Q2

NO BRAND

Introduction

I had a dream about starting a YouTube or TikTok channel reviewing MUJI products.

Because I’m not sure if you’re aware, MUJI outside of Japan sucks.

The products are a constant hit-and-miss.
Some just break.
I once bought a spray bottle, and the top trigger just popped out within 5 squeezes.
Brought it back to the shop, they say it’s out of stock.
Everything is always out of stock.

MUJI in Japan, they build a house for you.
MUJI in Australia, I get receipts of refunds and unfulfilled promises.

The one MUJI product I like is the ceramic grater (pictured above).

The Japanese use it for grating daikon (radish) because that is essential to their fish-eating diet. But I use it to grate carrots for my curry. I use it to grate parmesan cheese. It collects the juices and crumbs for you to pour out with a spout.
It has a non-slip rubber at the bottom.
I personally think it is the pen-pineapple-apple-pen of Japan zen, modernism, and design.

But guess what?
Out of stock.

Strategy

You gotta ask, why bother opening stores in the Southern Hemisphere?
The rent and wages are higher, the population and buying power are lower, opening hours shorter.

Australia is a great rubbish dumping ground, that’s why.

Think about it, the kangaroo season means they get to sell last season’s product to us. Can’t sell it in Japan? Leftover stock from Europe? Ship it over to Australia. They will buy anything with katakana characters printed on it.
At double the price!

It’s the same with Uniqlo.
Same with the automobile industry slowly edging their non-electric cars here.

Design

As a design student in the late 90s, MUJI was truly mind-blowing.

No logos, a philosophy.
Products that work.

Cutting through the brand clutter of the 80s Japanese bubble, promoting anti-consumerism. It was the original hipster movement.
It changed the game with a minimal and clean design like what Google did with search engines.
The Apple of home living.
They coined it ‘anonymous design’ - design without designers.

I don’t need twelve versions, just give me one decent pen.
One notebook. A cardholder.

20 years later, it is a parody of itself, right?
How can you be a hipster and a global conglomerate at the same time?
How can you be ‘Japanese’ yet produce everything in China (cough Xinjiang cotton cough)? Design without designers sounds eerily sinister under this context.
Are they not blatantly ripping off Sori Yanagi?

How can you say ‘this is enough’ while simultaneously building hotels in big cities?
Paying rent for a giant billboard to say ‘no brand’?
How about we spray paint a ‘peace’ logo onto an atomic bomb?
What is this music?
A Celtic Norwegian fever dream with elves?

The Future.

That’s the thing, isn’t it?

Ultimately, all major companies wet dream is to become a religion.
Inside the church of beige and white, there’s a slower, better, simpler, considerate version of me.

We go to MUJI to escape reality.

Newton’s third law of equal reaction - as the world becomes more materialistic; so does the anti-brand.

I think it’s ok to have one or two MUJI products at home as souvenirs of that spiritual battle.

When your home looks exactly like a MUJI shop, I think that’s when you completely lost it.

That’s when you yearn to visit Daiso or IKEA.

For some colours.

Hi there! If you’re new here, thanks for buying my book.
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