Everyone you know has been brainwashed into wanting to go to Japan. If you've noticed a massive influx at your feet of baggy-pants girls and selvage denim guys roaming the streets of Tokyo, you're not alone. The yen has depreciated 44% against the US dollar since 2019, making Japan one of the best-value destinations on earth. In 2024, they welcomed a record-high 36 million visitors, 53% over the prior year, and their goals were actually set much higher. But in one of the most interesting signals, typically in tourism, visitors prefer experiences. But Japan has become a shopping destination first. People are going to buy things.
And in this video, we're going to explore that arc. Because if you want to learn about brand, you want to learn about quality, but all of the dynamics happening on a global scale around marketing, there are so many fun and interesting topics. I'm fresh back after a weekend trip to Tokyo with my family, seeing and observing a lot of this in person, participating in the shopping economy. In this video, we're going to talk about everything from the creative directors of convenience stores, their department store culture, the opportunities in branding and duplicates, the oddball scenarios around licensing that are playing out globally. Let's lock in.
In Japan, they don't just consume brands, they obsess over them. And the consumer experience is treated like real hospitality. And there's no better place to call this out and start this video than with convenience store culture. You will see again and again on your feed, there are viral 7-Eleven Japan videos. You can get an egg salad sandwich. I went there with my son. He can pick out a bowl of frozen fruit and then make a smoothie right there in a 7-Eleven for $2.50. But 7-Eleven and their culture there isn't the story as much as Family Mart, one of the big competitors.
In Japan, there are three primary convenience stores. You have Lawson's, you have Family Mart, you have 7-Eleven. But why Family Mart stands out is they actually announced Nigo as their creative director last year. If you're not familiar with Nigo, he founded A Bathing Ape, the BAPE brand. In 1993, he opened a store called Nowhere with one of the founders of Undercover. The name is an idiom for overindulgence and complacency. It almost poked fun at itself and Japanese youth living off their parents' wealth. So there's an interesting streetwear dynamic and culturism from its start, and a huge proponent of the scarcity model.
This initially started partly by accident. The brand had a limited budget. When they dropped 50 T-shirts, it's all they had. And they famously really worked this ever since, including canceling wholesale outlets, focusing on their own flagship stores, and being a great global representation of Hypebeast culture overall. And it continues now. Their Kid Super collab this year was hot and in demand, 30-plus years later. And Nigo has taken that across many industries, including probably the most prolific position he's had, which has been as the artistic director of fashion brand Kenzo, a true high-end designer brand.
In between, he has collaborated and been part of showcasing streetwear culture and art culture worldwide. So how does someone like this end up as the creative director of a convenience store? And then what does that mean for brand and consumer culture going forward?
If you walk into Family Mart, it's almost identical to what you would see in 7-Eleven or Lawson's, except for one thing. They have their own line of branded products called convenience wear. So they have small towels, shirts, socks, well-priced, lightly branded items. It will remind you more of a Muji or an Ikea, but it's almost out of place in the other store, with everything else that's in the aisles, and your snacks and your beverages. Then you have this Helvetica-laid-out, very well-priced product.
But in this competitive world that they're in, where there are convenience stores everywhere, major brands they're competing with, and all this tourism culture where people are choosing to go and say, "Oh, I want to go to 7-Eleven. I want to have this egg salad sandwich. I want to experience X or Y." People make their lists from the internet. All of a sudden, this becomes much more competitive and interesting. And so with someone like Nigo, you can see that he is tasked with a few things. One is redoing the interiors of those stores. How does that become different over time? So he's going to begin rolling out new store experiences going forward.
And then second is, how does that product experience become more than just Family Mart, the convenience store, but convenience wear and these convenience items become their own brand, their own tool to be able to attract attention and to be able to get customers to spend money in different ways? And these two actually merge together. I visited a concept store they had in basically a high-end office building where it was just a convenience wear showcase, where they had joggers, umbrellas, socks, towels, pants conveniently laid out. You just grab them, scan, and go, with nice-looking stanchions and interesting merchandising.
It's basically an extension of your average convenience store, but played out in an untraditional environment, and begins to show you a bit of how the brand is thinking and where they're going. I think this is interesting. I think this is ahead of what's happening in Western culture, where you've seen things like high-end specialty groceries, seen the Erewhons of the world focus on collaboration, and bring in things like merchandise and drops to make it into an experience and a tourism destination in LA.
But that's operating at the highest end, at the luxury end. That's a given. That's going to happen. How do you engineer this in the rest of the world? How do you differentiate when everything becomes commoditized?
This is part of a bigger topic, and one that I feel Japan is closest to, which is that everything can be copied so easily now. You've seen my videos about this. You can go on Import Yeti and you can look up any brand and see what factory they're importing from. That goes for beauty. That goes for apparel. You could hack your way down to who someone's supplier is. You can go to China and find them yourself. You can duplicate almost any good. The gates have been broken. You'll be able to make almost anything you want, and in quantities lower than ever.
And so if you decide to make something niche or marketed or presented in a different way, even if it's successful and mainstream, you're able to take some of that market. We see the same thing in software now, people being able to quickly replicate things with AI coding.
But Japan has always seen that directly because China's right next door. There's still a barrier to entry that you had in the US pre-Alibaba, pre-the internet and TikTok culture, where you actually had to go hunt a bunch of that down. But that was happening in Japan constantly. Anything nice would potentially be bootlegged by China and easily imported. And so there's a proliferation of extremely well-made things and extremely cheap things all throughout.
And so in this lowest-end culture, in the things you buy most quickly and as a convenience, the branding and competition of that is ahead of where you consider something like that in the US. And the creative director is one of the last tools that people have. If you have the equal ability to buy anything, I can go to any grocery store, I can go to any convenience store. There's a QuikTrip next to a 7-Eleven, next to a Casey's. How do you pick what you're going to do? Does one of them represent your values better? Does one of them have a more interesting experience you can pick up? Does one of them have an item that they're known for?
When everything is the same, the identity becomes more important than ever.
