MUJI: It'S Not Just That "Japan'S Products Are Sold To China" Is So Simple.

More than 30 years ago,

It comes from cheap goods.

The early representative product, U spaghetti spaghetti.

In the production process, the long spaghetti is actually a leftover material, that is, the two ends of the noodles are bent.

Generally, this section will be cut and thrown away in the factory, but Muji thinks that the taste is almost the same anyway, so it is specially collected for sale at a lower price.

At that time, the MUJI slogan was called "reasonable low price".

At the beginning, Muji did not have such a large and distinctive shop.

At the beginning of the 1980 year, it was a private brand of Xi You department store in Japan.

The self operated product line is Great Value and MAINSTAYS.

But from then on, it has a clear style of presentation -- as far as possible concise packaging, brown brown paper label printed on the red font, has continued to this day.

Today, we can't find this kind of noodle in the catalogue of MUJI products, but there are many other products that are designed by similar ideas. For example, the use of noil made of noil, "noil" is the broken cotton dust produced in spinning mills.

{page_break}

In these products, the secret of MUJI design concept is hidden.

"Design" has always been the most commendable advantage of MUJI.

Indeed, its high level and systematic product design is unique in the world, especially in the East Asian culture, especially in Japan's aesthetic tradition. It also develops the style that Japanese brands have always been good at, with the ingenuity and perfection in details.

But few people really notice that MUJI is concerned about "material".

"Material" is the raw material used for making products.

Why does the storage box need pparent or plucent acrylic material? Why do some books use recycled paper, and some furniture has to use non scale materials (no defective solid wood)? Why do summer shirts mostly use cotton and linen materials, but underwear needs to blend some polyester fibers? The material determines to a large extent the manufacturing process and use scenarios of the products.

Material selection is actually a very basic and crucial link in product design.

But in fact, we rarely see brands like MUJI, which not only maintain sustained attention in this matter, but also establish their own unique style.

The style is: if two kinds of raw materials are of the same quality, but one of them is not good appearance, MUJI will choose the poor appearance because it will be cheap and avoid waste.

In addition to the previously mentioned U shape and noil, there is another example: South American Camel Hair is a high quality textile raw material, but people prefer white Alpaca because it is easy to dye - so the brown Alpaca is not attractive for a long time, so the breeding of Alpaca population has produced the bias of artificial selection.

After finding this incident, MUJI began to collect the variegated alpaca wool and make it finished with its original color. On the other hand, he realized the supply of the cheap alpaca wool fabric, and rescued the poor Alpine alpacas from the Pampas grassland from their miserable fate.

Of course, it does not mean that the quality of such things is super good.

Not long ago, there was just an article in the list that had tuckled MUJI's primer.

There is nothing more to say here, which means that the cost is really not comparable with the texture of combed cotton blended silk like CPB.

Here, I want to emphasize that MUJI parity does not mean that it is a cock wire brand.

It will not compromise on some material issues, such as furniture, which consumers want to use for a long time after purchase, and MUJI will prefer to use high quality natural wood.

Experienced people will know that high-quality wood, metal, leather and other products at home, not only will not depreciate, but will become more and more beautiful with the passage of time.

Back then, you can imagine how much Japanese consumers who had been annoyed by exaggerated luxury goods and poor local products in the early years of the 80 century were so fond of the plain and solid style of Muji, which is a bit like Chinese consumers nowadays.

Within a few years, Muji first opened its first direct store in Shibuya, Tokyo (83 years old, Castle Peak shop, only 103 square meters, and still in business), and then set up a special business unit, then set up a "good plan" company, and received its Muji operation rights from Xi you department store.

Then the key points came.

In 1991, MUJI officially appeared as a brand name in front of consumers.

In the same year, MUJI began to open shop outside Japan.

It's not in mainland China, but in a year, the two shops are in London and Hongkong.

In fact, before the opening of the first store in mainland China (05 years ago, Shanghai), people could buy things like MUJI in Hongkong, Ireland, Korea, Taiwan and Italy.

So we know that MUJI does represent the way of life recognized by the people of developed countries and regions.

Its globalization is not only so simple as "Japan's things are sold to China".

By the end of February 2015, China was already the largest number of overseas MUJI outlets, and only 128 in mainland China.

But this is still a small proportion compared with the Japanese mainland. In the same period, MUJI operates 284 outlets and 117 franchised outlets in Japan.

So far, more than half of MUJI's revenues come from the local market in Japan.

{page_break}

As we all know, the price of MUJI products in Japan is cheaper than that in China, or 20%-30%.

This price gap is not man-made, but a result of complex global OEM and import and export trading systems.

Taking into account the Japanese people's income level, many of his family in Japan is really cabbage prices.

Nevertheless, MUJI has maintained its distinctive brand connotation and good cultural prestige.

It has been said that things like MUJI can be bought in convenience stores in Japan, and I thought so, but later it was not so simple. In fact, it was available only in some stores of the convenience store of the whole family (FamilyMart).

As you can see from the financial statements, the family is actually the eighth largest shareholder of the MUJI parent company's good plan.

The Castle Peak shop in the year was also opened under the joint support of Xi you and the whole family.

That is to say, the alliance between MUJI and the whole family is not only long-standing, but also deeply rooted.

It is not always easy for other convenience stores to get sales permission from MUJI.