ItalianoGACKT Official blog update. Translation below:
The squall is beautiful.
When I went up to the lobby halfway through training,
rain suddenly started pouring.
I think it’ll probably stop in 30 minutes.
I finished my training and made myself comfortable in the lobby.
While I watched the rain, I enjoyed tea time in the afternoon.
I realised it’s the first time that I met Angie in quite awhile.
Even so, she’s cute.
Why is she so cute…
Maybe she seems this cute because she can’t speak.
If
dogs can speak,
I wonder if they’ll still be just as cute…
I spent the afternoon relaxing
while thinking about silly things like these.
I had to reorganise my documents a little
and in around 3 hours, I finished my work.
As evening came,
I went to the new Isetan area in KL for observation.
I want to find out how many people go in on a holiday,
how well their approach works, and other things like that.
A few Japanese companies
have received such questions too so I decided to have a look.
When I actually stepped in, I was honestly shocked.
Not only is Isetan’s target audience
vastly different from the customer base that enters the building that they’re in,
their approach is a complete failure too.
In addition to their approach being old fashioned,
I have absolutely no idea
what customer group they’re trying to target.
I think it’s already been open for a year…
Despite that it’s a holiday,
it’s a problem that there is so few people here
but basically, there’s no cohesion among the products they’re dealing in.
If their goal is to aim for a high-end customer base,
then they’ve picked the wrong building to begin with.
Customers like those are not here in the first place.
Both the price of their goods,
and the method of approach
don’t fit the customer base at all.
If you get your target audience wrong,
that will pretty much be aligned with the location conditions.
It’s directly connected to the monorail upstairs.
They’ve even built it in such a way that you’ll directly enter the building from the station.
However,
what they’ve gotten completely wrong is
the kind of customer
that uses the monorail.
If they wanted to capture these people,.
or if these people were their subject audience,
then you might as well say that, in the first place,
the prices of the goods are completely mismatched.
I found the entrance into the corner where Gundam goods were sold but…
Exactly whose department is this.
You could say that I am completely unable to comprehend
what it is they want to sell
and what they’re trying to set up.
Only a life-sized Gundam stood before me.
Instead,
it ends up looking cheap…
At the cafe that is directly connected to the monorail.
I watched for an hour and a half
to see how many customers enter but
despite that it’s in the evening,
there was almost no one walking into Isetan from here.
For crying out loud…
For this cafe too,
when I came in and when I left,
there were no customers at all…
I was appalled, to think that you’ll stop attracting customers
to this extent just by getting the approach wrong.
I suppose there will be a need to start over from zero
if they want to fix this but that will be a pretty difficult task.
In the first place, I don’t think this flow will change
just by playing around with the inside of the shop a little…
It’s difficult to find a building with this few people
in a central area where lots of people gather.
The idea that 【this is saleable because it’s a product from Japan】
is something from more than 10 years ago, and if you still believe in that even now,
that’s simply nothing more than a Japanese’s extravagance.
The streets are instead overflowing with products from Korea and other countries.
Now, finding a Japanese product itself
is really rare.
There are still many wonderful things in Japan but
that will not come through at all
unless you choose the person you want to execute your approach at.
For young people,
instead of bringing Japanese products to them,
it’s most important to bring more of the culture to them first
and if you just bring products,
it will simply look like you’re displaying obsolete products.
I was contacted by a staff, from another building’s Dolce & Gabbana,
telling me that it was going to be closed,
so I went to visit.
It seems that when their contract is up, they too
will be moving within the same building belonging to the building owner
but because they could not get the location,
they will have to be closed for awhile
as they look for a good place.
This D&G is being run quite well but
nevertheless, they carry out their approach very thoroughly.
To them, I suppose it’s a problem that they have to be very careful with.
At a glance, it makes me think that it’s a waste but
looking at the case this time around, I once again recognise
that being particular about that is the most important.
Alright then,
how will Isetan get revived from this flow.
Hmm,
they’ll probably need quite a lot of spirit to break out of this situation.
I suppose this can be said for any business but
it’s really frightening what happens if you get the approach wrong…
It’s often said that perfection is 90 percent preparation.
If you get it wrong here, something irrevocable can really happen.
Hmm,
what on earth will happen…
Source: GACKT Blog
Translation: GACKT ITALIA Team
Translation © GACKT ITALIA