kvmb Chapter 71 White Rationality
Chapter 71 White Rationality
(Thanks to "珈琬璃梦" for the 20 consecutive update reminder tokens! Thanks to "喜欢绿果的梁王" for the author certification! Bonus chapter~)
Twenty minutes later.
A black Nissan Presidential Sedan silently glided down the ramp of Shibuya Park and stopped in front of the three-story building under construction.
The car door opened, and a foot wearing a flat leather boot stepped onto the sidewalk.
Satsuki came down.
She wasn't wearing her school uniform today; instead, she wore a minimalist black turtleneck sweater and dark gray straight-leg wool trousers. A beige cashmere scarf was casually draped around her neck, and she wore no other jewelry.
Simple, cool, yet exuding an indescribable sense of sophistication.
Two men in black suits immediately stepped out of the escort vehicles in front and behind, following closely behind Satsuki.
"Young Miss".
Endo, who had been waiting at the door, hurriedly came forward, wiping his sweat as he led the way.
"It's still noisy inside."
Satsuki didn't speak, but simply nodded slightly and stepped into the construction site.
The air at the construction site was thick with the smells of sawdust and paint. The once spacious first-floor lobby had been fragmented by several newly erected plasterboard partitions.
"I'll say it again! Tear it down! Tear down these damn mazes!"
Tadashi Yanai's roar echoed.
He stood in the center of the venue, his feet on a newly laid, warm-textured walnut wood floor, waving a measuring tape in his hand.
"This is a retail store! Not a place for hide-and-seek! We need customers to be able to see all the merchandise at a glance! Efficiency! Don't you understand efficiency?!"
Opposite him, Suzuki, the designer wearing a beret, was tightly protecting a design drawing, his face flushed red.
"Mr. Yanai, please don't insult design with your supermarket theories! This is Shibuya! What we want to create is 'the joy of exploration'! It's 'a sense of private prestige'! If you can see right through to the end, what's the difference between this and a rural warehouse?!"
"What's wrong with a warehouse? A warehouse is the perfect sales floor!"
"You're being utterly unreasonable! This is a disgrace to the Saionji family's style!"
The two men were locked in a fierce standoff, neither willing to back down. The surrounding workers, tools in hand, looked at each other, completely unsure of whose advice to take.
"Stop, everyone."
A cool, clear voice broke the noisy argument.
The sound wasn't loud, but it had a strange penetrating power.
Tadashi Yanai and Suzuki stopped at the same time and turned to look at the doorway.
Seeing Satsuki walk in, Suzuki looked at him like a savior, quickly took off his beret, and ran over to point at Yanai and complain:
"Young Miss! You be the judge! This Mr. Yanai insists on turning this place into some kind of 'American-style department store,' tearing down my carefully designed layout, and even wanting to use the cheapest fluorescent lights! This is simply humiliating the Saionji family!"
Tadashi Yanai also came over, hung the measuring tape on his belt, and stiffened his neck:
"Miss, it's not that I want to save money. It's that he simply doesn't understand what we're selling. 1900 yen T-shirts with this high-end salon-like decor? Customers won't even dare to come in! And even if they do, they'll think it's fake when they see the price!"
Satsuki ignored their argument.
She walked straight to the center of the venue and looked around.
The walnut wood flooring underfoot is indeed very high-quality, smooth and silent to the touch. The niches in the walls are also very elegant, and there are even several rest areas with velvet curtains.
If you ignore the merchandise, this is indeed a very stylish boutique design.
But as Tadashi Yanai said, it is indeed too "heavy." It exudes an air of aloofness that keeps people at a distance.
"Mr. Suzuki."
Satsuki spoke.
"How much does this flooring cost per square meter?"
"This is imported black walnut wood from North America, costing 25,000 yen," Suzuki proudly introduced. "Only this color can bring out the calm and profound heritage of the Saionji family."
"Twenty-five thousand."
Satsuki walked to the corner, where Yanai Tadashi had just moved a box of samples for the demonstration.
She bent down and took a white T-shirt out of the cardboard box.
It was produced in the Shanghai factory, costing 45 yen, with a planned selling price of 1900 yen.
She threw the T-shirt on the expensive walnut wood floor.
"Look."
Satsuki pointed to the comparison.
"How does this garment look when set against this 25,000 yen piece of wood?"
Suzuki paused for a moment, then instinctively looked over.
The deep, heavy, and intricately textured walnut wood is placed next to that light, simple, and unadorned white T-shirt.
A stark contrast.
"It's like...it's like..." Suzuki stammered, not daring to say it aloud.
"Like a rag that a maid accidentally dropped on the floor."
Satsuki spoke for him.
"Excessive luxury can backfire on cheap products. This is called 'not worthy of one's position'."
