# Ryuichiro Shimoda
Profile
Independent Media Operator
Growth hacking, web direction, development, and infrastructure — for my own media
Tokyo, Japan · Self-employed · Open to full-time, contract, multi-client, or advisory arrangements
Summary
Since 2007 I have run my own business in e-commerce and specialised media. For a baby-products media outlet I handle everything myself: planning and writing articles, paid purchase consultations, and maintaining the product database.
Over the past year I have built and now operate nine web services for my own business using generative-AI development. I also have hands-on experience in network infrastructure and in internal IT operations and help desk work.
Areas of Work
Growth & Marketing
SEO · web analytics · paid ads (GDN / YDN / Google Ads) · conversion-path design · subscription monetisation · content planning
E-commerce & Web Direction
site design · wireframing · direction of outsourced designers · project management · WordPress
Development & Automation
generative-AI development (Claude / Cursor) · Google Apps Script · Gemini API · HTML / CSS / JavaScript / PHP / PowerShell
IT Infrastructure & Support
Cisco networking · Solaris / Windows Server · DNS · virtualisation · help desk · vendor coordination
Languages
Japanese (native) · English (business level; worked on assignment in Thailand)
Experience
Specialised Media Operator — Self-employed2012 – Present
- Founded and run a baby-products media outlet. It currently has 12,000 monthly unique users.
- Built a recurring billing setup (note.com / Stripe), and have delivered 300+ paid purchase consultations and 100+ hands-on product tests.
- Designed and built a 1,208-product database and an AI recommendation system (Google Apps Script and the Gemini API) that selects products from questionnaire answers. About 1,500 people used it in its first year.
- Provide editorial supervision for publishers, and have product-monitor relationships with domestic and international baby-product brands.
- Over the past year, released nine web services built with generative-AI development.
Web Director / Technical Advisor — Own sole-proprietorship office2015 – 2024
- For a yoga and fitness e-commerce site, handled site design and the management of a redesign project, wireframing, direction of outsourced designers, and coordination with the in-house team (monthly revenue over the engagement: ¥5M → ¥10M).
- Provided outsourced e-commerce and media operations, and technical advisory work, to several clients.
Director / Web Producer — a company operating a yoga portal and e-commerce site2009 – 2015
- Directed the company’s own portal site and e-commerce store, and ran SEO, web analytics, and paid-ad operations.
- Produced roughly two external contract projects per month.
Founder — own limited liability company2007 – 2011
- Took on web production and e-commerce development work on contract, combining infrastructure knowledge from earlier roles with web production as the basis for working independently.
Infrastructure & Internal IT Operations — fixed-term engagements2002 – 2024
- Internal IT operations and help desk (2022–2024, dispatch, a highway-infrastructure research institute): about 190 users, roughly 200 Windows machines and an Active Directory environment across two sites. Handled support requests, PC setup, IT asset management, server operations and monitoring, and escalation to vendors. Also compared vendors and prepared the decision documents for introducing a closed-network service.
- Network engineer (2002–2005, systems integrator): built and troubleshot Cisco switches and routers and Solaris servers, and built small to mid-sized networks.
- Earlier work includes system administration for around 100 Macintosh clients, bridge direction while stationed at an office in Thailand, and localisation and web coding for an international conference site.
Since 2007 my own business has been the main activity, with fixed-term contract and dispatch work running alongside it. The fixed-term engagements above were all taken on in that way.
Education & Certifications
2000B.A., Faculty of Commerce
2000Web production professional course (completed)
2001–2003CCNP · CCDA · CCNA (Cisco) / Sun Certified System Administrator and Network Administrator (Solaris)
* Not renewed and now expired; listed as a record of qualifications obtained.
2005AFP (Financial Planning Level 2) · BATIC Accountant Level · TOEIC 880
Work
Fifteen projects I have developed on my own. The “nine web services” mentioned above are the main ones currently in production.
