# Planning Meeting
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I want to change the convenience store clothes
Just the stereotype of "emergency items",
The whole family needs to give one to people
Reasons to go to a convenience store to buy clothes.
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What else can't convenience stores do? FamilyMart in Japan is already planning to deepen the field of clothing.
FamilyMart in Japan has entered its third year of making clothes. In March 2021, the company launched its Convenience Wear clothing line in select stores – its first official debut. The collection initially consisted of about 70 items, divided into three categories: Unisex household goods, women's clothing, and men's clothing, with T-shirts, tank tops, pants, underwear, socks, towels and other intimate clothing.
● Convenience Wear's latest Spring 2024 collection is available at FamilyMart stores nationwide from March 5, 2024.
Not only that, but recently, Convenience Wear has been upgraded. On March 5, FamilyMart announced that the new Convenience Wear Spring/Summer 2024 products will be available in more than 16,300 stores nationwide. This time, the assortment has reached 100, towels have been increased to 6 colors, and even jogging bottoms and dress shirts have been added – it's more like an authentic fashion brand. If it weren't for the clothes in a transparent sealed bag, you might forget that it came from a convenience store.
Companies like FamilyMart can make money more easily with franchise or channel fees – if you want to sell clothes, invite brands to store in stores. According to 2023 data from the Japan Franchise Association, FamilyMart has the second-most stores in Japan, with a market share second only to another convenience store brand, 7-Eleven.
The whole family did think so. It has partnered exclusively with MUJI to sell MUJI's stationery, household goods and apparel through its own chain channels. But on February 3, 2019, MUJI terminated its retail partnership with FamilyMart that had lasted nearly 40 years. FamilyMart publicly stated that the reason was the poor sales performance of Muji's products in its own channels.
This change is seen as a sign of the transformation of convenience stores. Hideko Yoshioka, a reporter who specializes in the consumer economy of convenience stores, pointed out that as consumers develop the habit of "buying daily necessities at convenience stores", stationery and miscellaneous goods have become popular categories with high repurchase rates, and convenience stores are keen to cooperate with third parties to develop their own brands and create exclusive products to improve their competitiveness. The practice of copying things and selling them is a bit outdated. "To put it harshly, Muji's products can be purchased at directly managed stores and online. There may not be many people who go to the whole family specifically to buy this (Muji). She commented.
The whole family also received this signal. In 2018, FamilyMart experimented with launching its own side dish and frozen food brand. Affected by the withdrawal of Muji, Naoji Yoshimura, who works in the daily necessities and magazines department of the family, came up with an idea: it is better to make his own products.
Yoshimura Naoji does have the confidence to make a proposal. In 2015, he joined ITOCHU Corporation's Textile Division, where he was responsible for the OEM business for women's underwear brands. In 2017, he was seconded to the family, of which ITOCHU Corporation is the majority shareholder.
Yoshimura found that most of the clothes sold at convenience stores were used as "emergency items" and were often sold well late at night on Fridays and Saturdays. In addition, people will run to convenience stores to buy socks when there is a sudden rainstorm. "To put it bluntly, it's a commodity when it's urgently needed, and we want to get rid of that impression. He said in an interview in 2021.
He was able to establish a project at the company thanks to ITOCHU Corporation's supply chain support in the procurement and production of raw materials, which also provided greater profit margins for the project. But that's just the beginning – Yoshimura knows about convenience stores and the OEM model, but he's not a designer himself. He thinks it's best to find a partner who can complement him first.
●Hirori Ochiai, the designer of FamilyMart's Convenience Wear collection, succeeded in making a convenience store clothing brand capture the attention of consumers.
In 2019, Naoji Yoshimura met Hirori Ochiai, the founder of designer label FACETASM, while attending Paris Fashion Week. A graduate of the Japan Bunka Fashion Institute, Hirori Ochiai founded the FACETASM brand in 2007 and has won several design awards worldwide. In 2016, Hirori Ochiai designed costumes for Japanese performers at the closing ceremony of the Rio Olympics. This experience made him take the initiative to approach big brands, and gradually dealt with Coca-Cola, Levi's, and Nike.
The idea they came up with was Convenience Wear. Yoshimura wants to start with the underwear category. The underwear market in Japan is 1.5 trillion yen (about 71.6 billion yuan), but the whole family has not allocated goods in this field. If you can make a private clothing brand that people usually want to buy and wear, you can break through the use scenario of "emergency". The cooperation is entrusted by the whole family to Ochiai Hongli to make products
● The blue and green striped socks that made the family's Convenience Wear series famous were designed by Hirori Ochiai based on the brand image of the whole family.
