You might even bump into him at Beams House Marunouchi at Tokyo station, his favourite of the stores. Twenty years ago, it was the first store where he oversaw the direction of the store, from set up to finish, and is still a flagship boutique that does the best sales for the company. He cheekily added that the customer profile of the Beams customer is more mature, like him (the youthful looking creative director in his late 50s but looks a decade younger).
“You see more things on the floor,” he shared, and that’s why Beams buyers start on the retail floors to understand what the customers are looking for. He believes firmly that “the experience on the floor is what makes them better buyers.”
While Beams has many brands in its stable, and each buyer does bring to the table their individuality and expertise, yet when you look at it, the sum of parts paints a whole picture that still sells the Beams philosophy. “Balance has never been a problem because the core philosophy (basic and exciting) is ingrained,” he said.
He shares proudly that “80 per cent of the time, our buyers make very spot-on buys, and there is only a 20 per cent margin of error.” And it’s a culture of ownership. For unlike typical department sales floor, where blame might be pushed to the retail staff for not working harder at getting sales, the revisions start at the buying level. “It’s important that we’re half step ahead of the customers but not get ahead of ourselves by projecting ideas they are not ready for.”
CULTURAL ARBITERS
When Nakamura is not visiting his stores, he is on the search for what he can bring to his customers, not just regionally but from the world, over. It comes back again to the founding philosophy that Beams always has a global outlook, and its buyers are a community of cultural arbiters that curate the finest of what the world has to offer.
The brand collaborates with not just local Japanese designers but designers and companies from all over. Colony Clothing in Singapore, which is a fashion label and retailer, and founded by Kozo Kawamura, is one such example. Incidentally Kawamura himself is a Beams alumnus, with extensive years of experience working with Beams in Japan.
Kawamura shared that one such collaboration was a batik reversible parka that sold through the Beams Plus collection. The batik print design came courtesy of culture historian, Peter Lee, who has over the years collected a wide range of Indonesian and Peranakan batik sarongs. These collaborations have a reciprocal arrangement that it gives young brands and designers greater exposure but is also an exchange of likeminded ideas with cultural nuance and depth that again bring excitement to customers.
