Shopping Guide
At Ikebukuro Loft and Kichijoji Loft, the FewMany-produced creator art bazaar event “Popbox” was held. Throughout the event, creators who participated in creating goods for the event held live paintings and performances, which were popular with attendees. More than anything else though, attendees came in order to seize the rare opportunity of seeing one-of-a-kind paintings, figures, and other handcrafted artistic works and products.
Loft is a chain store in Japan that sells a wide variety of items for everyday life, including bicycles and party goods. FewMany is an online shop that produces collaborative goods with illustrators, figure makers, and other popular artists. The goal of “Popbox” was to create a real location using Loft at which FewMany’s goods, which overflow with originality, could be seen. Until the event was held, no one knew what items would be included. It was a surprising space to say the least.
When asked about the event, Takeo from Super Powers, the company who planned the event, explained, “The event was put into motion six years ago after Valentine’s Day when we we contacted by Loft and asked to do a two week event.” He went on to say, “When we assembled artists we had worked with and held a mini exhibition in Shibuya Loft, customers took notice and it received good popularity. We have now been holding the exhibit twice a year for five years, once in May and once in November.”
After that, “Popbox” expanded to also include Ikebukuro Loft and Kichijoji Loft. The event will also be expanding to Osaka and Nagoya.
Takeo had this to say about where the event will go from here: “While producing toys and general goods, we thought that we wanted spread artists’ works to more people throughout the world, so we started this event. We have a strong feeling that if we produce each artists’ goods, we can get them out to the world. Moving forward, in order make the event more profound, we are thinking about spotlighting artists from different genres. Before that though, we must first research what makes those people fascinating and popular. We will start from there.”
From the frankness of Takeo’s words, we were able to grasp the carefulness of their work. We tip our hats to them for continuing this event.
FewMany Online Shop:
http://www.fewmany.com/index2.htm (Japanese)
This is a Tokyo Otaku Mode original article.