"When customers walk on such expensive floors and look at this maze-like corridor, they subconsciously feel that everything here must cost at least 50,000. Then when they pick up this 1900 yuan dress, they won't think, 'Wow, that's cheap,' but will only think, 'This must be a defective product,' or 'This is charity for the poor.'"
Suzuki opened his mouth, but couldn't refute it.
Satsuki turned around and looked at Yanai Tadashi.
"And you, President Yanai."
"I heard you're thinking of getting concrete floors? Exposed pipes? Using those metal shelves like in a supermarket? And piling clothes in baskets like salted fish?"
Tadashi Yanai adjusted his glasses: "That's for efficiency! Americans..."
"This is Tokyo, not rural Texas."
Satsuki interrupted him. This isn't like after the bubble bursts, when people in Tokyo are practically clutching 10,000 yen bills to their foreheads. If they really followed Yanai Tadashi's method, they'd definitely suffer a crushing defeat.
"Tokyoites these days only care about money and fame. Their pride is bigger than their wallets. If you make your shop look like a bomb shelter or a wholesale market, they won't even come in. It will make them feel like losers."
"It can't be too expensive, nor too shabby."
Satsuki walked to the center of the field and looked at the two of them.
"What we're looking for isn't 'luxury' or 'cheap'."
It is "rationality".
She turned to look at Endo.
"Have someone smash all these partition walls."
"Oh? But this has already cost a lot of money..."
"Smash it."
"Open up the entire space. I want it to be completely transparent, so I can see right through it."
"Pry up these walnut floors. Replace them with the lightest birch or maple. The kind of color that looks clean, shiny, and even a bit like 'Muji'."
"The walls need no wallpaper, no niches. Just paint them white. Pure white."
"Remove those complicated suspended ceilings to make the space as high as possible. Paint all the pipes white."
She walked to the partition wall that had been smashed open and gestured a huge square that stretched all the way to the ceiling.
"Lights. Mr. Suzuki, throw away all those ambiguous, warm yellow spotlights."
"I need fluorescent lights. The brightest white fluorescent lights with the highest color temperature. They need to be as bright as an operating room or a dental clinic."
"We want to turn this place into a 'white box'."
"Then……"
Satsuki gestured to Yanai to open all the boxes.
It was filled to the brim with T-shirts in dozens of colors.
"Mr. Suzuki, what do you think is the most cost-effective yet most impressive way to renovate?"
Suzuki was still in a daze, completely unable to follow the young lady's train of thought.
"It's the product itself."
Satsuki picked up a red T-shirt and then a blue one.
"President Yanai, throw away the metal supermarket shelves you wanted. We want a special kind of cabinet custom-made."
"White shelves, with closely spaced grids. Go all the way to the top, even if guests can't reach the clothes on the top shelf."
"Each compartment can only hold clothes of the same color. They must be folded as neatly as bricks."
"Red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple..."
Satsuki's voice gradually rose in pitch, as if she were painting a magnificent picture.
"We want to use these thousand colors, like a rainbow, to cover the entire wall according to the color spectrum."
"Pile them up from the floor to the ceiling."
"Create a 'wall' by piling up clothes. Visually create a waterfall of color."
"In this pure white, extremely bright space, when thousands of T-shirts are neatly stacked together, the cheapness disappears."
"Instead, there is a sense of awe brought about by an extreme sense of order."
"A kind of luxury called 'abundance'."
Everyone present was stunned.
That image flashed through their minds.
It's not a maze, nor does it have dim lighting or cheap concrete floors.
Only pure white and overwhelming colors.
Unlike the mess of a warehouse.
You won't feel the artificiality of a boutique.
It was an unprecedented product, a perfect blend of industrialization and aesthetics.
"This is our renovation."
Satsuki put down the clothes she was holding.
"This is called 'hyper-rationalism'."
"When customers walk in here, under those bright, operating room-like lights, every single thread is clearly visible. This represents our absolute confidence in the quality."
"What they see is not 'cheap goods,' but 'freedom of choice.'"
She turned around and looked at Tadashi Yanai.
"This is the efficiency you need. No need for complicated displays, just fold them up and put them in the compartments. If a customer messes them up, the staff just needs to fold them up again and put them back."
He turned his head again and looked at the Suzuki designer.
"This is the style you're looking for. This extreme cleanliness and striking colors is the epitome of modern pop art. It's neither tacky nor expensive."
The Suzuki designer's gaze changed. From initial disdain to shock, and finally to fervor. As an artist, he grasped this aesthetic more acutely than any businessman.
"Genius...this is a genius idea!" he muttered to himself. "Turning commodities into building materials...using quantity to create quality...how come I didn't think of that!"
