We build the bridge between Japan's marketplaces and the rest of the world.
NovaByte runs jpfans — a cross-border shopping platform that lets people anywhere buy from Japanese marketplaces that don't ship abroad. Ten marketplaces, fourteen languages, one checkout.
Buy. Hold. Ship.
Ten marketplaces, translated
Mercari, Yahoo Auctions, Yahoo Shopping, PayPay Fleamarket, Rakuten, Rakuma, Amazon.co.jp, Minne, ZOZO, Surugaya. Most of them sell only inside Japan and only in Japanese. We search all ten, translate every listing, and buy on the customer's behalf.
Our building, our staff
Everything lands at our own 4,000 m² warehouse in Japan — not a third-party forwarder. Thirty days of free storage means a customer can win six auctions across three weeks and ship them home as one parcel. International shipping is priced by box, not by item.
Priced up front
Multiple carriers and speeds, priced up front. The customer picks the trade-off between cost and time instead of discovering it at checkout.
Nothing here is one clean API call.
Japanese marketplaces weren't built to be searched from Warsaw or São Paulo. Listings are in Japanese, written by individual sellers, with photos that assume you already know what you're looking at. Prices move. Auctions end. Inventory is one-of-one — a used figure from 2004 exists exactly once.
Turning that into something a teenager in Mexico can search in Spanish, trust enough to pay for, and receive three weeks later is a genuinely hard product. That's the work.
Three countries. One warehouse we actually run.
A team of 100+ across three countries: Chengdu (China), Japan and Singapore. The Japan side isn't outsourced — we run our own 4,000 m² warehouse, with our own people receiving, inspecting, storing and packing every order.
We're hiring.
Engineering, operations and content.
One product, done properly.
NovaByte was incorporated in Singapore in August 2024. We operate one product — jpfans — and we'd rather do that one thing properly than run three things badly.
Our 100+ people sit in three countries: Chengdu (China), Japan and Singapore. The split isn't cosmetic. Buying from Japanese marketplaces means someone has to physically receive the parcel, check it's the right item and that it arrived intact, and pack it for an international leg. We do that ourselves, in our own 4,000 m² warehouse, rather than handing it to a forwarder and hoping.
Our job is to make the distance stop mattering.
Japan has the deepest second-hand and collectibles market in the world. Mercari alone lists tens of millions of items. Almost none of it ships internationally, and almost none of it is readable unless you read Japanese.
The demand is not theoretical. Over a million people have signed up, and they are spread right across the globe — buying Pokémon cards, K-pop albums, Gundam kits, vintage watches, Sanrio plush. Most of them find us in their own language, because we made sure they could.
Ship the boring version first.
A feature that works in fourteen languages beats a feature that demos well in one.
Measure, then claim.
We've had more than one change that returned HTTP 200, logged nothing, went green in CI, and did the wrong thing. We verify with the artefact that records the fact, not with the absence of an error.
Small teams, whole problems.
The person who builds the search ranking also watches what it does to conversion.
The paperwork.
| Legal name | NOVABYTE PTE. LTD. |
| UEN | 202432322C |
| Incorporated | 7 August 2024 |
| Entity type | Exempt Private Company Limited by Shares |
| Registered office | 39A Amoy Street, Singapore 069865 |
| Principal activity | Online marketplaces operating on a fee or commission basis (SSIC 63201) |
jpfans
Buy from Japan. From anywhere.
jpfans is a proxy shopping and forwarding service. A customer searches in their own language, we buy the item in Japan on their behalf, hold it in our warehouse while they shop for more, then ship everything home as one consolidated parcel.
Search across ten marketplaces
One query, ten sources, results translated automatically. Search by keyword, by Japanese term, or by uploading a photo when you don't know what the thing is called.
Fourteen languages, properly
Not just the interface — listing titles, buying guides, the lot.
Two payments, no surprises
Pay for the item. We buy it and store it. Pay for shipping only when you're ready to send it home, once you can see the real weight and the real options.
Thirty days free storage
Long enough to finish a set. Consolidation is the single biggest lever on cross-border shipping cost and we don't charge you to use it.
A library, not just a catalogue
Hundreds of guides and IP pages covering how to grade cards, how to spot a reproduction, what the Japanese search terms actually mean. Written because most of our customers are buying in a market whose conventions they've never seen.
Come build it
Chengdu (China) · Japan · Singapore · On-site
You'll see the whole loop.
A change to search ranking shows up in orders the same week. There is no layer of abstraction between what you build and whether it worked.
Real scale, real constraints.
Over a million registered users, fourteen markets, ten upstream systems we don't control.
Small enough that it's yours.
100+ people for one product means you own something end to end, not a ticket queue.
Where you'd fit.
No roles are listed right now. We still want to hear from good people — write to careers@novabyte.com.sg.
What happens after you apply.
Send your CV to careers@novabyte.com.sg. If there's a fit, we'll invite you to an in-person interview at the office where the role is based.
Don't see your role?
Write to careers@novabyte.com.sg — tell us what you'd want to build.
Get in touch.
careers@novabyte.com.sg
NOVABYTE PTE. LTD.
39A Amoy Street, Singapore 069865
Company information
Company information
| Legal name | NOVABYTE PTE. LTD. |
| UEN | 202432322C |
| Incorporated | 7 August 2024 |
| Entity type | Exempt Private Company Limited by Shares |
| Registered office | 39A Amoy Street, Singapore 069865 |
| Principal activity | Online marketplaces operating on a fee or commission basis (SSIC 63201) |