MONTH

2020年7月

July 29, 2020
April 23, 2022

How to Make Your Business Unique

Restaurant of Mistaken Orders In Tokyo last year opened a restaurant . The name is “Restaurant of Mistaken Orders.” All the servers working there are people living with dementia. According to their website, the servers may or may not get your order right. When I heard the news, I was so impressed. It’s not because I’m a good guy full of humanity but because it proves my marketing theory: People choose something not for its value but for its meaning. Little difference between the two Many marketers say differentiation is the key to success in business, but how? Now that the world is filled up with a lot of things, information, and services, it’s almost impossible to clearly differentiate something from others. Most people can’t tell such a small difference in quality and design. In the first place, as the Jam theory proves, people become overloaded with too many choices. […]

July 27, 2020
May 7, 2022

How to Design Furniture, Michael Schneider #1

Product design with the times Many social scientists say we humans will, for coming 100 years, experience the same amount of change as what we had got through over the last 2000 years. It’s not only about technological advancement but also about our mentality. People become less interested in owning things (as shown in the rise of subscription and sharing business models). Our economic activities shrink day by day. How should we manufacturers adapt? I threw this question at one of our product designers, Michael Schneider. Michael Schneider: I am affirmative on subscription and sharing business models because they will enable us to live our lives with less costs and pollution. We are living in times of saturated markets, global warming, and limited resources. In such a condition, we have to make sacrifices to some degrees. Thanks to IT revolution and digitization, people will realize many business ideas more easily […]

July 22, 2020
April 23, 2022

How to Develop Furniture #2

Let me continue to share the interview with our product development manager. “Products in good quality and design don’t always sell well.” These words aroused my interest in his opinion on design, because he meant market valuation about design would not always be appropriate. Then what is good design from the view point of a product development manager? Q 4. If what you said is correct, are there products that are bad in design but good in sales? Good sales doesn’t always mean good design? A 4. Sadly for me, design is not a centerpiece factor any more to decide if a product sells well or not. Now that marketing, advertisement, etc. have more significant influence, people are more likely to decide not by physical factors like design and quality but by impression fostered by advertising media, for example. Q 5. What is good design in a nutshell? A […]

July 20, 2020
April 25, 2022

How to Manage Furniture Production in Japan

Production in Toyota and Ferarri According to the government, we have experienced the longest economic expansion since after the WWII. Although it seems like we, ordinary people, are left out of the economic boom, more than 500 of Ferrari cars are annually sold in Japan. Speaking of Ferrari, Enzo Ferrari (the founder of Ferrari) left these famous words. “In the beginning the engine existed.” His point is it’s engines that feature Ferrari. Italian craftsmanship based on expert technique and experience realizes the world’s leading Ferrari engines. This doesn’t mean Toyota is inferior to Ferrari. I think it’s also another act of God. They annually produce millions of cars in high and constant quality. No matter how much the price is, cars are precision machines consisting of more than 30000 pieces of parts. In other words, Ferrari and Toyota are world leading companies. The former is in semi-handicraft manufacturing; the latter […]

Hokkaido Shreds

July 16, 2020
June 17, 2022

Doggies

When traveling in Yufuin, Kyushu (sorry, it’s not about Hokkaido), last summer, I randomly walked into this famous Shiba Inu Café, which was the one I always wanted to visit. The reason why I like shooting animals more than people is because I can easily capture ideal views without any communication. For people, they are always too shy to act natural in front of the camera. Natural light is always the best decoration for a photo. Hopefully I can take a sweet nap like her this weekend.

July 15, 2020
April 23, 2022

How to Develop Furniture #1

Are you interested in our product development stories? I actually am! Due to specialization at work, I don’t know much about how our products have been developed. Under the veil of work, I asked many questions to our product development manager. The questions that I’m personally interested in the answers to. They are more about the value he has in product development, rather than concrete methods of product development. This is delivered in two times: this week and next week. Q 1. Why did you decide to work in the product development of furniture, not other products? A 1. When I studied at Collage of Arts, the most popular industries were cars and electrical appliances, but most people working there didn’t look so happy. As specialization progressed, some people always worked on door mirrors, others worked on switch knobs, etc. On the other hand, we can see a broader […]

July 13, 2020
May 16, 2022

How to Make Price Setting

What is a reasonable price? I know it doesn’t look like that, but this object (in the above image) is a lounge chair. For your information, the price is highest among our chair lineup. With the same amount of money, you may buy full sets of living and dining furniture at IKEA, for example. I think it’d be very natural for many peole to take it very expensive. All-out cost reduction efforts Market prices are naturally fixed by the supply and demand balance. As the supply is likely to exceed the demand by technological development nowadays, price setting becomes more market-oriented, while ours is still product-oriented. I didn’t mean we have power to make a decision on price. For us, a furniture manufacturer, it’s beyond capacity to correctly forecast demand trends. What we can do is just sweating blood to accumulate small improvements and make prices as […]

Hokkaido Shreds

July 9, 2020
June 25, 2022

Portrait Mode

Have you ever used the portrait mode of your Iphone camera? It uses the combination of two different lenses, plus data algorithm to reach an effect similar to what the optical lens of high-end cameras makes. Even though it’s still a not-fully-developed technique, I have to admit it does make gorgeous pictures when lighting is right on point. This is a photo I took with my Iphone at last week’s CondeHouse barbecue event. The bright natural light even made the smoke extra visible. It’s amazing how technology development has enable everyone to capture fascinating moments easily with just a phone. I guess you can say this is one of the reasons why I love photography.

July 8, 2020
April 25, 2022

God Is in the Details?

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel The Imperial Hotel was built in 1923, demolished in 1967. Only the entrance is still left as a museum in a small city far away from Tokyo where it was built. In order to make it the best hotel in Asia, the hotel company placed an order for Frank Lloyd Wright to design it. The name of the architect is one of the big factors for the building to go down in history, but there’s another big factor. On the very day of unveiling the hotel, the Great Kanto Earthquake hit Tokyo and claimed more than 140000 lives. In such an unprecedented disaster, it remained intact. God in the decorations I visited the museum sometimes when I lived near the small city. What impressed me most is the decorations on the windows and pillars. Due to the natural light through the window decorations […]

Product development

July 6, 2020
May 15, 2022

How to Make New Furniture #7

Tense chemistry made in the process No matter how many times they have gone through the same process, the product development team gets tense when presenting the first prototype of a new design to designers and receiving their initial feedback. The designers are so meticulous that they, at times, point out slightest details. It’s so detailed like “The armrests are five-millimeter thicker than the specification in my drawing.” I believe it is a starting point to eliminate discrepancies between them. To be more precise, they’re struglling to fill the gap between the prototype made by the product development team and the image designers have in their mind. The product development team always aims to fulfill structural and technical feasibilities as well as manufacturing efficiency, while making their best efforts to meet designers’ requests. What makes us a Japanese brand? CondeHouse has collaborated with many designers from all over […]