"And... what about the service?" Endo asked. "There's still a commotion in Chiba. Manager Shiraishi insists on having sales assistants, bowing, and one-on-one service..."
"No sales assistant needed."
Satsuki walked to the center of the venue and picked up a red plastic shopping basket—it was a sample brought by Tadashi Yanai.
She carried a basket and walked around the open space, as if she were shopping in a supermarket, but her posture was as elegant as if she were browsing an art exhibition.
"Here, no one needs to follow customers around selling things. No insincere flattery like 'You look great in this.'"
"We want to give customers the feeling that 'I am in control of the situation'."
"All the clothes are hanging outside or folded on racks. Sizes, colors, and prices are all clearly displayed."
"Customers take their own baskets, choose their own items, try them on themselves, and go to the cashier to pay."
"This is not indifference."
Satsuki stopped and turned to look at the crowd.
"This is called the 'privilege of not being disturbed'."
"In those upscale stores, the attentiveness of the staff can sometimes be a form of pressure, forcing you to buy. But here, you are free."
"You can try on ten pieces of clothing and not buy a single one, and no one will give you a dirty look."
"This sense of ease is the rarest luxury in this tense Tokyo."
silence.
The only sound on the construction site was the wind blowing through the scaffolding.
Yanai stood there, looking at Satsuki, the light in his eyes growing brighter and brighter, as if he had seen some kind of faith.
He got it.
He understood completely. Wasn't this exactly what he'd always wanted to do but hadn't been able to? To wrap the core of "mass retail" in a shell of "modern art." To make buying cheap goods no longer shabby, but even cool. Why hadn't he thought of this? It was exactly what he craved most!
"But……"
Tadashi Yanai suddenly thought of something and frowned.
"Miss, if we do it this way, it'll be too different from our 'S-Collection' in Ginza. What will the customers there think? Won't they think we're lowering our standards?"
"That's the last point I wanted to make."
Satsuki walked to the French windows and looked out at the streets of Shibuya.
"We want to change our name."
"This place cannot be called S-Style. It cannot even contain any of the Saionji family crests."
"We need to cut it off completely."
She turned around and looked at Tadashi Yanai.
"President Yanai, what was the name of that shop you had in Hiroshima again?"
"Unique Clothing Warehouse," Tadashi Yanai replied, "abbreviated as Uni-Clo."
"Change one letter."
Satsuki picked up a piece of plasterboard from the ground and wrote several large letters on it with a red marker.
UNIQLO
She changed "C" to "Q".
Uniqlo.
Satsuki's voice was soft, yet it seemed to carry the weight of history.
"Unique clothing."
"We want everyone to feel that this is a brand new, independent brand, and possibly even a brand from abroad."
"It has absolutely no connection to the Saionji family's haute couture shop."
"S-Collection is responsible for reaping the benefits from wealthy people who want to save face, just like we're fishing for tuna."
"Uniqlo is responsible for harvesting ordinary people who want substance, just like we use nets to catch sardines."
"This is like walking on two legs."
She handed the plasterboard to Tadashi Yanai.
"This name is yours."
Don't let me down.
Tadashi Yanai took the board with both hands.
UNIQLO.
These red letters look a bit odd, yet also stylish. The little tail of the Q looks like a playful hook.
He seemed to see a giant ship setting sail.
"Yes! I understand!"
Tadashi Yanai bowed deeply, his voice booming with an unprecedented confidence.
"I'll arrange it right away! Pry up all those wooden floors! Paint the walls white!"
"And those shelves! I want to order a thousand of them!"
"Lights! The lights need to be the brightest!"
Seeing Yanai Tadashi rekindle his fighting spirit, even more fervent than before, Satsuki smiled.
She straightened her scarf and walked towards the door.
As she reached the door, she stopped and glanced back at the still-stunned Suzuki designer.
"Mr. Suzuki."
"exist!"
"Those red shopping baskets are so ugly."
Satsuki pointed to the plastic basket.
"Redesign it. Change it to a black metal mesh basket, or dark gray hard plastic. The handles should have a matte finish."
"Since we are selling 'dignity,' we can't let customers stroll around the streets carrying shopping baskets."
"Even if it's just a piece of clothing that costs 1900 yen, you have to make it look like you're displaying a work of art."
"...Yes! Miss is wise!" Designer Suzuki bowed with heartfelt admiration.
Satsuki walked out of the construction site.
Outside the door, a spring breeze caressed my face.
The streets of Shibuya remained bustling. Young people, dressed in expensive designer brands, laughed amidst the bubble of vanity.
But inside that building that was about to turn pure white, a revolution about "basic" has quietly begun.
This time, there was no gunfire.
There was only that white wall, and the rational colors that were about to fill it.