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English | Japanese
3 - Motive Over Marketing
| Sonya | Something I found interesting after starting ARTS&SCIENCE is how running a shop evokes the feelings of a person painting a picture. It's just a matter of creating something and waiting for customers to come. There's a chance that no one will like it, and that makes me nervous when I really think about it. |
| Itoi | Really? Even you've gotten nervous? |
| Sonya | …Not really. |
| Itoi | (laughs) |
| Sonya | I just said it aloud now and thought, wait a second. (laughs) Sometimes people ask me where I get all this confidence from, but I have no idea. I mean, all I'm doing is choosing objects based on what I absolutely like. |
| Itoi | So you're selling things that "of course are good!" |
| Sonya | Yeah. In my shop I have things that I like and things that I made because I want to use them, so it's not like I've calculated each object's price and specific audience. I talk with my staff a lot, and they all want to do marketing. |
| Itoi | I see. |
| Sonya | But I think we shouldn't. Regardless of whether something is cheap or expensive, we've got to line our shelves with products that we believe are good. We can't choose them based on what's handy or easy to sell. We've been remodeling our men's boutique, and if we were to arrange things conveniently and put ease of use first, it would get normal fast. Originally our appeal came from being a group of amateur cool people, even if we did have to struggle for it a little. |
| Itoi | Yeah. |
| Sonya | It was a shop made by an amateur who'd never worked at a boutique before, so it was interesting in its own way. The same goes for the planner—the most important part was that feeling of, "I want to use this." I think it was good that I approached it as an amateur and made it with a very clear motive. I'm sure there are some defects since it was the first English version and I'm not a professional planner designer. Even so, I think it turned out really interesting. |
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| Itoi | Yeah, there are lots of things people can do specifically because they're not a pro. Around the time we first made the Hobonichi Techo, daily planners were as thick as dictionaries. Dictionaries fall apart. Children who don't study have mint-condition dictionaries, but children who do study have dictionaries that are in pieces. |
| Sonya | That's right. |
| Itoi | A planner is something you carry with you every day, so it gets a lot more use than a dictionary and is guaranteed to fall apart. So there hadn't ever really been many daily planners. |
| Sonya | Ah, I see. |
| Itoi | We were amateurs, too, so it started on the whim of saying we wanted a daily planner and figuring we could pull it off. Then after it went on sale, our bookbinder told us the possibility of every single one of them falling apart. |
| Sonya | Oh! |
| Itoi | One day, as we were enjoying our lunch, he said with a smile, "That planner might not last a year. Just look at dictionaries." So we said, "Well yeah, but… what?!" |
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| Sonya | What happened then? |
| Itoi | We talked about it and ended up replacing them all. We tried a new kind to give to everyone who bought a planner, and once we thought it was going to work, we sent them out. So those who bought the first year have two books. |
| Sonya | Wow. Did anyone actually have a planner fall apart? |
| Itoi | As it turns out, the planners didn't fall apart. But it was a preemptive move, so we can't know whether they would have or not. And since we sent two books in the first year, a lot of people figured they didn't need two of them and gave the other one away. That's how the planners spread, and the following year we sold a ton. |
| Sonya | Wow. |
| Itoi | We screwed up because we were amateurs, and we panicked and sent new ones out to everyone because we were amateurs. That's how the planner got its start. |
| Sonya | That's amazing. But basically, when you and your staff made what you most wanted to use, everyone else wanted one. |
| Itoi | Exactly. |
| Sonya | I get it. |
| Itoi | It’s okay to view marketing as something to fall back on afterwards, but it’s not something you do beforehand. What you can do is realize something's going to break right away and do something about it. |
| Sonya | That's right. Although "development for improvement" is good and all, “development for selling more” isn’t going to help. |
| Itoi | Right. |
| Sonya | Sometimes I'll be called in as a stylist by a company. "We need your advice, what's going to sell next year?" …I don't know that! (laughs) |
| Itoi | Nope. (laughs) |
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| Sonya | If people ask what I like I can answer all day, but predicting trends is over my head. If everyone just designed things around their personal taste, I think there'd be a lot better things out there. Lately more young people are designing things that way, but companies are still lagging behind. |
| Itoi | Yeah, companies are looking for a one-size-fits-all way to succeed. |
| Sonya | Yeah! That's it. |
| Itoi | And that’s what makes them think of marketing. |
2012-11-08-THU
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Stylist: Michio Hayashi Photographer: Masahiro Sanbe |
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