Category Archives: Travel

09/11/2014 · 01:10

Art & design in Taipei (2/3): Songshan Cultural & Creative Park

Songshan Cultural & Creative Park is the most recent and also the biggest of Taipei’s creative locations. Like the Red House and Huashan 1914, the Songshan complex used to be an old industrial site. Built in 1937 as a tobacco factory, Songshan extends over some 6.6 hectares of space. The factory buildings alone include five warehouses, various office buildings and manufacturing halls, an inspection room and a boiler room.

In 2001 the factory complex was designated an important historic location and Taipei’s city government began to develop the site as a creative and cultural design centre. And in 2012, Songshan Cultural & Creative Park was opened with the mission to kindle creativity and innovation, with a particular focus on cross-industry creative projects.

Songshan Cultural & Creative Park (31)

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08/11/2014 · 07:03

Art & design in Taipei (1/3): Huashan 1914

This city has a very cool art and design scene! I knew next to nothing about Taipei (or Taiwan, for that matter) before I visited here, but the creative vein that runs through much of the urban lifestyle is very visible. In many stores you’ll find products and brands that emphasize Taiwanese design and manufacture and there is a strong reflection on the cultural and ethnic heritage of the island.

At the moment, for example, the city is hosting Pulima Art Festival 2014 which celebrates the cultural and musical diversity of Taiwan’s many Aboriginal tribes. I came across this festival when I was visiting Huashan 1914, the oldest of Taipei’s three major cultural & creative locations.

And this is really what the article is all about: a closer look at Taipei’s creative and design scene focusing on Huashan 1914, the Red House and Songshan Cultural & Creative Park. All three locations are former industrial sites which were transformed into lively (and very stylish!) cultural/art centres. I have split the article into three individual posts to improve readability. The first installment: Huashan 1914!

Huashan 1914 (9)

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04/11/2014 · 11:14

Retail notes from Taipei: [Store Profile] MasKingdom in Ximen

A few days ago I spent the afternoon in the Ximen area of Taipei. Ximen is a teen-oriented neighbourhood which is also called the “Harajuku of Taipei” [Harajuku is a Tokyo area famous for its teen/street fashion style]. The streets in Ximen are full of food stalls, restaurants and cosmetics retailers (including Korean chains Nature Republic, Etude House, Skin Food, Tony Moly and Face Shop, Sasa from Hong Kong and Western favourites L’Occitane and The Body Shop). There are game arcades, cinemas and fashion/accessories stores – Ximen is very loud, very colourful and very VERY crowded. On the weekends this is where large numbers of Taipei’s youngsters hang out.

I was walking aimlessly around the Ximen streets when all of a sudden I came upon MasKingdom – a store which specializes in face masks. Now, this in itself is nothing special: face masks (the foldable kind) are an integral part of the Taiwanese beauty market and the country is famous for its face masks manufacturers (the best-known brands include Sexy Look, My Beauty Diary and LoveMore).  In Taiwan, face masks are a staple in every drugstore and every perfumery chain. However, MasKingdom has a different – and very cool – brand concept.

Maskingdom (1)

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03/11/2014 · 08:02

Retail notes from Taipei: [Show Report] Asia Organic & LOHAS Expo 2014

I arrived in Taipei last week. A very cool city! On my first day I was walking past the Taipei International Exhibition Centre (I was actually on my way to meet a friend for coffee!) when I saw big posters advertising the 7th Asia Organic & LOHAS Expo from 31st October to 3rd November. I had come across the term LOHAS several times in Taiwanese stores and on product packaging – obviously organic and LOHAS is a lifestyle and/or marketing trend in Taiwan just as much as in other Western and Asian countries. I decided that I simply had to visit the Organic & LOHAS Expo – and it turned out to be a compact and interesting little show.

LOHAS show (12)
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31/10/2014 · 17:37

Tokyo Design Week (TDW) 2014: [Show Report] Inspiring, weird and wonderful

Although I spent a lot of time in retail-oriented places, my stay in Tokyo wasn’t just about shopping and cosmetics! A few days before I flew to Taipei, I visited Tokyo Designers Week, an international design festival which started out in Tokyo in 1985 as a trade show for interior and product design. Over the years the event has expanded to take in fashion, music, anime, films, digital art….you name it, TDW has it.

Tokyo Designers Week in 2014 was bigger than ever. The event covered four central themes – design, art, fashion and music – and brought together an inspiring and very diverse range of art and design from all over the world. The structure of TDW was rather complex, with a dozen separate exhibition spaces, an arts and craft market and an extensive schedule of workshops, talks, events and performances. And there were so many innovative, imaginative, weird, spectacular and just plain beautiful artworks, exhibits and installations that my head was still buzzing the next day!

