Yukari Mitsuhashi
A rather historical event took place at one of the biggest train stations in Japan Shibuya just a few weeks ago. The old Toyoko train line, which has a history of 78 years, closed down as part of a large scale urban renewal project. The train service was re-routed to the 5th floor underground lane. The switch-over construction at the station was done overnight in just four hours, leaving a large empty space right in middle of Tokyo.
Uniqlo found the vacant 660-square-meter space convenient for a pop-up shop called UT Pop-up Tokyo. The Toyoko-line Shibuya terminal is now filled with more than 1,000 kinds of items and over 12,000 t-shirts. The shop opened on March 28th as a part of the Uniqlo pop-up shop World tour, led by well-known Japanese creative director Kashiwa Sato. The project is planned to launch in different cities around the world including (but not limited to) London, Paris, New York, and Singapore.
Visitors can even shoot videos of themselves at the site using a new mobile app called UT Camera, which converts their original movie into a unique animation. The resulting content is displayed on a big screen at the pop-up store as well as on a dedicated website.
The pop-up shop works for shoppers looking for fun t-shirts, but it also functions as a form of interactive entertainment. It will be open until April 7th, selling unique t-shirts in collaboration with Star Wars and other artists. This UT line of t-shirts has sold over 160 million worldwide.
Rick Martin
Masaru Ikeda