The project is based on the development of daily necessities and apparel that emphasize functionality and comfort. Ochiai Hirori designed a solid circular logo, with the left half hollow, which looks like the letter C. The core concept of the whole project is "good materials, good technology, good design".
FamilyMart has really worked the supply chain for this product line. Instead of trying to control everything, they will work with trusted and well-known "experts" in a certain field. This makes Convenience Wear more convincing than an emergency item – it's a waste to just buy it on a business trip.
In order to get the "good material", FamilyMart and Asahi Kasei Co., a Japanese general chemical company, jointly developed Paircool, a technical fabric that uses ITOCHU Corporation's recycled polyester RENU, which is characterized by quick-drying, antibacterial, soft and eco-friendly. The fabrics of all Convenience Wear products are treated with antibacterial and antiodor treatments. According to Yoshimura Naoto's vision, Convenience Wear focuses on long-term use rather than disposable goods.
They also found the famous Japanese towel brand "Imasari" to complete the collection. Imabari is one of Japan's most important textile producing regions, and in Ochiai's view, the textile mills in the Imabari area have a high level of jacquard and dyeing technology. In addition to towels, Imabari's factory can also help them secure a supply chain for handkerchiefs and socks.
Imabari towels are famous enough. Designer Kashiwa Sato, who developed a global brand strategy for Uniqlo, later took over the brand strategy plan for the revival of Imabari towel and brought its white towel to Tokyo and Europe. Convenience Wear's first collaboration was with Imabari Towel and Coca-Cola. Later, it cooperated with Disney and Netflix's hit series "Stranger Things" in the same model, and launched limited products such as towels, socks, and handkerchiefs with the Imabari towel logo.
Hirori Ochiai invited creative planning firm CEKAI to design packaging and shoot a print advertisement for Convenience Wear. In 2021, the packaging design of this collection was shortlisted for the Good Design Award in Japan. It is designed for diverse, quick decision-making shopping scenarios: products are put in transparent bags and hung up for sale, and the instructions are all printed on the packaging, so customers can directly see what's inside the bag.
It's a solution that fits into the convenience store channel. However, convenience stores are full of shelves, and they don't have enough display space like ordinary clothing stores, so the products themselves need to be attractive enough to make people want to give it a try. Ochiai chose to use "color" to attract people's attention.
Before the spring of 2021, they experimented with stocking their shelves with colors such as pink and light green that responded to the season, and it wasn't long before light blue surpassed black to become the number one seller. Hiroshi Ochiai realized that color would be a reason for people to visit the store. "Basic colors are necessary and popular, but our users tell us that color is much more than that. He explained. So, you can find uncommon colors like fluorescent yellow and salmon pink in his designs.
This is exactly the logic of the convenience store channel selling exclusive goods - people go on a special trip to buy things for the whole family, which Yoshimura calls "purpose buying", after all, these clothes cannot be easily replaced everywhere. Sensing this trend, Ochiai Hongli has launched more exclusive collaborations and patterns.
But before they could do that, they had to figure out how to integrate more than 60 new products into the huge and sophisticated retail machine of convenience stores. Convenience Wear's standard display sales specification for the whole family is 2.5 shelves, of which socks and towels are the most colorful and men's and women's underwear, T-shirts, sweatshirts, and raincoats are usually only 1 or 2 colors. Raincoats are emergency supplies that are in high demand at convenience stores, and the team is considering adding more colors in the future.
● In the regular channels of FamilyMart convenience stores, Convenience Wear series products generally occupy two or three shelves, and all the products are hung up in transparent plastic bags.
Ochiai Hirori will not miss any opportunity to distribute goods. "About 5.5 billion people browse convenience store shelves every year, and they're like media. In other words, the products on the shelves are the content, and the employees are responsible for selecting the content and managing the media. He desperately persuaded Yoshimura Naoto, and visited more than 50 stores, surveying the customer base of each store, trying to get the store manager to accept the new goods. After a period of trial sales in the Kansai region of Japan, in March 2021, this batch of products was able to be sold "nationwide" in Japan.
Colourful socks give Convenience Wear a head start. One of the most famous is the blue and green socks based on the FamilyMart logo, which is a symbol of the family's characteristics without a logo, which is very popular among young people and promotes the brand for the whole family. The family also took the opportunity to do a marketing campaign, posting the hashtag #全家袜子 (#ファミマソックス) on Instagram, and let celebrities and athletes post photos of them wearing the socks, creating a trending topic. TikTok and YouTube are the other two marketing fronts. As of March 2024, TikTok Topic #全家袜子 has over 12 million views.