So, thinking about how in any normal business can you differentiate yourself through what a creative director would do, how could they design the experience to be more shareable and more compelling and more interesting than the surroundings? That might take time. You may not want to run that right away. Whenever you're doing your redesign, can you begin to bring that creativity in? Can you collaborate and have exclusives that people want to show up and buy and participate in, which you'll see Nigo doing through a series of collaborations inside Family Mart? Can you develop your own specific products and lines that give people an interesting reason to have demand or want to get something and pick something up because they know you have a superior item?
And so if I was in any of those businesses, those more traditional businesses here in the US, I'd be thinking about that. Grocery, convenience, what is that creative director path to enable product, to enable distribution and content, and to enable experience in a world where basically everything else, including your proximity and availability, becomes commoditized? And one interesting thing that I feel ties really well into marketing and brand building in general is the next level of experience in Japanese shopping, which is the department store. So you think of department store in the US, you think of Macy's, Nordstrom,
be able to collaborate and have exclusives that people want to show up and buy and participate in, which you'll see Nego doing through a series of collaborations inside Family Mart. Can you develop your own specific products and lines that give people an interesting reason to have demand or want to get something and pick something up because they have a superior item? And so if I was in any of those businesses, those more traditional businesses here in the US, I'd be thinking about that, right? Grocery, convenience, what is that creative director path to enable product, to enable distribution and content, and to enable experience in a world where everything else, including your proximity and availability, becomes commoditized?
And one interesting thing that I feel ties really well into marketing and brand building in general is the next level of experience in Japanese shopping, which is the department store. So you think of department store in the US, you think of Macy's, Nordstrom, Saks, some pretty antiquated models. They feel nothing like they used to, even Neiman Marcus, the high end. In the UK, you have Harrods and Selfridges and more of a culture that's built around that. So they've kept some of that experience at a higher degree of quality than in the US. Whereas in Japan, there's still a primary mode of consumption. You're still going to a department store versus an individual store for lots of experiences. And some of the best brands themselves function both as a brand and as a department store.
The most interesting one to me is Beams. If you hadn't heard of Beams, the story starts with Japan's reproduction of American garments. So there's an obsession in Japanese design with the heyday of Western craft. The most authentic American garments of denim, some of the processes that were used for high-end American workwear, are now really only continued in Japan at that level of quality. There are brands, Beams being one of them, that have made entire businesses off of making the highest quality versions of classic American garments. There's a book on this, Amatora, How Japan Saved American Style, that you could dive into. But American traditional is a style in Japan based on Ivy League style of the US. And what started as imitation became far more elevated over time. Rather than importing stuff from the US, Japanese companies like Beams did a much better version of it locally and took the craft more seriously.
And you see, we've seen my video on Ralph Lauren and Kapital. It's another example of someone who took what Ralph Lauren was doing, but didn't just say, hey, we're going to replicate this. They made it better and more interesting over time, which is, for a lot of brand builders, how to think about it. I don't want to just make another t-shirt. I'll make another pair of pants. How do I elevate the craft? How do I elevate the story? And so as Beams began to develop these originals at a higher quality standard, they had a store that would sell imported American goods. They would curate. They sold Japan's first Nike trainers and eventually developed into their own lines. And this brand blossom that's now collaborated with a lot of the American brands it used to base its products on, or be inspired by, or carry, Red Wing, Timberland, Levi's, L.L. Bean.
And they've created these multi-floor experiences where you go there, and on the bottom floor of the one I went to, there was a Ziploc bag collab with coquette bows on them. It was hot and in demand, and people were there to shop. It was a standout collaboration I hadn't seen. It would rival any collaboration you'd see in America with an iconic brand. The Ziploc bag is an outrageous collab, but one nonetheless, and they did a good job with it. But then there's curated goods and levels of product, right? Where they have a lot of products they're selling of local Japanese and American, everything from ceramics to food products to watches. And then it goes layer by layer through the store where you have streetwear and curation around that and the things you'd expect, and toys and vinyl, all the way up to more traditional menswear to home goods. And it's all looked on through this lens of Americana, but also being really true to finding its own through lines into Japanese culture and curation and the merging of the two.
And I think as we see everything in our world and so much product so commoditized, where everyone will have a brand that looks like anyone else's brand or everyone makes elevated streetwear, people who are really passionate about the same two things, three really, will find their way to stand out, right? So first is the craft, saying, hey, we're not going to make a crew neck, we're going to make the best crew neck. And here's why. We're going to use alternative materials. It's why you see all the things I create, I'm so obsessed with texture. When you get something from me, it's going to be similar to what you've seen before, but the texture is going to be unique. And then there's this idea of history and the portrayal and where can you spin from and how do you combine multiple backgrounds? Yeah, I'm going to take an Ivy League style with a medieval twist or Kapital's Americana mixed with almost a rural Japanese style.
And then last is that experience. How do people actually engage with this? Because doing it online and in e-commerce versus having a world is interesting. And that world does not just have to be your own things you sell. I found when I visited the UK, a lot of these brands, Earl of East had their own products and also curated others. You bring it into an experience of the brand's world. And in a world where everything is so ephemeral and any store pops up online overnight, there's something interesting about that permanence. You can take a lot of inspiration from brands like Beams.
It's also interesting to see how a brand can be interpreted in a country. So I'm wearing stuff that I bought at North Face Japan, North Face Purple Label, which is an interesting story. There is a distributor called Goldwyn, and they're also a brand. You may be familiar with them, who used to distribute North Face. So for those that don't know, in the nineties, North Face was having a rough time. They almost faced bankruptcy. They were cooking the books, and a series of deals that they did, this being one of them, helped save the company from bankruptcy at that point. And one of them was they sold the complete trademark rights to the name to Goldwyn. Not just a license that they have or they pay, but perpetual ownership of the brand in Korea and Japan.
