Muji

MUJI

MUJI

THE BRAND WITHOUT A BRAND MUJI, originally founded in Japan in 1980, offers a wide variety of good quality products including household goods, apparel and food.

Mujirushi Ryohin, MUJI in Japanese, translates as “no-brand quality goods.”

MUJI is based on three core principles, which remain unchanged to this day: 1. Selection of materials 2. Streamlining of processes 3. Simplification of packages MUJI’s products, born from an extremely rational manufacturing process, are succinct, but they are not in the minimalist style.

That is, they are like empty vessels. Simplicity and emptiness yield the ultimate universality, embracing the feelings and thoughts of all people.

Author: Mamiko Nakano Muji showroom for MUJI A/W 2014 Womenswear and Menswear Collection 10 | DESIGN TODAY

Muji is a Japanese brand that claims to be ‘no-brand’. Muji was founded in 1980 in Japan by the Seiyu Group, which also owned supermarkets and shopping centers, as a response to excess and the overflow of new products into the Japanese market. Rather than developing more foreign-made luxury brands or manufacturing poor-quality, low-priced goods, Muji’s founders envisioned a collection of tasteful yet affordable products. Muji is now part of Ryohin Keikaku, which was launched in 1989 to manufacture and distribute the company’s products. The company is traded on Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average.

Since 1980, the retailer has built a cult following by offering what you might call affordable restraint. Like a Japanese normcore IKEA, Muji commodifies a certain brand of comforting plainness and utility. In its native Japan, that aesthetic philosophy also extends to space – via branded campgrounds and Muji House, their range of prefab abodes designed by architects such as Shigeru Ban and Kengo Kuma. The orderly shelves of non-brand wares have a certain uniformity (and a trio of visual display artists from Muji’s Tokyo headquarters team are on hand to ensure sameness of vision). It all combines to imply a counterpoint of consumption that seems less about wants than needs – even a display of wire storage baskets holds a promise of purposefulness. Though for a retailer built on the philosophy of simplicity, Muji sure sells a lot of stuff. They have tapped something that speaks to the global consumer.

The company now plans and sells all kinds of products related to people’s daily lives. The simplicity of their ‘no-design’ designs seems to fit easily into various cultural environments, and overseas fans are steadily increasing. The number of shops outside Japan has grown to 300 at the moment, and by 2017, and the company aims to have a total of 888 shops in and outside Japan. Which is what drove revenue for the most recent fiscal year up 18 percent to 260.25 billion Japanese yen (approximately $2.14 billion), fueled by growth in Asia, especially China. There are currently nine stores across the U.S.; two more are expected to open this year. What is behind the creation process of these unbranded products and their universal appeal? I talked to Naoko Yano, General Manager of the Planning and Design Office of the Household Division at Ryohin Keikaku, which oversees the design process of all household-related Muji products, from ballpoint pens to large furniture.

Hexagonal Frontier house for Muji

Konstatin Grcic’s hut for Muji

THE PHILOSOPHICAL COMPASS Muji’s full name—Mujirushi Ryōhin—translates to “no brand, good segment of the population placed a premium on functionality, affordability, quality.” When the company launched in 1980, Japan was very brand

and quality over marketing hype, inflated price tags, and status symbols.

conscious. Muji’s generic, anonymous products were a statement “Some people felt that it was ‘fake’ to pay for a brand,” Asako Shimazaki, against the excessive labeling and high price tags accompanying luxury president of Muji USA, says. “The philosophy of Muji is not only the goods. While it was popular at the time to buy a name-brand product price, not only the quality, not only the design—it’s everything together.” regardless of how well it worked, Muji smartly recognized that a growing

BEING SIMPLY SIMPLE Since the brand started in 1980, the total number of Muji products has never thought about that.” From the time the brand was first developed, grown to 6,500 items. Out of these items, 4,000 of Muji’s products are she says, Muji products have been created with only 3 simple principles: household goods. I first asked Yano if she is thinking about being ‘Zen’ selecting the appropriate materials; reviewing the production process; or Japanese when she designs products, since these are some of the and simplifying packaging. characteristics that Muji is often associated with. She responded, “I have Muji apartment in Tokyo

OBSERVATION AT INDIVIDUAL

NARITA AIRPORT TERMINAL 3

Observations are typically short visits to individual

One of the products born from the interactions of

homes. “We go to our customers’ and families’ houses

Fukasawa and the household goods section are the

and look at the problems they have cleaning their

sofa benches set up in Terminal 3 of Narita Airport. The

home spaces. People do things unconsciously that

deep blue color makes an impression unlike any other

make their homes messy, so we come up with product

Muji product – most of which tend to have no colors.

ideas that will help them,” says Yano. “But if we tell them

“Mr.Fukasawa told us that to express the uplifting feeling

we are visiting them at a certain day and time, they

of going to the airport. He told us it would be better

always clean up before we get there. So we always

to use the color of the sky and other colors found in

pay surprise visits to our friends’ and families’ homes”.

nature for this product. He gave this advice based on his experiences working with public spaces.”

Observations are done in several teams of 3 - 4 people, usually a combination chosen from among the 20

Muji products are not only created from conversations

designers in the household goods and merchandising

within the advisory boards; many are the result of direct

sections. The visits take place in spring and autumn.

interaction with end-users. The two most interesting

When they are planning to make products for seniors,

kinds of production development processes at Muji are

Muji representatives will go to elderly people’s houses;

“observations,” and those made through the “Kurashino

when they are planning products for young people,

Ryohin Kenkyujo (Good Life Institute)”.

they go to young people’s houses. Yano says going to actual people’s living spaces leads to a lot of discoveries that help bring about new product ideas.

