PROFILE
Born in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. After working in sales and press at select stores, he became the director of Bloom & Branch in 2014, and in 2020 will open Kakinoha in Kamakura, which he will also own. He currently lives in Zushi, and divides his time between Tokyo and Kamakura.
The important thing is to convey the feeling of "good" to customers.
It is a morning on a spring day. Aoyama, which is usually crowded with many people, is still quiet at this time of the day with very few pedestrians. The Renault "Captur" drives through such a town. The Captur blends in easily with the scenery of Aoyama with its rows of elegant buildings.
The driver of this car this time is Yohei Kakimoto. He is the director of Bloom & Branch, a select store along Kotto Dori.
The store opened in 2014. The store features not only Kakimoto-san's clothing selections, but also crafts such as pottery, a shoe care shop-in-shop, and a coffee shop. While paying homage to traditional items, the shop also accurately captures the atmosphere of the current era and skillfully mixes these elements.
What we select here are items that move us. We put on display items that we think are really good while visiting exhibitions of various brands. The important part of our job is to convey this feeling of "good" to our customers. However, it is the staff members standing in the stores who do this. That is why I often picture the faces of our staff when I see our clothes at exhibitions. I think, "This dress is really cool, but it doesn't suit me. But the manager of the Aoyama store would definitely like it.
Bloom & Branch" has four stores nationwide, and "each store carries different products," Kakimoto continues.
That means we take into account the preferences of the staff who work there. I meet with the managers of each store once a week to communicate with them and understand what is going on. I also look at the clothes they are wearing and talk with them, saying things like, 'I see you like that brand. I also call the store managers and ask for advice before ordering clothes. It's like having the store managers participate in the buying process. I think this creates a sense of solidarity, so that the clothes are not just 'the clothes Mr. Kakimoto bought,' but rather 'the clothes I bought based on my own advice.
Mr. Kakimoto says this while sipping coffee at COBI COFFEE, a coffee shop inside the store. He visits the store once a week to check on products and communicate with the staff. In his free time, he drinks coffee and stews over ideas for his work. Kakimoto's routine is to buy some beans for home and leave the store on his way home.
We not only roast our own coffee, but we also source from unique international roasters and put passion into each cup with one of the best attention to detail in this neighborhood. We use flannel cloth when we drip coffee. This is a method of extraction that used to be commonplace at coffee shops in the olden days, but it has fallen into disuse over time because of the time-consuming and costly process of boiling the flannel and having to replace it after a short period of time. The method of extracting coffee has become more and more obsolete over time. The characteristic of this store is to brew coffee by combining the individuality of carefully selected specialty coffees with such good old Japanese traditions.
