start a conversation. Every element serves one goal — in this case a free sample request — rather than optimising an add-to-cart that does not exist.
How do you handle a genuinely bilingual site?
By treating both languages as first-class from the architecture up, not bolting a translation layer onto a monolingual build. Japanese and English each need to feel native, with correct metadata and structure for both. Here that also served two distinct audiences — the Japanese parent company and the European market — without either feeling secondary.
Why lead so heavily with craft and heritage?
Because in B2B food supply, provenance and process are the product. A restaurateur choosing a noodle supplier is making a menu-defining decision, and specifics — 60 flour blends, Hokkaido snowmelt groundwater, certified noodle masters, FSSC 22000, 45 years of frozen export — are verifiable evidence. Sceptical B2B buyers discount adjectives and weigh facts, so we led with facts.
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