Goldwyn was a really interesting steward of this. They spun off a sub-brand. I don't want to butcher the name, where they had really excellent takes at design and other branding underneath it. And now 95% of the North Face products sold in Japan are unique to that market, and they are excellent. They have a dozen sub-labels. They have North Face Altar. They have Purple Label that I got. There's White Label in South Korea. They have Standard. They have Sphere. They have a 141 custom service that will 3D scan you to make perfect things to your body, really taking the ethos of the North Face brand and doing what that brand has insisted it won't do.
I poked fun the other year at North Face launching this new manifesto that was AI-written and completely out of touch with their customer versus their traditional tagline that never stop exploring. It means a lot to people. But it's interesting to see in a vacuum when someone takes the craft and the presentation and the elevation of a brand seriously versus what happens in a company that lumbers on under their huge hold co-ownership and ends up in weird corporate stewardship, where that line goes. I think what's been done with the North Face in Japan is a tremendous example of the more uninhibited creative vision that can come forth, so much so that I spent an awful lot of money on clothes there.
And North Face did 1.7 billion in the US but did 670 million in Japan. It's a huge business, and they coexist. And there's other stories like this, oddball stories of brand ownership. Budweiser doesn't own its own name in Germany. Brothers who, in a faux family feud, split up the Aldi grocery chain in the UK, and then one of those brothers owns Trader Joe's in the US. You have all these little interesting scenarios that come up around. I always just find it interesting to look at and think about. Those are the kind of things that intrigue me a lot.
But it's funny when you look at how do you look at brands? How do you find brands that you want to reference or look from if you're in fashion? Or you want to build your own unique style? A lot of that comes from, okay, being unique is what are garments other people don't have? Or if you want to have your reference garments, how can you reference things that are different from what other people do? And so if everyone's looking at the same brands that are in the US when they copy things or are inspired by things, you're looking at a completely different set of brands that are only available if you go somewhere in
grocery chain in the UK, and then one of those brothers owns Trader Joe's in the US. You have all these little interesting scenarios that come up around. I always just find it interesting to look at and think about. Those are the kind of things that intrigue me a lot. But it's funny when you look at how do you look at brands? How do you find brands that you want to reference or look from if you're in fashion, or you want to build your own unique style? A lot of that comes from being unique is what are garments other people don't have? Or if you want to have your reference garments, how can you reference things that are different from what other people do? And so if everyone's looking at the same brands that are in the US when they copy things or are inspired by things, you're looking at a completely different set of brands that are only available if you go somewhere in person. That's a very interesting concept. It's a way to base what you're doing around something unique.
So, related to some of these conversations around brand positioning, I'm working on a new project. We'll see if it comes to fruition. Those of you who know, those who follow my lab diamond journey and a few others, I try a lot of things, and we'll see if they come or not. Some have worked well, some continue on. I still have the fashion brand. We've been selling more and more of the car accessories, which is interesting. I'm debating whether I restock that or not. A lot of this is just for me to enjoy the experience and make a little money along the way.
But what I've been looking at is I've been looking closer and closer at interior and exterior objects. And I have some ideas for how I could make some furniture and interiors products by own. And so I've been researching a bunch on Particle, or the sponsor of this video, relevant because it's something I'm using for this exact process. And what's interesting here is I like to look at some of these people in the space to find what are things you would be unexpected that they're selling. So I've been in the furniture world. I've been researching what sells. And one thing that was interesting to me is I went on to Modern. I'm looking at all these dupe brands, brands that sell a lot of common designer stuff and slightly redo it. So I'm thinking of putting my own twist on some of that and have it be tongue in cheek.
What was interesting to me is looking at 2Modern this spring, all their top products are umbrellas, like outdoor umbrellas is a top seller. Then the other ones are ceiling fans. I thought that was interesting, as I have these unique ceiling fans in my house because there's just not many options. We got two of the only ones you could get on the internet back when we moved in here because I was like, cool, I don't want, I don't like the look of the standard ones. There's only so many that look interesting. And it was interesting to me to see that their volume sellers, I can see here on Particle, 700 units the last four weeks of the Irene ceiling fan, 557 of this other variations of threes versus fives, like two of their seven top-selling products. This is a massive firm. I can go look at their overall. Obviously, these numbers are directionally correct. But yeah, we're looking at tens of millions of dollars a month. And they sell lots of different things. It's a wide catalog. It was interesting seeing the million-dollar months are coming from the umbrellas. And this is one of the reasons you look at and take a look at what's happening in these categories, you don't really know what people are selling.
In the same way, I want to look at Interior Icons. They're a classic gray market dupe brand. And what's interesting to me looking at them was there is no big top seller, right? There's lots of little sellers. So it's funny, this On the Rock sofa is a product I've been looking at for the house, which is funny, but again, they sold four, but it's their highest revenue generator. They're selling a lot, four to 15 across so many of these. This is why you see furniture brands operate the way they do, where it's like, oh, it's six to 10 weeks for delivery, they're making it when you buy it, right? And this makes sense, because why would you want to stock something you're selling four of every month, and you need a wide catalog to do that. And we also notice this is something I hate and is borderline illegal, constant average discount of 60%, right? And so you'll see when you're playing in that arena, the perceived value of something versus the discounted value, whether that's your always price or not, you have to get something worth entertaining. It's like, cool, do I want to play in that gray area if I was to compete in this space as a brand? Can you make it work if you're not perpetually discounting? It's one of the reasons I like to look at data like this, you can see what that looks like.
I'm just wondering, in Particle, you get to do that. You can look at their various assets. So not only can I see the price and average value and how that changed over time and how much they're discounting it, I can see when their homepage changes, I can see what they posted on Instagram, we can see with their SMS, can check into their Meta ads all in one place, see how much they post, what their average likes are. People do not mess around with Interior Icons on Instagram. And you're able to actually look at a competitive set for any industry that you're diving into. If you want to learn more about Particle, you can check them out at the link in the description. And thanks to them, as always, my first and original YouTube sponsor, for staying with me.
