Popular Californian brand Juicy Couture opened its first flagship store in Tokyo last week. Co-founder Pamela Skaist-Levy was there for the store’s official opening in the Aoyama district.
“In Ginza there are so many tall buildings, and Shinjuku’s atmosphere is different from what Juicy Couture is looking for,” Skaist-Levy told WWD, commenting on the choice of location. “Aoyama has a special atmosphere. This is the place for Juicy Couture to show the entire world of the brand.”
The new store offers women’s and men’s wear and accessories like shoes, sunglasses, bags, dog apparel and iPod cases. Juicy Couture now counts 10 Japanese points of sale. The company also opened shop-in-shops in Yokohama, Chiba, Niigata and Sapporo this year. Japanese distributor of the brand, Sanns Freres, is hoping for a total of 50 stores.
The store offers the first ever Juicy Couture men’s corner, which include graphic printed shirts by Duran Duran member John Taylor (also husband of Gela Nash-Taylor, the other half of Juicy Couture).
Paul Charron, chairman and chief executive of Juicy’s parent company Liz Claiborne Inc told WWD the brand had surpassed expectations and “is now a phenomenon”. The company would not, however, reveal sales projections for the store. Charron did say that “the business increase has given us confidence for further expansion.”
He added that the brand has grown from $50 million at wholesale at the time of Claiborne’s acquisition in 2003 to $300 million at present. “We’ve done it without opening new points of distribution other than a couple of stores. This year, we will open 17 shops, including flagships in San Francisco and New York. Having the flagship in Aoyama at this time means a lot,” he said. He added that despite having launched several of its brands in Japan, “the business is still underdeveloped” and said that introducing Juicy Couture in Tokyo was an important test for the group.
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Juicy Couture is also planning to launch watches, fragrance, infants’ and children’s wear and a cosmetics and home collection.