Last week, Nissan released the cute and highly customizable Pino, a 660 cc mini car that can be totally decked out with patterned seat covers, stuffed animals, matching handbags, tissue covers, cd cases, and more. All of these accessories are part of a collaboration with Sony Plaza which (among other things) sells popular and trendy lifestyle products for women.
The Pino itself comes in nine exterior colors, but the real push is with the interior customization, marketed through the easy-to-use, flash-based “Pinoshop” website. Because the Pino is marketed towards 18-30 year old women (the purikura generation), the Pinoshop allows users to customize their Pino online with an interface very similar to the purikura photo booths they grew up with.
It operates like Japanese purikura in that you can add lots of stickers, glitter, backgrounds, and drag and drop all of the car accessories to the car. When you’re done, take a picture! The shopping cart makes it a breeze to buy the exact package you just picked out.
In our eyes, this is a perfect example of knowing a demographic well and marketing to it. Japanese women don’t just know purikura, they lived it in high school, and now they want to buy cute cars. Nice work Nissan.
The basic Pino goes for ¥861,000 ($7,000), but the Barbapapa cushion will set you back ¥3,465 ($28).
Pictures via Pinoshop
Michael is CEO and Co-Founder of the 
Looks fun and trendy…I would love to try it someday. When will it be available in the US? Japan has greatly evolve in technology adding more trends and lifestyle. It would be a fun online shopping for cool accessories and gadgets. Do they have weathertech mats?
That’s the friendliest car I have ever seen. The Automobile Parts must be the size of parts for a remote control car. Its cute thought. My daughter would love this car. I wonder how good this car is on gas? But for $7000 you can’t go wrong. I know Tata motors is also coming out with a cheap car as well.
Wow that thing is small. The alternator on that must be the size of a peanut.