And all this kind of culminates in a conversation around Muji, one of the most interesting brands in the world. If you're not familiar with Muji, I liken them a bit to an Ikea, but they don't make furniture, they make everything, furniture included, but every category from grocery to luggage to bed and bath products. At the Muji I went to in Japan, they have a Muji hotel, there's a Muji cafe inside, they have a diner, they have every type of experience. They have positioned themselves as being the anti-brand. Their slogan in general and their belief system is the absence of a logo, the absence of a brand, the idea that it's good enough. There's a philosophy around, instead of this is exactly what I want, this will do. That's the entire philosophy of the brand, which is interesting that that philosophy has become a brand in itself because it's so much of what people want. They want a standardization. They want to know a certain standard or quality across anything that they can go and get and feel that they're getting a good price and something that's worth the money and interest. They've elevated this idea of this will do into something that has clarity and confidence behind it, where I walk in, I'll buy any Muji products sight unseen and know that it's going to be fun. I can't really say that about any of the other generic experiences you have, or even any of the other value experiences, you don't know if it's going to be fine. It's probably going to be mid. It's funny that the no brand now sells you a hotel you can sleep underneath that branding.
What I think is interesting here is that trust level that you see for modern brands now. Who's going to sell you what in the future? If you have an overarching identity, and we see this more in Japan than anywhere, if you sell me one thing and I trust it, and you start selling me another and I trust that, I'm only going to trust more of those things in the future. That's why you see now everything from Satisfy launched a marathon protein bar, or it was an energy bar. Graza isn't really an olive oil brand. They're also selling chips and hummus and mayonnaise. They're a food brand. If they were to move into Graza home goods, you'd know what to expect. I think that's what we're going to see here is trust and distribution. This idea that there is brand love and the brand hasn't messed up and it keeps going. You have a huge email list. And look at this, the kinks phenomena too, right? Where I start to like one thing or I get one dupe, all of a sudden I want to get more and more. You become obsessed with the value. As brands get more and more own distribution and more brand trust and understand the internet more and more, they have more opportunities to move across these categories, to not be limited at all. And in Japan, this is inaction because people are doing this from a physical experience standpoint. I go to the Muji store to get groceries and snacks for my flight home, and then I also find that there's luggage. Now I want to try this candle for my house. And why don't we eat at the diner? And next time, look at how nice these rooms are for the value. Let's stay at the hotel. You're putting yourself in
email list. And look at this, the kinks phenomena too, right? Where I start to one thing or I get one dupe, all of a sudden I want to get more and more. You become obsessed with the value. As brands get more and more own distribution and more brand trust and understand the internet more and more, they have more opportunities to move across these categories, to not be limited at all. And in Japan, this is in action because people are doing this from a physical experience standpoint. I go to the Muji store to get groceries and snacks for my flight home. And then I also find that there's luggage. Now I want to try this candle for my house. And why don't we eat at the diner? And next time, look at how nice these rooms are for the value. Let's stay at the hotel. You're putting yourself in that experience. The same thing, I went to Beams, where I went there to look at some of the curation they have, the interesting package CPG products on the bottom floor. And then I got the Ziploc collab, and then, hey, the streamer is actually pretty good. Oh, the men's tailoring is excellent. And you begin to get introduced to this entire world of a brand. And I say that to say that I would, I think from a product perspective, anyone who's in that battle now, who's having any level of success, who has that brand love, I wouldn't be underestimating what you're going to be capable of in the future. And I think we are going to see these big overarching brands, the way you'd see these massive P companies, but now composed of these smaller entities, become something really prevalent in the next decade. And that ties into two final sections I have here. One is about the new world of branding and clones. And one's about the experience and constant recommendations I have if you travel to Japan. Everyone's really with Gentle Monster. And you see my video on Gentle Monster. Maybe I'll link it here at the end. Incredible art direction, incredible brand presentation, really popular, but extremely expensive. I know a lot of people that like Gentle Monster. I know very few that have ever bought anything from Gentle Monster. And so there was a brand in Tokyo. I always like to look when I'm traveling anywhere. I'm a brand cultural anthropologist, for lack of a better term. I'm building as much of my vernacular as humanly possible across everything I do, always to bring decisions I can bring into creative strategy, creative direction, product development, and marketing. And I like to look at where are the actual youth shopping? What have I not heard of that's packed? And in Japan, it was a store called Blue Elephant, which is another Korean brand, some other Gentle Monster that also sells eyewear. But it is just literally a knockoff of Gentle Monster. When I looked it up, I believe they have been in lawsuits, and just at a cheaper price. And this is interesting and damn near genius in that there is so much brand equity has gone into building Gentle Monster for something that most people simply do not want to buy at its price point. And people will not necessarily care. They know what they're getting if they get a dupe that's trying to do a lot of the same exact things, but at a price they can afford because we know now every consumer, every one of you watching, knows or is about to know in 20 seconds that we know everything is an upcharge. We know what things cost. The internet and TikTok has democratized what things are worth. And so we know we're buying the brand. For Gentle Monster, you're paying an egregious upcharge for their marketing and for maybe an ABG to recognize you. What brand it is? Ask you a question. Probably not. And that is a premium that is not worth it for most consumers. And brands can fit in that middle ground. I had my entire product versus brand series on this, right? Where it's like, you can buy the fritté towel for sheets for thousands and thousands of dollars. And guess what? The italic ones, who pride themselves on being an anti-brand like Muji, are just as good. And they're a fraction of the price. And we now know that the information has been democratized. You are wasting money on brand and signal, and that signal on your sheets doesn't really matter anymore. And for a generation, those little signals meant everything. But now, as Rolex makes a million watches a year, as Porsche has a million 911s on the road, you may like those things, may enjoy those things, but they're not the signalers they were. Signals have been ubiquitous. And so you might as well take the thing that looks like it, that functions like it, at the lower price point. And there are brands to be built specifically doing those things. And no one wants to say, oh, I'm going to start a dupe brand, but you'll find that most of the successful things that we're looking at now are doing that. And so I thought it was interesting that Blue Elephant was playing there. And it gave me a few ideas of experiences I want to have. And there's probably a whole separate dupe and shitification video coming