In the year and a half since it was launched, nearly 9 million pairs of Socks in the Family's color matching have been sold. And according to the latest data released by FamilyMart in November 2023, more than 15 million pairs of this sock have been sold.
These socks belong to the "crew socks" category, featuring a length that fits a standard-sized foot and can be worn by both men and women without being too tight or slipping, and being slightly taller than low-top socks and can be worn with almost any style of shoe. Takashi Isobabe, president of Coco Bay, a Japanese fashion consultancy, believes that Happy Socks, a Swedish brand that has become popular in recent years, has verified that colored socks are good enough to sell, and that there are not many channels for selling crew socks in Japan, and the family has filled this gap. Technically, FamilyMart's socks emphasize antibacterial, deodorant, non-slip, and anti-deformation, which strengthens the convincing power of the product.
There is also a doorway for pricing. Socks are the cheapest item in the Convenience Wear collection, costing only 390 yen (about 18 yuan) regardless of color and style. Short-sleeved T-shirts cost just over 1,000 yen (about 50 yuan), which is a few hundred yen cheaper than the same category of clothes as Uniqlo and Muji. The price is not too hesitant.
With the sales data in hand, Yoshimura calculated the various resources at hand. He is very good at creating marketing events inside and outside the company. After Convenience Wear's packaging was shortlisted for the Japan Good Design Award, Naoto Yoshimura immediately incorporated the award's well-known Gmark logo into its product promotions. The project team also received a daily necessities award within the company. September 2021 marks the 40th anniversary of FamilyMart, and FamilyMart announced "40 Good Things!?" （40 のいいこと!? The release of Convenience Wear nationwide is the third "good thing". In two years, they received 10 interviews alone.
Then, someone who knew more about the brand came to help. In October 2021, Kenhiko Sube officially joined the family, after which he took over the Convenience Wear project completely. Yoshimura didn't continue his job, he jumped ship to Nintendo's family investment office.
● Kenhiko Sube, the current leader of the FamilyMart Convenience Wear project, has raised the profile of the project and made the consumer group cover female consumers and young people.
Kenhiko Sube has more experience in how to be a women's clothing brand. IN 2012 HE JOINED THE WOMENSWEAR GROUP ONWARD KOYAMA, A COMPANY WITH 6 BRANDS, AND HE HAS BEEN IN CHARGE OF THE COMPANY. He told Future Vision that he wanted to develop clothes that he could wear, and that convenience stores were open to people of all genders and ages, which made him feel interesting, so he came to the family.
It can be said that Kenhiko Subei's mission is to help Convenience Wear further expand its customer base. "Our goal is to strengthen our brand image and increase awareness by partnering with highly recognized global brands and brands rooted in local communities. He said. In January 2024, Kenhiko Sube disclosed the changes in recent years to Japan Innovation Review, a Japanese financial media. When demand was limited to emergencies, the customer base was predominantly male, but since the launch of Convenience Wear, there has been a significant increase in women, young people in their teens and twenties, "which are people who were previously difficult to reach in convenience stores." He said.
That's why the whole family keeps trying to co-brand – they want to reach more people. On March 21, 2023, FamilyMart collaborated with professional baseball team Hiroshima Toyo Carp to launch 6 types of co-branded products including socks, hand towels, and scarves, and sold them at about 720 FamilyMart convenience stores in Japan and Chugoku (excluding some stores in Yamaguchi Prefecture). The partnership is to build momentum for the opening of the Japan Professional Baseball League at the end of March.
The idea of co-branding has also been carried over to larger events. FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL is Japan's largest rock music festival, where people camp in the mountains in the summer to listen to music and set up tents for the night. In July 2023, FamilyMart became an official FUJI ROCK partner for the first time, providing festival staff with approximately 7,000 employee t-shirts with the words FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL'23 and the Convenience Wear logo on them. At that time, the family also opened a pop-up store centered on clothing at the camp. It's getting closer to young people's pop culture.
● The 2023 collaboration between FUJI ROCKFESTIVAL and Convenience Wear is inspired by the green, blue, and orange colors on the FUJI ROCKFESTIVAL'23 poster, and includes waterproof foldable jackets, towels, and socks.