At the end of 2014, Muji conducted its first overseas observation in Hong Kong. The topic for this observation was ‘small housing’, which was a theme set up to benefit Muji’s upcoming renovation business.

Yano tells me that, in Hong Kong, it is quite common for a middle class family of 3 adults to live in a small space of 40 square meters. “Many things are packed into small spaces. Things are hanged wherever they can be hanged”, Yano recalls. “But the people of Hong Kong love to shop and do no like throwing things away.

In that situation, we are now thinking about how the spaces could be tidied up, Muji style”.

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Muji sofas set up at the Narita Airport Terminal 3

Muji polypropylene storage

THE POLYPROPYLENE STORAGE CASE “We have just continued to be simple. If the product is simple, customers

of Japanese retail giant Saison, and Ikko Tanaka, a graphic designer,

gain more freedom and versatility when they use them. Simplicity is very

who invented this concept of Muji to produce and sell simple and easy-

important to us.” Yano explains with Muji’s polypropylene (PP) storage

to-use products. In the 1970s, Japan’s economy was in the midst of

case, one of Muji’s basic items, to illustrate. “When these cases were first

rapid growth. Tsutsumi, who was making a success in his business, had

made, we focused on removing excess coating and finishing, in order to

conflicting feelings about playing a leading role in a society of consumer

lower the price.” A counter-culture of the consumer society, created by

excess. That brought him to come up with ideas about products that

a representative of a retail giant. It was Seiji Tsutsumi, a representative

had no brand, simple functionality, and a reasonable price.

Muji Exhibition in Milan

THE FIRST 40 ITEMS OF MUJI Thus, in 1980, a leader of consumer culture gave birth to a brand that

level with respect to Muji’s product creation and overall activity. They

was an antithesis to the existing consumer society. Ikko Tanaka and

provide expert advice so the Muji brand can create the best possible

other prominent creators directed the brand’s overall design. When

experience for their users. In the case of household goods, which Yano

Tanaka passed away in 2002, four creators who inherited Tanaka’s

supervises, Naoto Fukasawa, the senior advisor for product design, is

philosophy continued to provide guidance to the product design at Muji,

responsible of the overall direction of the products. “Mr. Fukasawa has

depending on their expertise. Naoto Fukasawa (Product design), Kenya

a perfect understanding of the Muji brand”, says Yano. “Because of his

Hara (advertising), Ichiko Koike (copywriting), and Takashi Sugimoto

deep understanding, he is able to give us very straightforward advice. At

(store environment) come together to Muji’s headquarters in Tokyo once

the same time, we are not just listening to him passively, and we have

a month to listen directly to the staff about what is going on at the ground

considerable and lively debates.”

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In notable contrast to the prevailing over-embellished products in the marketplace, MUJI’s products both won great appreciation and sent shock waves not only through Japan but across the entire world.

This is because we do not make objects to entice responses of strong affinity, like, “This is what I really want” or, “I must have this.”

MUJI’s goal is to give customers a rational satisfaction, expressed not with, “This is what I really want” but with “This will do.”

“This is what I really want” expresses both faint egoism and discord, while “This will do” expresses conciliatory reasoning.

In fact, it may even incorporate resignation and a little dissatisfaction.

MUJI’s goal is to sweep away that slight dissatisfaction, and raise the level of the response, “This will do” to one filled with clarity and confidence.

BORN FROM USER’S VOICES, THE SOFA THAT SPOILS PEOPLE THE BODY-FIT SOFA Muji’s body-fit sofa, which has captured the hearts of many American of sofa they would like to have if they were to live a ‘low-height life’. “We and Chinese users, is another product created through interactions with came up with three prototype sofas, and the body-fit sofa got the most end-users. It was born from a pre-site of a web project called the “ votes from our users. Then it was made into an actual product”.

Kurashino Ryohin Kenkyujo (Good Life Iinstitute)”.

The sofa was originally released in 2003, but ten years after in 2013, “At Kurashino Ryohin Kenkyujo, we try to catch user’s a bit ahead it became famous earning the nickname “people-spoiling sofa” on of the curve. We provide information to our users and ask them Japanese social media. Sales have grown extensively since then, questions”(Yano). In the pre-site they operated in the early 2000s before paving the way for expanded production that has made overseas retail their current site was developed, they asked their customers what kind possible. Sales of the sofa are now at a record high.

Image below: Muji body fit cushions

BROADENING THE MEANING OF ‘DESIGN’ Muji products are all designed as solutions to actual life problems; none of them is created for the sake of design. Of the creation process of Muji products, Yano says, that the word ‘design’ could be interpreted in a very broad sense. “For Muji products, I think that what we select, where we produce, and how we sell the products, are all ‘design’.”

Lastly, I asked Yano what the future holds for Muji’s

Image on pages 10-11: Muji Store in Tokyo Above: Muji S/S Womenswear

designs. She shared their company slogan, ‘jishin ni michita kore de ii’, which means “aming for the best that we can do in our given situation, with clarity and confidence.”

“Since economic and social situations change constantly, things like just using natural materials without thinking about the surrounding situations won’t work. I think from now on too, we’ll just keep on thinking about the best solutions to problems and how we can be of help to people’s daily lives.”

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Muji store in Tokyo