where I'll talk about that more. But last, I do want to give you some tips for things, if you do go to Tokyo and Japan, you can dive into. So first, there's an awesome listening room culture where everything from going to be able to go play vinyl to these experiences. I went to Karamoku Research Center, which had all these Devin Turnbull-designed listening room. They had speakers, they had special furniture just for listening, you could experience the rooms, and they had all the items laid out on the bottom floor. And it's really interesting design and look, and a whole brutalist facility you can just go to for free. Team Labs, Planets, they had this amazing exhibit that's basically a complete interactive playground, kind of like those photo exhibits you go to in LA. It was take pictures, but everything's actually interactive and useful, almost like an amusement park. Amazing if you have kids, and they have Michelin Green Star vegan ramen there as well. And then there's a special separate kitchen town and fabric town. So I always go. I'm always looking for more fabric. If you've seen the pants I have that I sell a lot of in white and black, we've restocked them a few times. It's a specific Japanese fabric, even though we make them in Wangzhou, specifically because I found something I love from a mill that just does this particular thing. And so I'm always hunting for fabric in there. Same thing in the kitchen town. It was really interesting, all these really unique molds, any questions you've ever had about what knife is worth it or what cuts, you can resolve right there, right then, and they'll ship it to pans, anything like that. I mean, unless there's so many custom examples, I'm going to do a whole post on this on Instagram, but you can do everything from making your own ceramics to making the fake food that they use in photos. There's so much custom experiences there, which I find for creative people, it's really fun to be able to participate in your own souvenirs. So I know we had our art direction of K-pop and Korean fashion videos, a little bit of a different approach. I want to talk about those branding concepts in general. And this is what I'm going to focus on in the April community call. When this comes out, I'll have just done the March one where we focused on social brand strategy. I'm going to focus on brand creative direction in that, at a macro level, what does creative direction even mean in this kind of day and age? And then how do you decide what to base things on in this kind of complicated world? So I'll have info on that live event down below. I hope you enjoyed this video. I'm at Shop Talk in Las Vegas this week, getting into a lot of e-com. We'll see if I end up recapping that. But if this comes out before it's done, and you're there, don't hesitate to say hi. I appreciate y'all so much for watching.
except for one thing. They have their own line of branded products called convenience wear. So they have small towels, shirts, socks, well-priced, lightly branded items. It will remind you more of a Muji or an Ikea, but it's almost out of place in the other store. With everything else that's in the aisles and your snacks and your beverages. Then you have this Helvetica laid out, very well-priced product. But in this competitive world that they're in, where there's convenience stores everywhere, right? Major brands they're competing with. And there's all this tourism culture where people are choosing to go say, oh, I want to go to 7-Eleven.
I want to have this egg salad sandwich. I want to experience X or Y. People make their lists from the internet. All of a sudden, this becomes much more competitive and interesting. And so with someone like Nego, you can see that he is tasked with a few things. One is redoing the interiors of those stores. How does that become different over time?
So he's going to begin rolling out new store experiences going forward. And then second is how does that product experience become more than just Family Mart, the convenience store, but convenience wear and these convenience items become their own brand, their own tool to be able to attract attention and to be able to get customers to spend money in different ways. And these two actually merge together. So I visited a concept store they had in basically a high-end office building where it was just a convenience wear showcase where they had joggers, umbrellas, socks, towels, pants conveniently laid out.
You just grab them, scan and go with nice looking stanchions, interesting merchandising. It's basically an extension of your average convenience store, but played out in an untraditional environment and begins to show you a bit of how the brand is thinking and where they're going. I think this is interesting. I think this is ahead of what's happening in Western culture where you've seen things like high-end specialty groceries, seen the air wands of the world, focus on collaboration, and bring in things like merchandise and drops to make it into an experience and a tourism destination in LA. But that's operating at the highest end, at the luxury end. That's a
given. That's going to happen. Well, how do you engineer this in the rest of the world? How do you differentiate when everything becomes commoditized? This is part of a bigger topic, right? And one that I feel like Japan is most close to is that everything can be copied so easily now. You've seen my videos about this. You can go on Import Yeti and you can look up any brand and see what factory they're importing from. That goes for beauty. That goes for apparel. You could hack your way down to who someone's supplier is. You can go to China and find them yourself. You can duplicate almost any
good. The gates have been broken. You'll be able to make almost anything you want and in quantities lower than ever. And so if you decide to make something niche or marketed or presented in a different way, even if it's successful and mainstream, you're able to take some of that market. We see the same thing in software now, people being able to just quickly replicate things with AI coding. But Japan has always seen that directly because China's right next door, right? There's still a barrier to entry that you had in the US pre-Alibaba, pre-the internet and TikTok culture, where you actually have to go hunt a bunch of that down. But that was happening in Japan constantly.
Anything nice would potentially be bootlegged by China and easily imported. And so there's a proliferation of extremely well-made things and extremely cheap things all throughout. And so in this lowest end culture, right, in the things you buy most quickly and as a convenience, the branding and competition of that is ahead of where you consider something like that in the US. And the creative director is one of the last tools that people have, right? If you have the equal ability to buy anything, I can go to any grocery store, I can go to any convenience store. There's a quick trip next
to a 7-Eleven, next to a Casey's. How do you pick what you're going to do? Does one of them represent your values better? Does one of them have a more interesting experience you can pick up? Does one of them have an item that they're known for? When everything is the same, the identity becomes more important than ever. So thinking about how in any normal business can you differentiate yourself through what a creative director would do? How could they design the experience to be more shareable and more compelling and more interesting than the surroundings? That might take time. You may want to run that right
away. Whenever you're doing your redesign, can you begin to bring that creativity in? Can you be able to collaborate and have exclusives that people want to show up and buy and participate in, which you'll see Nego doing through a series of collaborations inside Family Mart? Can you develop your own specific products and lines that give people an interesting reason to have demand or want to get something and pick something up because you know they have a superior item? And so if I was in any of those businesses, those more traditional businesses here in the US, I'd be thinking about that, right?
