It will be five years in May since we opened our store in Kobe. It feels like those five years have flown by. Looking back, we started from scratch and had never even built a store before, but we wanted to create a unique interior, so we used diatomaceous earth for the walls and solid wood flooring, set up a workshop at the back of the store, and started out as a store where you could buy products made in the workshop right away.
Because it was a unique store, we gradually started to get regular customers, but soon we ran out of stock! As a result, we were unable to give the products to customers who wanted to take them home today , and we continued to be unable to provide adequate service. So we started making small wooden goods in the workshop at the back and selling them in the store. We engraved names on them and made cute keychains to attach to bags for 500 yen. The store would sometimes attract a crowd. In particular, tourists visiting Kobe bought a lot of them as souvenirs.
Furthermore, we wanted local mothers raising children to know about our furniture and toys, so we renovated the former workshop to create a kids' room where parents and children can relax together.
A pleasant space with the scent of wood was created. Since there are few places in the neighborhood where children can relax and play, mothers with infants often came to use the space. (The entire second floor has now been remodeled into a kids' room.)
However, one month after creating the kids' room, Kobe went into lockdown due to COVID-19. The store was forced to close, and even after the state of emergency was lifted, customer traffic did not return.
There's no point in just waiting. So I decided to take the kids' room on a business trip. So I started to sell it to nearby nurseries and car dealerships . Thanks to that, I was able to get several contracts in the first year. I was able to advertise my store there through the business trip events, and little by little, my customers started to come back.
When our business had started to gain recognition a little more than when we first opened, we received a request to exhibit at Hotel Okura Kobe, a long-established hotel in Kobe.
That was a very long introduction, but we will be opening our second store in Kobe. After much deliberation, we accepted the offer at the Hotel Okura Kobe, which will also serve as an experimental space for future store development. We will do our best as this is a challenging store, doing the things we have always wanted to do and try☆
Please come and visit us when we open (^^♪ We look forward to seeing you **