PROFILE
Owner of the select store "analog / tool". Born in Ichinomiya City, Aichi Prefecture. After working at a major apparel store and a vintage clothing store, he opened "analog / tool" in Toyohashi, Aichi, and moved to his current location in 2018, in the neighboring city of Toyokawa. His posts on Instagram are a mixture of his deep love, passion, and knowledge of fashion. The reason why the information on the website is stripped down is explained in the main text.
instagram.com/analog_tool
Internet that is not aimed at an unspecified number of people.
This is the first time I have interviewed a local store since Corona. What did your stores do under the state of emergency declared by Corona?
HOKOKUTSU:I was opening the store for short hours. I was thinking that maybe clothes are not a necessity of life. At any rate, just staying home is stressful, so I decided to do it solemnly. When customers were feeling anxious, it would have been strange to say, "It's okay, please come in," and I decided to explore what I could do in such a situation, because it was an experience, so I tried an online store for two months. But when the store was open, we had some customers. There was hardly a day when no one came at all....
Do you still have an online store?
HOKOKUTSU:Yes, it is. It was great to be able to simulate a situation where you don't know when something like blockading a city on a national level will happen again. But (as the name of the store suggests), I prefer analog tools, so online is not really suitable for me. Online is just a last resort. We had a certain amount of brands that we carried on the site, but most of the access was to brands from local regions and products that we planned and produced ourselves. It seems that many of the people who accessed the site were aware of our existence in some way. In other words, it did not become an Internet tool for the general public, but rather a tool for our clients.
The photo above shows the owner, Mr. KOKETSU. Below is a deer sculpture on the second floor.
You sold the original shirts that were to be sold at the (cancelled) "Forest, Road, Market 2020" online.
HOKOKUTSU:The response was beyond my expectations. After working with the designers at "holk" to come up with the concept of "forests, roads, and markets," as well as the price and content of the project, I suggested that it might be interesting to market the product in this way, and thankfully, within a few hours, we had a huge surge of traffic. I felt that from now on, we can think of new approaches even on the Internet. It might be interesting to create that kind of uplifting feeling. I thought that things that create tension can be done either on the Internet or in the stores. Of course, my usual activities are centered on the store, but I think I was able to explore the possibilities of the Internet a bit.
