Mother’s Industry: A Brand For Everyone, By Everyone

Please give us a quick introduction to your company.

First and foremost, our company highly values our credo and philosophy. That philosophy, in particular, emphasizes our use of fashion to put smiles on peoples’ faces. As for our vision, we want to be known as a brand for everyone by everyone. This philosophy is the foundation of our company. Our concept targets people who want to express themselves in a simple manner. With our collections, we are providing customers with the opportunities to express themselves in this manner.

As a baseline, we want to value the traditions of Japan. I feel that the Japanese people have grown in admiration of Western culture, and as a result, we have learned a lot about fashion from the West. Personally, as I’ve made my way through the fashion industry, I’ve realized that the combination of Japanese and Western styles creates uniqueness. Ms. Minako Kawahara is a mizuiro ind designer and my partner in this business. She is also the executive manager of the company and the leader of our female staff. When we launched her brand, we decided to call it mizuiro ind since mizuiro is the Japanese word for light blue, which is her favorite color. Since her childhood, she has said that light blue has been an initiative color. Therefore, with her designs, she wanted to invoke the intuitiveness she felt from the color. Included in the designs is also the keyword “Japanese Trad,” invoking the timelessness of traditional Japanese clothing and fashion.

Looking at our latest collection of promotional materials, I hope that you can understand that our identity revolves around simple yet fashionable. This promotional material includes parts of our exhibition in Paris for the collection, which has the title “Free People.” We named this collection Free People since the vision goes beyond just men and women as people. Essentially, we are looking at genderless pieces that men and women can wear. Our target is to become a new luxury, and while many will associate luxury with high-class, what we aim for is, beyond that, to trigger emotions in our customers. The idea is to create a peaceful mind of the wearer, providing them with freedom of the senses. The encapsulating vision allows the wearer to enjoy the fashion on a truly emotional level.

The price range isn’t too high, and the reason is that we want to keep our products affordable for those who understand the value of luxury that enriches the heart. Currently, the consumption rate of our inventory is 99.6%, meaning that for 20 years, we haven’t discarded any excess stock. This is a reflection of the Japanese mottainai; a centuries-old philosophy that expresses a sense of regret over waste. We value and treasure everything.

From our understanding, your collections are also sold overseas. Do you see this significant level of sales in your overseas stores?

What I’ve described so far today is based on our domestic retail stores. We don’t have any direct retail stores overseas. We sell to other stores, meaning that sales at that point are out of our hands. We don’t know the ratio, but we hope that they are close to what we have achieved in Japan.

When we launch our overseas direct retail business, our common goal is to reduce the amount of inventory and achieve 100% sales, reducing our stock to zero. This can be achieved by utilizing logistics and digital means.

Do you have any plans to open your own boutiques overseas?

We are currently preparing Taiwan to launch our own direct retail store there. To take advantage of this opportunity, we are currently in discussions about stores in China Korea. The strategy is to strengthen our overseas operations. To this end, we’ve also had discussions about a pop-up store in Singapore.

Our sales have been increasing year-on-year, with only COVID-19 having an impact and causing a dip. Growth is expected to continue in the future.

Just now, you mentioned opening physical stores. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, many physical stores were heavily impacted by forced closures and stay-at-home measures. As a result, many looked to e-commerce as a way to buy and sell fashion. What role does e-commerce play in your business model, particularly in your expansion overseas?

When we initiated our e-commerce business, the plan was to provide 24/7 services at the same level as we provide in physical stores. We are now endeavoring to provide the same high quality in both physical and online stores. At physical stores, we occasionally attach a handwritten message from the staff members on purchased items, and the feedback we’ve received is that customers find this extremely pleasing. The packaging is also highly appraised by customers since we make sure that they are very detailed. The reason we can do this is because we take care of all the processes, including logistics.

If you were to compare shopping online versus at a physical store, there are some elements that online cannot replicate, such as allowing customers to touch materials themselves. There are of course, several digital tools now that can replicate some elements of physical store. Do you see the two platforms as being complementary to each other, or do you see physical stores as something that will always be essential to your business?

The biggest challenge for an online store is sizing, but our biggest uniqueness I think, is taking inspiration from Japanese traditional kimonos and making them applicable to a wide range of sizes. We can accommodate female heights of 150 cm to 170 cm, meaning it is just a matter of how you wear the clothing. In Japan, we consider traditional clothing to be something that surrounds the body. It is important that the clothing itself stands out, but at the same time, our designs are made to illuminate the person wearing it. By combining apparel with the wearer's personality, we can create something that allows the wearer to shine brightly.

Japan is currently experiencing record levels of tourism, with 37 million inbound tourists being the projected number for 2024. This trend is expected to continue in 2025. Many of these inbound tourists are taking advantage of the weak JPY and tax-free shopping to take home unique items of made-in-Japan clothing and apparel. How has your company been impacted by these record numbers of tourists visiting Japan, and what opportunities are you seeing as a result?

