Cotojikara
CAZGA global
Two workshops in the same trade, running the same machines, are still two different businesses — different customers, different reasons people stay. So the plan that fits yours is not the plan that fits the trade. Cotojikara builds that plan with you, by asking.
Start a consultation$59 a month · tax added at checkout · cancel any time
Why it exists
Ask a general-purpose AI how to grow your sales and an answer comes back in seconds. It is a good answer for your trade. It is the same answer everyone else in your trade is reading.
Cotojikara asks about your operation first. What you make. Who buys it now. What you do that gets no name in the brochure. What the floor does when the process runs out. Only then does it put a plan on the page — and it says plainly which parts are hypotheses and what would settle them.
It is built on the thinking of Taro Kasuga, Principal & Chief Value Architect at CAZGA global, and it speaks that thinking as its own. It is an AI built on his thinking, and a separate thing from him.
The name: in Japanese, koto is written two ways — 言, a word, and 事, a deed — and they were once the same word. Cotojikara is the force that turns what you say into what you do. It works that way too: when you make a claim about your product, it asks what was actually done, and what was actually observed.
What it sounds like
From testing. The workshop is invented; the replies are the ones that came back.
Sheffield knives — that carries weight, and flat for two years usually means the story that used to sell the knife has stopped doing the work, not that the knife got worse.
Before we go anywhere near what to change, I need to know who's actually buying from you now. Who are your customers today — working chefs directly, restaurant supply distributors, specialist retailers, home cooks through your own channels, or some mix of those? And roughly, where do most of them sit — UK, Europe, further afield?
One answer, whatever shape it comes in, and we'll build from there.
That's a real answer to a different question — and worth holding onto, because the hand-finished edge on a hollow grind is the sort of thing that gets buried under “quality” when it deserves its own name. We'll come back to it.
But I still need the one I asked: who's actually buying your knives today, and where are they? Chefs direct, distributors, retailers, home cooks online — and UK, Europe, further out?
Without that, anything I say about why sales have gone flat is a guess.
How a consultation goes
- It asks, and keeps asking for a while. The opening exchanges are questions about your product, your customers, and what has actually happened. One thing at a time, so you can answer from memory rather than go and prepare.
- Then it puts one sentence on the page. Who you are for, what you do for them, and what you are trying to achieve — in a single line — and asks which of the three misses your reality. Correcting a sentence is easier than answering an open question, which is why it comes early.
- When the line lands, the whole plan arrives in one reply. The objective, the environment around you, your strengths against it, the three Cs, targeting and positioning, the four Ps, and the tactics that follow. Long, and meant to be read closely.
- A consultation runs up to 25 exchanges. As it nears the end the screen tells you, and the consultation closes with where it reached. That closing can be carried straight into the next one, so the work continues rather than restarts.
- Leaving and coming back is the design. A plan takes its shape when you carry it to the floor, find something new, and return. Your consultations stay in a list, and each one can be printed or downloaded to keep.
What it holds back
- Judgements about your competitors. Repeating a rumour about someone else's quality is easy, and it is your name on it when a buyer repeats it back. What it works with is what you can verify.
- Rulings on regulation. Certification, customs classification, data-protection law, employment rules — these differ by country and change. They come back as things to go and confirm, with the strategic question kept separate: whether a market is worth the cost of clearing it.
- Professional advice. Legal, tax, trade compliance, company formation, intellectual property, financing — each belongs with a qualified professional in your jurisdiction.
- Lists that stand in for thinking. Asked to name every option, it turns the request back into the strategic question, so what you get is something you can act on.
- The decision itself. What it produces is material for your judgement. The judgement stays yours, and it says so where a hypothesis is doing the work.
What it costs
$59 per month
- 20 consultations each month, each running up to 25 exchanges. Your message and the reply together make one exchange. Starting a consultation is what counts against the month; the exchanges inside it are yours to use.
- The count resets at the start of each calendar month, and unused consultations stay in that month.
- Tax is added at checkout. Sales tax, VAT, or GST according to where you are — the price above is before it. The subscription is sold through Link, LLC, a Stripe company, as merchant of record, and Link calculates and collects it.
- Cancel any time through Link, from the link on your receipt. Access continues to the end of the period you have paid for.
- Your conversations stay readable while you subscribe, and each one can be printed or downloaded as a file — including after a subscription ends. One year after it ends, the records held here are deleted.
A subscription is for one person. It is not offered to people resident in Japan — the merchant-of-record arrangement this is sold through does not cover domestic sales inside Japan, and readers there are served by a separate Japanese-language service. The terms set this out in full.
Questions people ask first
- Do I need to have read anything before I start?
- No. Where a term carries a specific meaning here — bi, gemba, sanpo-yoshi — it is defined the first time it comes up.
- What happens when a consultation reaches 25 exchanges?
- It closes with where it reached: what was settled, what is still a hypothesis, and what to check on your floor. You can carry that closing into a new consultation and pick up from there.
- Can my colleague and I share one subscription?
- A subscription covers one person. Someone working alongside you can hold their own.
- What if a payment fails?
- Access pauses until the payment goes through, and your consultations are kept. Updating your card with Link starts it again.
- Is it Taro Kasuga?
- It is an AI built on his thinking, and it says so. What it produces is its own work, not his professional opinion.
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