NEW PEOPLE is a relatively new store in San Francisco’s Japantown. It opened around summer this year. It has a theatre on the bottom floor, café and gift store on the first floor, fashion on the third floor and art gallery at the top.
NEW PEOPLE focuses on the Japanese pop culture and welcomes everyone who is open-minded and doesn’t mind about being different. The concept is to bring new things and new people. NEW PEOPLE is the place where new things meet.
Seiji Horibuchi, the owner of NEW PEOPLE, created this store with the theatre as the focus of the store. He has an interest on anime and manga. With that in mind, he created the NEW PEOPLE. To complement the theatre, the art gallery, gift store, fashion store and the cafe were brought to NEW PEOPLE.
The fashion floor is a mix of gothic, punk and Lolita style. People can find dresses with layers of laces dominated with white and pink colors. On the opposite of the store, people see clothes that are mainly black and white with a cross being embroidered at the back of the clothes. In this floor, there are four popular brands from Tokyo: Baby, the Stars Shine Bright, Black Peace Now, Sou.Sou and Tokyo Creators Garden. Each brand has a distinct character.
The art gallery currently featuring seven artists from Tokyo including Junko Mizuno, Kim Songhe, Mikito Ozeki, Noritake, ON ZA Line, Kazmo aka Tomomi Kazumoto and Yuichi Yokoyama. Mika Anami, the art gallery manager, said if the exhibition is popular with children too. The playfulness of the arts seems to draw children to this exhibition.
Anami said, parents will say, “No touch, just see.”
There are lots of pretty dolls along with some little colorful things in Kim Songhe’s art. She made a chandelier from hello kitty dolls. Besides that, there’s also a playful tea chandelier. The chandelier was designed to hung so low so that people can put their cups and plates on the chandelier.
The art gallery also featured, Junko Mizuno, a well-known artist in the United States. Mizuno has published some comic books. However, different from what people have in mind, comic books are not just for children.
Anami referred to Mizuno’s art as “X-rated.”
Mizuno created several dolls shaped like a heart that she named as heart goblins. The dolls have big eyes and very unique style that will make people exclaim, “Oh… these look like Junko Mizuno’s work.” These dolls looked cute but again, Anami said it’s not for children. Mizuno was very popular that even before the exhibition was opened, some of these heart goblins were already purchased by people.
After doing a lot of shopping, people can spend their time at NEW PEOPLE’s café on the first floor. It sells delicious cookies along with Blue Bottle Coffee’s coffee and Delica’s bento boxes. The café has free wifi and the store is generally pretty quiet so people like to spend time here browsing the Internet or do their work on the laptop.
The underground floor accommodate a small theatre for around 125 people. The theatre was designed by an architectural design firm, Torafu, to resemble the lights of Tokyo. It screens Japanese movies along with some anime. If people feel like eating popcorn, the cafe sells popcorn with Japanese flavours like curry, Japanese seven spice (shichimi) and wasabi.
NEW PEOPLE offers thing that may be hard to find elsewhere. The price may be a bit expensive but along with that, it comes with quality and a great shopping experience.
NEW PEOPLE used twitter and other social media to advertise its products. According to Elizabeth Crawford, the marketing coordinator of the NEW PEOPLE, the store will launch its online store soon to maximize the use of technology.
Along with that, NEW PEOPLE also held several events. Just two weeks ago, NEW PEOPLE worked with Redbull to offer free screening of Viz movie hit, Death Note. This week, they worked with the Bay Guardian to screen 20th Century Boys. So far, the response from people have been good and NEW PEOPLE planning to do more of these events to attract more people to the store.
The current economic downturn caused many stores closing down. NEW PEOPLE too has a lot to do. The competition’s really hard.
Crawford said the store did a lot of trade with other businesses like during the past movie screening with the Bay Guardian. For that event, NEW PEOPLE provided the space to held the event while the Bay Guardian gave a free advertising space. The event was successful and the beginning of NEW PEOPLE too looked bright.
With J-pop culture as its focus, the NEW PEOPLE came into a niche market and seems to going strong everyday. This market has a lot to expand to. J-pop culture is not only for kids nor exclusively for adults or Asians. J-pop culture is where many different things and people meet. NEW PEOPLE is the intersection of the meeting point for these people and things.
Japan export to the U.S.
The first floor of the NEW PEOPLE