Grocery, convenience, what is that creative director path to enable product, to enable distribution and content, and to enable experience in a world where basically everything else, including your proximity and availability, becomes commoditized? And one interesting thing that I feel ties really well into marketing and brand building in general is the next level of experience in Japanese shopping, which is the department store. So you think of department store in the US, you think of Macy's, Nordstrom, Saks, some pretty antiquated models. They feel nothing like they used to, even Neiman Marcus,
the high end. In the UK, you have Harrods and Selfridges and more of a culture that's built around that. So they've been, you know, kept some of that experience at a higher degree of quality than in the US. Whereas in Japan, there's still a primary mode of consumption. You're still going to a department store versus an individual store for lots of experiences. And some of the best brands themselves function both as a brand and as a department store. The most interesting one to me is Beams. If you hadn't heard of Beams, the story basically starts with Japan's reproduction of American garments. So there's an obsession in Japanese design with the heyday of Western craft. The
most authentic American garments of denim, some of the processes that were used for high-end American workwear, are now really only continued in Japan at that level of quality. There are brands, Beams being one of them, that have made entire businesses off of making the highest quality versions of kind of classic American garments. There's a book on this, Amatora, How Japan Saved American Style, that you could dive into. But American traditional is a style in Japan basically based on Ivy League style of the US. And what started as imitation basically became far more elevated over time. Rather than importing
stuff from the US, Japanese companies like Beams basically did a much better version of it locally and took the craft more seriously. And you see, we've seen my video on Ralph Lauren and Kapital. It's another example of someone who basically took what Ralph Lauren was doing, but didn't just say, hey, we're going to replicate this. They made it better and more interesting in their own over time, which is for a lot of brand builders, how to think about it. I don't want to just make another t-shirt. I'll make another pair of pants. How do I elevate the craft? How do I elevate the story? And so as Beams began to
develop these originals at a higher quality standard, they had a store that would sell imported American goods. They would curate. They sold Japan's first Nike trainers and eventually developed into their own lines. And this brand Blossom that's now collaborated with a lot of the American brands used to base its products on or be inspired by or carry, Red Wing, Timberland, Levi's, L.L. Bean. And they've created these multi-floor experiences where you go there and on the bottom floor of the one I went to, there was a Ziploc bag collab with coquette bows on them. It was like hot and in demand and people were there to shop. It was like
a standout collaboration I hadn't seen. It would rival any collaboration you'd see in America with an iconic brand. The Ziploc bag is kind of an outrageous collab, but one nonetheless, and they did a good job with it. But then there's curated goods and levels of product, right? Where they have a lot of products they're selling of local Japanese and American, everything from ceramics to food products to watches. And then it kind of goes layer by layer through the store where you have streetwear and curation around that and the things you'd expect and toys and vinyl all the way up to more
traditional menswear to home goods. And it's all looked on through this lens of Americana, but also being really true to also finding its own through lines into Japanese culture and curation and the merging of the two. And I think as we see everything in our world and so much product so commoditized where everyone will have a brand that looks like anyone else's brand or everyone makes elevated street wear, people who are really passionate about the same two things, three really, will find their way to stand out, right? So first is the craft saying, hey, we're not going to make a crew neck,
we're going to make the best crew neck. And here's why we're gonna use alternative materials. It's why you see all the things I create, I'm so obsessed with texture, you know, when you get something from me, it's going to be similar to I didn't even see before, but the texture is going to be unique. And then there's this idea of history and the portrayal and where can you spin from and how do you combine multiple backgrounds? Yeah, I'm gonna take an Ivy League style with a medieval twist or Capitals Americana mixed with almost a rural Japanese style. And then last is that experience. How do people
actually engage with this? Because doing it like online and in e-commerce versus having a world is interesting. And that world does not just be your own things you sell. I found when I visited the UK, a lot of these brands, Earl of East had their own products and also curated others. You bring it into an experience of the brand's world. And in a world where everything is so ephemeral and any store pops up online overnight, there's something interesting about that permanence. You can take a lot of inspiration from, from brands like Beams. It's also interesting to see how a brand can be interpreted in a country. So I'm wearing stuff that I bought at North Face Japan,
North Face Purple label, which is an interesting story. There is a distributor called Goldwyn and they're also a brand you may be familiar with them who used to distribute North Face. So for those that don't know, in the nineties, North Face was having a rough time. They almost faced bankruptcy. They were cooking the books and a series of deals that they did, this being one of them, helped kind of save the company from bankruptcy at that point. And one of them was they sold the complete trademark rights to the name, to Goldwyn. Not just like a license that they have or they pay, but like a perpetual ownership of the brand in Korea and Japan. Goldwyn was really interesting
steward of this. They spun off a sub brand. I don't want to butcher the name where they had really excellent takes at design and other branding underneath it. And now basically 95% of the North Face products sold in Japan are unique to that market and they are excellent. They have basically a dozen sub labels. They have North Face Altar. They have purple label that I got. There's white label in South Korea. They have standard. They have sphere. They have a 141 custom service that will 3d scan you to make perfect things to your body. Really taking the ethos of the North Face brand and
doing what that brand basically has insisted it won't do. I poked fun the other year at North Face launching this new manifesto the other year that was like AI written and completely out of touch with their customer versus their kind of traditional tagline that never stop exploring. It means a lot to people. But it's interesting to see in a vacuum when someone who takes the craft and the presentation and the elevation of a brand seriously versus what happens in a company kind of lumbers on under their huge hold co-ownership and ends up in like weird corporate stewardship where that line goes. I think
what's been done with the North Face in Japan is a tremendous example of the more uninhibited creative vision that can come forth so much so that I spent an awful lot of money on clothes there. And North Face did 1.7 billion in the US but did 670 million in Japan. It's a huge business and they coexist. And there's other stories like this like oddball stories of brand ownership. Budweiser doesn't own its own name in Germany. Brothers who in like a faux family feud split up the Aldi grocery chain in the UK and then one of those brothers owns Trader Joe's in the US. You have all these little interesting scenarios that come up around. I always just find it interesting