In May 2023, Convenience Wear launched a limited edition summer sandal, which specifically mentions that the sandals and socks are highly matched in the promotion to boost sock sales. Kenhiko Sube's goal is to make the product line "cover the whole body" so that it can reach more people. Today, FamilyMart Convenience Wear has more than a hundred regular products, including clothing and household groceries. They must be ready for more new products in the future.
Just stuffing clothes into convenience stores and selling them obviously won't work. Kenhiko Sube said that in most FamilyMart stores, they will put the clothes in a good position to see them when they enter the door. However, due to the limited sales space of convenience stores, most stores can only hold about 3,000 SKUs, and clothing can only be divided into two or three shelves. They tend to change the way they display them, such as using shelf heights to hang clothes up and fold suits and jackets, rather than taking up more shelves — if you want to expand your clothing sales area, you have to design a store.
High-priced bulky products will be put in a store for trial sale first. On November 30, 2023, FamilyMart held its first fashion show "Fami-FEST" at the Yoyogi National Stadium in Tokyo, unveiling a new collection of Convenience Wear.
● On November 30, 2023, the Japanese family held the first fashion show "Fami-FEST" at the National Yoyogi Stadium in Tokyo, a move that Sube said was an attempt to "challenge the traditional presentation".
This special form of shop is called Famima!! , which is primarily aimed at the retail scene of hotels and office buildings, but Azabudai Hills is more focused on sustainability, using eco-friendly materials, and has launched a retail area for bulk food and a bring-your-own-cup beverage station. There are a total of 27 limited edition clothing products, which occupy 11 shelves in the store's window. In the beginning, clothes were no longer put in plastic bags, but hung up and sold.
People can try them on the spot, but there are no fitting rooms available. At present, this layout display has been removed and reverted to selling clothing on 3 shelves.
Kenhiko Sube believes that the strategy of limited store sales will be more attractive to customers, and Azabudai Hills Famima!! This speculation was confirmed. According to Nana Shimada, head of the FamilyMart Division, the store's sales exceeded 1 million yen (about 474,000 yuan) in the first week, and T-shirts with the FamilyMart's logo were the bestsellers.
Azabudai Hills' presale sales data directly influenced the team's development decisions. The family didn't stick to a low-price strategy — on March 12, the nationwide Convenience Wear added jogging bottoms and a dress shirt, which were said to have been limited to Azabudai Hills and entered the regular collection because of the "high demand", and they are both priced at 3,000 yen (about 142 yuan).
● Slightly more expensive jogging bottoms and dress shirts were used at Azabudai Hills Famima!! Available in limited quantities, they're part of the Convenience Wear spring collection in 2024.
The whole family is happy with the results: sales of clothing are always on the rise. Since its launch in March 2021, sales of Convenience Wear have doubled every year since its launch in March 2021 and have maintained the same growth rate for three years, Sube said.
This project also inspired the whole family to start deploying their own brand. At the beginning of 2024, FamilyMart reorganized the Commodity Division's Commodity & Magazine Division into the "Commodity Division's CW & Miscellaneous Goods Division" – CW is an abbreviation for Convenience Wear, and it has been raised to the level of corporate strategy. Kenhiko Sube continues to serve as Product Owner. He told Future Prospect that he was looking forward to seeing a convenience store centered on clothing.
Nana Shimada, head of FamilyMart's Merchandise Division, said that in 2024, after Convenience Wear, they plan to do a new project to improve convenience store stationery, and the idea is to turn customers' "urgent needs" into "preferences". Ochiai Hirori will continue to develop products as a designer and with stationery giant KOKUYO.
(Intern reporter Li Yan also contributed to this article)
｜ One More Thing ｜
Now you can also "listen" to the report - the "Present Continuous Tense" podcast has a new episode, and the anchor talks about making clothes for the whole family. Convenience Wear is a collaborative effort between the interior and the outside, with the fashion designers, creative studios for packaging products, and co-branded partners all coming from outside the company, but the whole family doesn't mind bringing them with them. In this era when even convenience stores want to be their own brands, this is an effective case to make a name for itself.
You'll hear:
● The "separation" with Muji is a signal that FamilyMart is beginning to transform
● What efforts does the whole family put into the clothing products themselves?● "Color will be the reason why people visit the store"● Colored socks have made a start for Convenience Wear● How can the whole family market their clothing products?● Where else can clothes be sold in addition to convenience stores?
🔍 Find us
Search for "present continuous tense" on audio platforms such as Small Universe, NetEase Cloud Music, Himalaya, Douban Podcast, Apple Podcast, Spotify, etc.
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You can purchase the April 2024 issue of CBN magazine