I translated my app into Japanese, Korean and Chinese. That was not distribution.

I built a desktop AI companion called Local Waifu.

The name is Japanese. The visual style is inspired by anime. The app already supports Japanese, Korean and Simplified Chinese. I also translated the five main pages of the website into those languages.

But almost all of my distribution still looked like this:

• Product Hunt

• Indie Hackers

• English SEO

• English social media

• a checkout priced in dollars

I had localized the product without localizing how people discover or buy it.

So this week I put Local Waifu on BOOTH, the marketplace connected to pixiv where Japanese creators sell indie games, software, illustrations and doujin work.

The listing is in Japanese. The price is 3,300 yen, paid once. One purchase includes both the Windows and macOS versions.

BOOTH is international, but its center of gravity is Japan. People browsing it already have pixiv accounts, already buy directly from independent creators and do not need an explanation of why someone might want an anime-styled digital companion.

That makes it a very different environment from a Western startup directory.

On Product Hunt, I first need to explain the category.

On BOOTH, the category already feels at home.

I do not have results yet, and I am not pretending that opening one storefront means I have entered the Japanese market. The listing could produce nothing. The Japanese copy could be awkward. The positioning that works in English might not work there at all.

China and South Korea will also need their own distribution channels. Translating a landing page does not make East Asia one market.

But this already changed how I think about localization.

I used to treat it as a product task:

translate the interface → translate the website → add hreflang → done.

Now I think there is another layer:

Where would someone in that market naturally look for a product like yours?

Sometimes the right distribution channel is not the biggest global platform. It is the smaller local shelf where your product does not look out of place.

For founders who expanded beyond English: did translating your site make a difference, or did growth only start after you found a local marketplace or community?