Tokyo Girls collection: shopping with a Japanese mobile twist

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Tokyo Girls Collection and Shibuya Girls Collection are twice yearly events held in Tokyo ran by blogs Candywalker.com and Girlswalker.com that highlight the latest Japanese fashion ranges to young women. The women usually live outside Tokyo and usually attend the event in person or watch it streamed live online. 

The events attract 20,000 attendees. What is very impressive about the events is:

• The tight integration of the live experience with an e-commerce and m-commerce experience
• The amount of major sponsors like Toyota and Coca-Cola for these events
• The huge brand power that these events have developed. Lawson, a challenger convenience store brand (think 7-Eleven) have collaborated with Tokyo Girls Collection on a limited edition tea drink
• The cross-over between media and retail business that TGC and SGC represent

The data that they’ve gathered about their attendees show an impressive engagement with the online internet.

Attendees spend 98 minutes a day on the mobile internet.

70 per cent have ‘experienced’ m-commerce in the past year. Kawaii doesn’t only mean cute, but serious spending power and mobile connectivity.

Why they work (thanks to my friend Junko Furukawa for this insight):

• SO….Models ARE the key to the event. There are models and dokusha-models. (These are chosen among actual readers of the magazines as “representatives”.  They are more attractive than average readers but not pretty enough to be actual models). Those models have fans who want to be like them, and with dokusha-models, you can relate yourself to them more
• Why would women order clothes without trying them on, feeling the fabric, quality of the finish etc? Everything is centralised in Tokyo including clothes stores.  Unlike Top Shop which has branches all over the UK, those “select shops” are only in Tokyo. So girls living elsewhere have no choice but to resort to online shopping or m-commerce. Many girls buy exactly the same stuff models wear on magazines, so they don’t actually “need to” try them on.  The dokusha-models are the key here as well in terms of pre-purchase reassurance

More Japan related content here.