to look at and think about. Those are the kind of things that intrigue me a lot. But it's funny when you look at how do you look at brands? How do you find brands that you want to reference or look from if you're in fashion? Or you want to build your own unique style? A lot of that comes from okay being unique is what are garments other people don't have? Or if you want to have your reference garments, how can you reference things that are different from what other people do? And so if everyone's looking at the same brands that are in the US when they basically copy things or are inspired by things,
you're looking at a completely different set of brands that are only available if you go somewhere in person. That's a very it's an interesting concept. It's a way to base what you're doing around something unique. So related to some of these conversations around brand positioning, I'm working on a new project. We'll see if it comes to fruition. Those of you who know, those who follow like my lab diamond journey and a few others, I try a lot of things and we'll see if they come or not. Some have worked well, some continue on. I've still have the fashion brand. We've been selling more and more of the car accessories, which is interesting. I'm debating
whether I restock that or not. A lot of this is just for me to enjoy the experience and make a little money along the way. But what I've been looking at is I've been looking closer and closer at interior and exterior objects. And I have some ideas for how I could make some furniture and interiors products by own. And so I've been researching a bunch on particle or the sponsor of this video relevant because it's something I'm using for this exact process. And what's interesting here is I like to look at some of these people in the space to find what are what are things you would be unexpected
that they're selling. So I've been in the furniture world. I've been researching what sells. And one that was interesting to me is I went on to modern. I'm looking at all these kind of dupe brands, brands like sell a lot of common designer stuff and slightly redo it. So I'm thinking of putting my own twist on some of that and have it be tongue in cheek. What was interesting to me is looking at two modern this spring, they're all their top products are umbrellas like outdoor umbrellas is a top seller than to the other ones are ceiling fans. I thought that was interesting is I have these
unique ceiling fans in my house because there's just not many options. We got you know, two of the only ones you could get on the internet back when we moved in here because I was like, cool, I don't want like I don't like the look of the standard ones. There's only so many that look interesting. And it was interesting to me to see that like their volume sellers I can see here on particle 700 units the last four weeks of the Irene ceiling fan 557 of this other variations of three versus fives like two of their seven top selling products. This is like a massive firm like I can go look out there
overall. Obviously, these numbers are like directionally correct. But yeah, we're looking at 10s of millions of dollars a month. And they sell lots of a lot of different things is a wide catalog was interesting seeing the million dollar months are coming from the umbrellas. And this is kind of one of the reasons you look at and kind of take a look what's happening in these categories, you don't really know what people are selling. Like in the same way, I want to look at interior icons. They're like a classic kind of gray market dupe brand. And what's interesting to me looking at them was there is no like big top seller, right? There's lots of
little sellers. So it's funny this on the rock sofa is a product I've been looking at the house, which is funny, but again, they sold four, but it's their highest revenue generator, they're selling a lot four to 15 across so many of these. This is why you see furniture brands operate the way they do, where it's like, Oh, it's six to 10 weeks for delivery, they're making it when you buy it, right. And this makes sense, because why would you want to stock something you're selling four of every month, and you need a wide catalog to do that. And we also noticed this is something I hate and is
borderline illegal constant average discount of 60%. Right. And so you'll see when you're playing in that arena, the perceived value of something versus the discounted value, whether that's your always price or not, you have to get something worth entertaining is like, cool, do I want to play in that gray area if I was to compete in this space as a brand? Can you make it work if you're not perpetually discounting? It's one of the reasons I like to look at data like this, you can see what that looks like. I'm just wondering in particle, you get to do that, you can look at their various assets. So not only can
see the price and average value and how that changed over time and how much they're discounting it, I can see when their homepage changes, I can see what they posted on Instagram, we can see with their SMS can check into their meta ads all in one place, see how much they post what their average likes are people do not mess around with interior icons on Instagram. And you're able to look actually look at a competitive set for any industry that you're diving into. If you want to learn more about particle, you can check them out at the link in the description. And thanks to them as always, my first and
original YouTube sponsor for staying with me. And all this kind of culminates in a conversation around Muji, one of the most interesting brands in the world. If you're not familiar with Muji, I liken them a bit to an Ikea, but they don't make furniture, they make everything, furniture included, but every category from grocery to luggage to bed and bath products. At the Muji I went to in Japan, they have a Muji hotel, there's a Muji cafe inside, they have a diner, they have every type of experience. They basically have positioned themselves being the anti-brand. Their slogan in general and their belief system is
the absence of a logo, the absence of a brand, the idea that it's good enough. There's a philosophy around instead of this is exactly what I want is this will do. That's the entire philosophy of the brand, which is interesting that that philosophy has become a brand in itself because it's so much of what people want. They want a standardization. They want to know a certain standard or quality across anything that they can go and get and feel that they're getting a good price and something that's worth the money and interest. They've elevated this idea of this will do into something
that has clarity and confidence behind it, where I walk in, I'll buy basically any Muji products sight unseen and know that it's going to be fun. I can't really say that about any of the other generic experiences you have or even any of the other value experiences, you don't know if it's going to be fine. It's probably going to be mid. It's funny that the no brand now sells you a hotel you can sleep underneath that branding. What I think is interesting here is that trust level that you see for modern brands now. Who's going to sell you what in the future? If you have an overarching
identity, and we see this more in Japan than anywhere, if you sell me one thing and I trust it, and you start selling me another and I trust that, I'm only going to trust more of those things in the future. That's why you see now everything from Satisfy launched a marathon protein bar, or it was like an energy bar. Graza isn't really an olive oil brand. They're also selling chips and hummus and mayonnaise. They're a food brand. If they were to move into Graza home goods, you'd kind of know what to expect. I think that's what we're going to see here is trust and distribution.