Main Project
babycar-kun (AI Stroller Advisor)Private
Google Apps Script / Gemini API / Stripe API
A subscription service that takes answers to a 33-item questionnaire, scores a 1,208-product database in two stages, and emails a recommendation report selected by AI. It is currently in production.
The aim is to close the information gap in choosing one stroller out of roughly 1,200, using the questionnaire plus staged scoring (primary scoring, then differentiation within the candidate set, then selection that keeps a spread of brands). Payments call the Stripe API directly, which removes a structural source of failure caused by webhooks.
Public Web Tools
spec-comparisonPrivate
GAS + Netlify (JavaScript)
A tool that builds a side-by-side comparison table of up to five models from a database of about 1,000 products.
Comparison criteria used to vary from article to article, so it uses a single 32-item format and picks competing models automatically from a spec-similarity score.
spec-table-generatorPrivate
GAS + Netlify (JavaScript)
An admin-only tool that generates the HTML for spec tables used in articles.
It removes manual data entry, and avoids the WordPress editor corrupting attributes by producing HTML that can simply be pasted in.
handle-heightPrivate
GAS + Netlify (TypeScript)
A tool that calculates a comfortable stroller handle height from the user’s own height.
Fit used to be something you could only judge by pushing a stroller in the shop; this suggests candidates from a height entry alone.
whats-my-handlePrivate
GAS + Netlify (JavaScript)
The international edition of handle-height, with Amazon links for seven countries.
Handles the cm/inch unit barrier and the fact that product links differ by country.
Media Operations Infrastructure
babycar-price-systemPrivate
GAS + WordPress (PHP) / Rakuten API
Fetches prices from the Rakuten API and updates what is shown on the WordPress side.
Replaces looking prices up by hand with API integration and a daily batch. Automatic retries on failure keep it stable in operation.
stroller-page-creatorPrivate
Google Apps Script / WordPress (PHP)
Generates WordPress pages and various tables from the product database.
Replaces transcription from spreadsheets with generation through a GAS web app.
content-preview-protectorPrivate
WordPress plugin (PHP)
A plugin that automatically protects recently published articles and shows a freshness notice on older ones.
Removes the manual work of time-limited publication and freshness management. Its incompatibility with edge caching (Cloudflare APO) is solved by rendering on the client side.
Research & Knowledge Tools
counseling-viewerPrivate
GAS + Netlify (JavaScript) / Gemini API
Applies AI tags to four years and 355 cases of purchase-consultation history so that similar cases can be searched.
Past similar cases were hard to find; AI tagging plus similarity search made them retrievable.
research-toolkitPrivate
GAS / Gemini API / YouTube Data API
A pipeline that collects and structures Rakuten and YouTube reviews and analyses them with AI.
Replaces the collecting and reading involved in industry research with a four-stage automated process.
weekly-researchPrivate
GAS / Gemini API with Search Grounding
Generates an industry report each week and delivers it by email.
Replaces the hours that regular industry monitoring used to take with automatic generation and delivery.
collect-shopsArchived
Python / WordPress
Collected rental-shop data for 1,919 regions across Japan and generated SEO pages from it.
Stopped voluntarily in January 2025 after weighing the terms of the Google Places API against the SEO risk.
General-Purpose Tools
gas-product-sort-by-categoryPrivate
Google Apps Script
Sorts spreadsheet rows by how often the value in a given column occurs.
Removes manual re-sorting. It uses a stable sort and change detection, so nothing is written back when the result is unchanged.
google-sheet-color-analyzerPublic on GitHub
Python / OpenCV / K-Means
Detects the dominant colours in product images and writes them back to the spreadsheet.
Replaces classifying the colours of several hundred items by eye with automatic detection using OpenCV and K-Means clustering.
gas-sheets-csv-exporterPublic on GitHub
Google Apps Script
Exports every sheet in a spreadsheet to individual CSV files on Google Drive in one pass.
Removes exporting sheet by sheet, and handles interruptions from the API rate limit (HTTP 429) with exponential-backoff retries.