TDW Tokyo (33)
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Retail notes from Tokyo: [Store Profile] Organic beauty at Cosmekitchen

If you’re interested in organic cosmetics, a visit to Cosmekitchen (Mash Beauty Lab) is practically mandatory. It is Japan’s biggest organic beauty store chain: the first Cosmekitchen store opened in 2004 and the company currently operates 30 outlets across Japan. The majority of the stores are in the Kanto area on Honshu island.

Although the organic beauty market in Japan is growing constantly, I think it is still primarily an urban trend – I noticed that Cosmekitchen stores seem to be mostly located in larger cities. The retailer’s outlets are usually shop-in-shop areas that are based in department stores; in Tokyo, for example, five of the Cosmekitchens are situated in outlets of the Lumine department store chain.

Cosmekitchen Hikarie (1)

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29/10/2014 · 10:42
28/10/2014 · 00:31

Retail notes from Tokyo: [Store Profile] Retail at RanKingRanQueen

There is a Japanese store chain which is even more focused on the trend aspect of FMCG retail than @cosme. RanKingRanQueen sells cosmetics, confectionery, beverages and books strictly according to what the three top-sellers are in each category. There are four RanKingRanQueen stores in Japan; two in Tokyo, one in Yokohama and one store in Osaka.

The stores are located in busy train stations since this is where commuter traffic and especially the trend-driven younger consumers (the main target demographic of the store chain!) congregate. I visited the RanKingRanQueen store in Yokohama – it’s located in Azamino station (one of the stops on the Tokyu Den-en-toshi line from Shibuya) directly opposite the main ticket gates.

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24/10/2014 · 13:54

Retail notes from Tokyo: [Store Profile] Hansel & Gretel

On the list of my must-see stores in Tokyo was an intriguing-sounding shop in the Western parts of the city: Hansel & Gretel (yes, the store is indeed named after the Grimm Brothers’ famous fairy tale!) is located in the affluent suburb of Seijo.

Seijo area (2)

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23/10/2014 · 20:45

Retail notes from Tokyo: [Store Profile] Online/offline beauty @cosme

I was eager to see the stores of @cosme, a Japanese beauty chain with a retail concept that is strongly driven by social media network. The @cosme approach is an ingenious merger of online and offline retail.
[EDIT 30/01/2018: @cosme finally has an English-language version of the website! Check out: https://www.cosme.com/en; it’s just a part of @cosme’s huge Japanese language database but still, yay!
EDIT 24/01/2020: A couple of weeks ago @cosme opened a massive multi-storey outlet in Harajuku, opposite the Omotesando entrance of Harajuku JR station. This new store is stupendous – it makes all other @cosme outlets in Tokyo look boring and even dated; so if you’re in Harajuku or Omotesando area, do yourself a favour and visit it!]

@cosme is Japan’s largest cosmetics online store and it is also the country’s biggest virtual beauty community. The company’s websites are www.cosme.com and www.cosme.net so every Japanese Internet user who searches for anything to do with cosmetics ends up at @cosme sooner or later. @cosme’s main target group are consumers aged 16-25 which means that the website and its online community are hugely influential in the trend-driven teen and young adult consumer demographic in Japan.

@cosme’s very successful retail venture actually started with a simple review website: cosme.net was launched in 1999 and became popular very quickly. In 2001, the company behind @cosme (marketing agency iStyle), launched online store cosme.com. @cosme sells an extensive range of Japanese, Asian and Western mass market, masstige and premium brands. Whether you are looking for a Japanese face mask, a Korean eyelash lotion or Chanel’s latest whitening face serum, it is all available on @cosme.

@cosme (1)

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22/10/2014 · 09:07

Retail notes from Tokyo: [Show Report] Cosme Tokyo 2014

This week I attended CosmeTokyo, Japan’s most important cosmetics trade show. The fair took place from 20th to 22nd October in Tokyo’s Big Sight exhibition center, which is located near Tokyo Bay. CosmeTokyo 2014 was the third edition of the show; it was held in conjunction with CosmeTech, a trade fair for ingredients, packaging, OEM manufacturing and so on. A total of 542 exhibitors from 36 countries attended the two shows and over the three days of CosmeTokyo/CosmeTech, there were 20,754 trade visitors.

CosmeTokyo 2014 (14)

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