It doesn't work the way you want it to, that's New York.
Can you start by telling us how the two of you met?
Eiichiro Honma: Mr. Honma joined Goldwyn in 1982. In 2003, he established NANAMICA with his partner Takashi Imaki.
Honma:Even if I wanted to build a store in the U.S., I couldn't apply for construction unless I was an architect (architect) licensed in the U.S. Therefore, I could not ask the designer I had requested in Japan. So I asked Daiki Suzuki (a designer at Engineered Garments) for advice, and he said, "I know a good young guy. He introduced me to Taichi.
Kumataichi: Architect, born 1985 in Tokyo. Studied architecture at the University of Stuttgart, Germany. After completing his doctoral studies at the University of Tokyo, he began working at a design firm in New York in 2017. He returned to Japan at the time of the Corona disaster and has been based in Tokyo since 2020.
Bear:I received a text message from Mr. Suzuki at about 7:00 a.m. saying, "Mr. Honma is in New York and would like you to contact him. We met for the first time that night in the hotel lobby.
What did you talk about then?
Honma:First of all, to help them understand our company and brand, we showed them the archived books and other materials we had created for our 15th anniversary. At the time, it was just before the reopening of the store on the first floor of our headquarters in Daikanyama, which had undergone a concept change, so I showed them some drawings from that time.
Bear:As soon as I heard about it, I responded that I would be happy to do it. But it didn't go very smoothly.
Honma:Yes. Actually, the original opening date was around the fall of 2019. But things don't always work out the way you want them to in New York City.
At that time, it was not yet the time of the Corona disaster, was it?
Honma:Not at all. For example, New York requires approval from the landlord for ideas on what to do with the store. It took a long time. When we finally got the approval, the landlord changed and we had to rewrite the contract.... Anyway, these legal matters were delayed for a long time.
And then it went into lockdown.
Honma:Yes, on March 20, New York went into lockdown. Naturally, the construction that was underway stopped.
I heard that you came back to Japan from New York just before the lockdown.
Bear:That's right. I had been thinking of moving my base from New York to Paris, and I came back to Japan in March.
I have felt the thoroughness of the New York lockdown in Japan as well.
Bear:Now it has eased up a lot, though. But at that time, even if we wanted to proceed with construction, we were forcibly stopped except for three areas: hospitals, social housing, and infrastructure. We were not allowed to do any work on these stores.
