Monday, October 19, 2009

A Flashback Fabric Post, Osaka: Part 1

On my last trip to the USA I had extended my layover in Tokyo to about a weeks length so I could travel down to Osaka and meet with the fabric company we had been working with for our first season to collect a bunch of new fabric swatch cards for selecting fabrics in future product drops.

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About to board the bullet train to Osaka. A 3 1/2 hour trip from Tokyo station. Bought a nice katsu bento set to eat for the ride, unfortunately I have no photos as I ate the meal and passed out.

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The meeting area where clients discuss and view new fabrics and potentials buys. I spent a good 24 hours here over the next 2 days.

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Another vantage point of the fabric showroom in Osaka. Wall to wall in fabric and over 20 binders filled with swatch cards.

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Notating and shortlisting fabrics was a daunting task, especially on the second day when I had to resift through binders to confirm my final fabric selection to mail off to Singapore. But just seeing the different possiblities for sifr just from stock fabric alone was inspiring. Can't wait to start developing custom fabrics, however it's 3000m minimum.

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Green tea, oolong tea and water dispensing machine. Looking to get one of these for the office.

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Green tea and onigiri kept me going through the day.

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Great pencil, didn't improve my penmanship though.

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No secretary, open office concept. The boss is at the end of the room by the window. Interesting take on an office space. Most conventional office spaces communicate hierarchy of the employee structure through office spaces/suites, but in this case everyone is given the same working space. Maybe a reflection of post bubble Japan. So long, until SS11!



That's it for now, in the subsequent posts I'll be showing the other fabric company I met with and some snaps around Osaka and Tokyo.

Sincerely,
Chris

2 comments:

Oscar said...

that office space concept comes about from ideas of equality so as to lessen major discrepancies between positions to aid with teamwork and unity. as well as allowing open discussion to aid with knowledge sharing amongst coworkers

cjf said...

hey boris,
yeah it's a great looking office environment. i think a lot of people are use to seeing the office structure that's usually portrayed in entertainment media where office space is awarded according to employee hierarchy - it was neat to see everyone sort of meshed together - design team right by sales and customer rep teams. cool stuff, i still want to get a tea dispenser for my office though