This idea that there is brand love and the brand hasn't messed up and it keeps going. You have a huge email list. And look at this, the kinks phenomena too, right? Where I start to like one thing or I get one dupe all of a sudden, I want to get more and more. You become obsessed with the value. As brands get more and more own distribution and more brand trust and understand the internet more and more, they have more opportunities to move across these categories, to not be limited at all. And in Japan, this is inaction because people are doing this from a physical experience standpoint. I go to
the Muji store to get groceries and snacks for my flight home. And then I also find that there's luggage. Now I want to try this candle for my house. And why don't we eat at the diner? And next time, look at how nice these rooms are for the value. Let's stay at the hotel. You're putting yourself in that experience. The same thing I went to, I went to Beams where I went there to look at some of the curation they have, the interesting package CPG products on the bottom floor. And then I got the Ziploc collab and then, Hey, the streamer is actually pretty good. Oh, the men's tailoring is excellent.
And you begin to get introduced to this entire world of a brand. And I say that to say that I would, I think from a product perspective, anyone who's in that battle now, who's having any level of success, who has that brand love, I wouldn't be underestimating what you're going to be capable of in the future. And I think we are going to see these big overarching brands, the way you'd see these kind of massive P companies, but now composed of kind of these smaller entities, become something really prevalent in the next decade. And that ties into kind of two final sections I have here. One is about this kind of like the new world of branding and clones. And one's about the
experience and constant recommendations I have if you travel to Japan. Everyone's really with Gentle Monster. And you see my video on Gentle Monster. Maybe I'll link it here at the end. Incredible art direction, incredible brand presentation, really popular, but extremely expensive. I know a lot of people that like Gentle Monster. I know very few that have ever bought anything from Gentle Monster. And so there was a brand in Tokyo. I always like to look when I'm traveling anywhere, you know, I'm a brand cultural anthropologist, for lack of a better term. I'm building as much of my vernacular as humanly possible across everything I do always to bring decisions I can
bring into creative strategy, creative direction, product development and marketing. And I like to look at where are the actual youth shopping? What's what have I not heard of that's packed? And in Japan, it was a store called Blue Elephant, which is another Korean brand, some other Gentle Monster that also sells eyewear. But it is just literally a knockoff of Gentle Monster. When I looked it up, I believe they have been in lawsuits and just at a cheaper price. And this is interesting and damn near genius in that there is so much brand equity has gone into building Gentle Monster for something that most people simply do not want to buy at its price point.
And people will not necessarily care. They know what they're getting if they get a dupe that's trying to do a lot of the same exact things, but at a price they can't afford because we know now every consumer, every one of you watching knows or is about to know in 20 seconds that we know everything is an upcharge. We know what things cost. The internet and TikTok has democratized what things are worth. And so we know we're buying the brand. You know, for Gentle Monster, you're paying an egregious upcharge for their marketing and for maybe an ABG to recognize you. What brand it is? Ask you a question. Probably not. And that is a premium that is not worth it
for most consumers. And brands can fit in that middle ground. I had my entire product versus brand series on this, right? Where it's like, you can buy the fritté towel for sheets for thousands and thousands of dollars. And guess what? The italic ones who pride themselves on being an anti-brand like Muji are just as good. And they're a fraction of the price. And we now know that the information has been democratized. You know, you are wasting money on brand and signal and that signal on your sheets doesn't really matter anymore. And for a generation that did those little signals meant
everything. But now as Rolex makes a million watches a year, as Porsche has a million 911s on the road, you may like those things, may enjoy those things, but they're not the signalers they were. Signals have been ubiquitous. And so you might as well take the thing that looks like it, that functions like it at the lower price point. And there are brands to be built specifically doing those things. And no one wants to say, oh, I'm going to start a dupe brand, but you'll find that most of the successful things that we're looking at now are kind of doing that. And so I thought it was interesting that Blue Elephant was playing there. And it gave me a few
ideas of experiences I want to have. And there's probably a whole separate dupe and shitification video coming where I'll talk about that more. But last, I do want to give you some tips for things if you do go to Tokyo and Japan, you can dive into. So first, there's an awesome listening room culture where everything from going to be able to go play vinyl to these experiences. I went to Karamoku Research Center, which had all these Devin Turnbull designed listening room. They had speakers, they had special furniture just for listening, you could experience the rooms, and they had all the items laid out in the bottom floor. And it's really interesting design and look,
and a whole brutalist facility you can just go to for free. Team Labs, Planets, they had this amazing exhibit that's basically like a complete interactive playground, kind of like those photo exhibits you go to in LA, it was like take pictures, but everything's actually interactive and useful, almost like an amusement park. Amazing if you have kids, and they have Michelin Green Star vegan ramen there as well. And then there's a special separate kitchen town and fabric town. So I always go I'm always looking for more fabric. If you've seen the pants I have that I sell a lot of in white and black, we've restocked them a few times. It's a
specific Japanese fabric, even though we make them in Wangzhou, specifically because I found something I love from a mill that just does this particular thing. And so I'm always hunting for fabric in there. Same thing in the kitchen town, it was really interesting, like all these really unique molds, any questions you've ever had about what knife is worth it, or what cuts you can kind of resolve right there, right then and they'll ship it to pans like anything like that. I mean, unless there's so many custom examples, I'm gonna do a whole post on this on Instagram, but you can do everything from making
your own ceramics to making the fake food that they use in photos. There's so much custom experiences there, which I find for creative people, it's really fun to be able to participate in your own souvenirs. So I know we had our art direction of K-pop and Korean fashion videos, a little bit of a different approach, I want to talk about those branding concepts in general. And this is what I'm gonna focus on in the April community call. When this comes out, I'll have just done the March one where we focused on social brand strategy, I'm gonna focus on brand creative direction in that like at
a macro level, what does creative direction even mean in this kind of day and age? And then how do you decide what to base things on in this kind of complicated world? So I'll have info on that live event will be down below. I hope you enjoyed this video. I'm at Shop Talk in Las Vegas this week, getting into a lot of e-com. We'll see if I end up recapping that. But if this comes out before it's done, and you're there, don't hesitate to say hi. I appreciate y'all so much for watching.