Our mizuiro ind store in Kyoto Sanjo have 43% inbound sales, and our store in Tokyo Aoyama has 20% sales from inbound. Our Sanjo store is in a 130-year-old building, which was the very first Western-style building made by Japanese carpenters. We decided to choose this location since we admired the combination of traditions of the West and Japan, something we feel our brand epitomizes.

We have thought  about why we have such a high rate of inbound sales at our mizuiro ind stores, which are not known overseas, and I think that because our brand and clothing are so quintessentially Japanese, tourists want to take that home. It isn’t necessarily brand name popularity; rather, the inbound sales come from an affiliation with the product and customers.

We advertise heavily through social media, and one key point we try to put across is “Five Hour Distance.” What we mean by this phrase is that specifically, we are targeting customers who are on only a five-hour flight from Japan. This also means that our strategy focuses on neighboring Asian countries like Taiwan, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Korea at the same time as we expand to Paris, New York, and other fashion-centric Western locations. The idea is to take advantage of the butterfly effect through a global network.

You mentioned utilizing social media to increase brand awareness. Do you have any plans to work with influencers to raise brand awareness in overseas markets?

Yes, you are spot on. We want to actively use social media and influencers in each region so that we can reach out to people in the area. The key to this is the central location of our Aoyama flagship store that will open in the spring of 2025.

For inbound tourists, we offer souvenir items designed to make good gifts for friends and family back in their home countries.

Earlier, you mentioned the possibility of opening new stores in overseas locations. Do you have a concept in mind for these new stores? How do you differ the concept of your stores from country to country?

We must conduct market research for each locality and find the needs of each particular area. The uniqueness of mizuiro ind is that we have a seasonless collection. Japanese brands tend to have higher sales in the winter, but since our products are seasonless in concept, they sell well throughout the entire year. Being seasonless, therefore, is adaptable to many different localities and climates. This doesn’t necessarily mean that sales are a sure thing; hence, there is a need for proper market research. I believe that Japan’s textile technology has a huge impact on fashion.  

How important is it to be a made-in-Japan brand? Is this something relevant to your philosophy, or is your brand something that can be made throughout the world?

Firstly, we want to carry out strict domestic quality control, and to this end, we have 21 commissioning factories. We are particular about our brands being made in Japan, and the factories we are working with have been selected due to their high technology and use of made-in-Japan fabrics. If we were to shift our production facility overseas, it would be hard to procure made-in-Japan fabrics. There would be a smaller pool of high-technology factories to select from. It is, therefore, important that we keep our options open with Japanese textiles and techniques.

The defect rate for mizuiro ind is only 0.288%, which is incredibly low. This is thanks to the partner factories in our supply chain. Conventionally, automatic cutting machines are used in apparel, but in our factories, some cutting processes are still done by hand. By cutting manually, you can fully draw out the best of the texture of the textile, and in some worst-case scenarios, the fabric may be defective, in which case a technician would spot that and remove that fabric from the production processes. Our factories excel at sewing and possess high sewing technologies and techniques. What this means is that our designer, Ms. Minako Kawahara, may propose specific methodologies, but our factories may be able to counter-propose something that might look even better. In many cases we adapt to their recommendations since we trust in their expertise. This means that our mizuiro ind brand is one that is made by many rather than just a single person, which is the culmination of combined efforts. If we were to produce overseas, we would want a factory that shares our passion and dedication to the craft. What is not written in the contract is often just as important, if not more important than what is written, and we want to work with factories that can read between the lines and understand the kind of excellence we are trying to achieve.

In terms of your overseas strategy, what role do partnerships and collaborations play in your business model, and are you currently looking for any new partnerships either domestically or abroad?

Yes, we are currently looking for partners. As I mentioned, however, sharing the same values and passions is vital to us in order to proceed with a partnership. Currently, our search for partnerships covers Taiwan since the country possesses an affinity for Japanese culture and the Japanese mindset. In terms of what those partnerships would look like, at this present time, we are looking for both sales channels and partners to help us with boutique stores as well as partners to help with production.

Once we consolidate our foothold in Asia, we will expand into Western nations, which are advanced fashion nations. The goal here is to be recognized worldwide as a unique Japanese brand.

We saw in our research that your company has taken part in numerous unique social projects such as disaster relief and Save the Children. How did these collaborations come about, and how do they fit into your company philosophy?

Our business is sustained by so many different people, and we really owe a debt of gratitude to all those that have paved the way for Mother’s Industry to become the company it is today. We want to thank all of those who have helped us grow through continual social contributions. Whenever we make financial contributions, they are acquired through sales to customers, so really, it is the desire and kindness of our customers that are responsible for our ability to give back to society. Currently, we contribute JPY 1 per item of clothing sold, with the money going to Save the Children.

Imagine that we came back in 2033 and had this interview all over again. What goals or dreams do you hope to achieve by the time we come back for that new interview?

This goes back to our company’s credo. I would be extremely grateful if we could create a happiness chain, basically bringing smiles to peoples’ faces through our brands.

For more information, please visit their website at: https://mothers-ind.com/