Hasta La Gadget!

Click for our 2008 Tokyo Girl’s Collection report

The Tokyo Girls Collection is best known for blending forward-thinking e-commerce strategies with the appeal of a classic stadium extravaganza. While three dozen popular domestic fashion brands stage runway shows of their latest looks, audience members can purchase the items as seen immediately with their mobile phones through a dedicated mobile retail site. The event also eschews typical fashion world exclusivity by offering a general admission ticket for just $40 (less than a typical concert ticket), regularly attracting a crowd of 20,000 plus teens and 20-somethings.

According to organizers, a remarkable 57 million yen ($580k) worth of merchandise was sold during the event as users accessed their phones to grab the latest looks as they were first revealed on the catwalk.

Below is a report from our friends at Diginfo News

Event producer Branding Inc. is the media company behind top portal and retail websites Girlswalker.com and Fashionwalker.com. According to a survey conducted last season by the company, 85.6% of respondents in their teens or twenties spend nearly 100 minutes on the mobile internet per day and more than 70% have used their mobile phones to shop at least once in the last year.

Now in its 8th season the Tokyo Girls Collection also features an increasing number of partner booths and presentations, collaboration projects, and spin-off activities in addition to the mainstay fashion shows and pop singer performances. Event partners include leaders from diverse industries, such as cosmetics, automotive, and food & beverage.

Trend Potential
The Tokyo Girl’s Collection is a big deal, not just for fashion, but for mobile, e-commerce, publishing, New Media, and more. This is why we go to every TGC and document it top to bottom with sound analysis on the trends, marketing collaborations, and technology behind the events. For our full report and the connection to related global trends, you’ll find it all in the Trendpool. For companies and individuals interested in experiencing the action themselves, our Tokyo Trend Tours can integrate the next TGC event with a full retail experience in the city.

Iconic street fashion magazine FRUiTs is producing a retail space, FRUiTs MiX, in the brand new Marui One department store in Shinjuku. This is the first move of this kind for the famously progressive publication, and one that takes the brand into far more mainstream, accessible territory. A number of locally influential Harajuku boutiques (like Faline and Dog) and vintage shops (Berberjin) are involved in the project. Street savvy designer Nozomi Ishiguro has also been tapped to create a limited edition line, Nozomi Ishiguro FRUiTS PUNCH, for the select shop.

Marui One, which opened on February 20th in the high-traffic, oft-visited Shinjuku district of Tokyo, is positioning itself as a showcase for Tokyo fashion to Japan and the world. Each floor gets its own theme: the first is Tokyo Pop City, the second goes to FRUiTS, the third is “Romantic Casual,” and the fourth will sell contemporary kimonos under the banner “Asian Modern.” Floors 5-8 are taken over by Marui Young, the arm of the department store chain specializing in gothic, Lolita, and punk styles.

Like the Beams CULTuART Store we covered previously, Tokyo retail institutions are looking to capitalize on the city’s cool quotient.

Sofa specialty shop NOyes has a new campaign to recycle your old jeans into home furniture.

Sofa manufacturer NOyes has announced a service available from this month to turn your old jeans into a cushy stool. Sure, the idea of re-using denim is not particularly novel—we covered the more artistic installation of recycled denim creations at last season’s Japan Fashion Week. However, when an otherwise ordinary furniture manufacturer takes up this sort of project it shows the extent to which the idea of re-using materials (and eco-friendly lifestyle in general) has entered the mainstream psyche.

The promo website shows the process of how your jeans (three pairs are necessary) are transformed into the finished stool, complete with a video that demonstrates the whole hand-made process. It is a neat way of re-assuring increasingly wary consumers that they can be sure exactly how and with what materials the product was created (original production of the denim aside). After all, if those jeans had been up to no good, only you would know.

The custom denim stool costs ¥36,720 ($400) and orders take three weeks to complete.

Recently, women’s undergarment maker Peach John started offering a line of gashapon capsules containing their own branded items. These miniature mobile phone “straps” attach to the hole on a mobile phone for decoration and can be found on just about anyone’s handset these days.

Below is a video introduction to the Peach John shop in Shibuya 109.

Peach John’s straps are available in machines in their shops, but if you go to just about any shopping center or toy shop you can find row upon row of gashapon machines that dispense everything from miniature anime characters to collectible items on just about any topic. Many of these machines are selling branded items, typically miniature versions of the real product, that can be attached to handsets. Below are four examples (out of many) that we saw recently representing Mister Donut, Lotte Gum, AU mobile (mini handsets!), and Gatsby hair gel.

While brands often give away mobile phone straps as promotions, these cost money (from $1 – $5) and still manage to sell out. This is where Japan’s deep consumer and mobile phone cultures collide in a fun way.

Trend Potential
Mobile phone culture runs deep in Japan, and accessorizing the devices is particularly important for users regardless of age. The Mobile Trendpool features the rest of this report and many other similar marketing and mobile trends.

Via Danny Choo and Gyao.

The digital lifestyle application in development from Tonchidot, makes its first public appearance in Japan at the fashion trade show Rooms.

Tonchidot’s “Sekai Camera” made its Japanese debut in the most unusual place: at Tokyo fashion trade show Rooms. While the Japanese creators have presented this iPhone application to “tag the real world” at noteworthy expos overseas (like TechCrunch 50 in San Francisco), they had yet to demonstrate it in their home country.

To catch you up, Sekai Camera (“world camera” in Japanese) is an Augmented Reality iPhone application in development that offers users “pop-up” information about their surroundings, as viewed through the camera screen. Touch any of the approaching icons to pull up the corresponding information into the frame or drop it into your “pocket” for later. Put simply, it’s a kind of Second Life spatial interaction for your, err, first life.

Visitors to a space can also tag the place themselves through comments, photos, and eventually voice recordings, viewed by friends or the public depending on filter settings.

But returning to the first point—it was the fashion industry that got a sneak peak of this future-forward technology. More specifically Rooms is a high-profile, yet invitation only, trade show attended by thousands of buyers, designers, and press. Nonetheless these are professionals who, by reputation, are typically more interested in things more tangible and less tech-y.

Trend Potential

We have been covering the increasing convergence of fashion retail and digital lifestyle trends for some time. To read the rest of this review with more depth, as well as connections to similar trends, you’ll find it all in the Trendpool.