KANEKO OPTICAL: its work and people

Today, as ever, what becomes popular is a matter of chance. The closer you are to the front lines of what’s “in vogue,” the more you understand the fickleness of the public’s taste.  Takashi Shirasaki, Kaneko Optical’s area manager for Chiba/Saitama is one such example. He experienced the street fashion boom of the early 2000s in his early twenties, and also witnessed the rise of trendy eyewear fashion in around the year 2000 as a sales person right where these phenomena were in full swing. He

Born and raised in Tokyo, Shirasaki has been a clothes fiend since high school days. When he had spare time, he read every fashion magazine he could find. On holidays he’d make a bee line for Shibuya or Harajuku. When he graduated from college in 2000, “Urahara-kei” was the watchword in downtown fashion – referring to the street fashion emerging from the many small shops popping up around the back (“ura”) of “Harajuku BEAMS,” known as the birthplace of the Beams brand. Street-focused, with a mix of hip-hop, punk, and many other elements, Urahara-kei truly symbolized the era. 
Shirasaki rode the trend, joining the apparel industry after graduating from college. His first job was at a popular Harajuku vintage clothing store, but his work there was not in sales – it was sorting clothes in the back lot. He couldn’t find much meaning in this work, and later moved through a series of jobs in apparel and skate shops in Ueno and Harajuku. During this short year and half period, he witnessed a trends go all the way from peak to petering out. 
“When I first joined the industry there were so many customers coming in, but once the boom started to wane, they suddenly dropped out of sight. Trends are really obvious. It struck me how severe they can be. Once I'd witnessed how fast a rise and fall can be, I began to sense the limits of the fashion business (smiles ironically), and to see that I wouldn’t be able to stay in this career for the long run, and I better make a switch”

Around age 25 Shirasaki had his first contact with eyewear. While working at a men’s fashion accessory shop in the Ikebukuro Parco department store, he was put in charge of sunglass sales. Sunglasses were selling well at the beginning of the 2000s. He felt satisfaction in the work and decided he would like to make a career selling eyeglasses and sunglasses. At 27, he joined a company called Inface. 
Inface was a joint venture between Kaneko Optical and a Tokyo eyewear planning company, with several eyewear stores in central Tokyo focused on select brands from both companies. They also had a store in the "Decks Tokyo" megamall in Odaiba, where Shirasaki began working as a staff member. From here he progressed in experience, working at the Shinjuku and Shiodome stores, but Interface itself was on a gradual downward trend, and in 2008 closed all its stores. 

“Just like when I worked at the clothes store, there were tons of people coming in at the beginning. Back when I was working at the clothes store, things got pretty sad when customers stopped coming in, and it was such a relief when a customer would appear. Once again, I saw the customers begin to dwindle. When this happens it’s pretty depressing. And it wasn't just me – it was the whole staff. The atmosphere in the store darkened, and everything started to head in a bad direction.” This happened to be just the time when the eyewear world was polarizing into two camps: glasses that embodied the craftsman’s technique and quality, and low priced glasses people could buy on a whim. Inface’s shops tried to present new trends, but the company was in a halfway position, not fitting either of those two poles, and had lost its reason for being. After the clothing business, Shirasaki was again tossed on the waves of boom and bust – this time in the eyewear business. He considered changing careers to the fashion-

Mr. Kaneko gradually brought the conversation around to the future of eyewear stores. As if to emphasize, he said, “I don’t want you to think this is what an eyewear store has to be like. I will show you just what potential there can be.” I said, “But the eyewear business seems pretty opaque to me. Competition had already started in the low-priced segment and 3 price, and I’d been questioning the future of this business if that’s going to be the mainstream.” 
To hear President Kaneko say so clearly, “I will show you the potential for eyewear stores” when things were looking
Moved in this way by the words of the president, Shirasaki joined KANEKO OPTICAL in August 2008 as a staff member at the Maihama store in Urayasu, Chiba.

14 years have now passed since Shirasaki joined the company. During that period he was the manager of several stores, and is currently the manager in charge of stores in the Chiba and Saitama regions. His stance has been consistent since joining the company – “don’t overdo it,” and “be natural.” He describes his approach to customers as “unintrusive” in a good sense. “I think some staff try to really shrink the distance between them and the customer, but that’s not me. If I had to say, I’m more the type who concentrates on showing the customer what they seem to be looking for. I make a judgment of what kind of eyeglasses they’re looking for based on watching where the customer lingers after coming into the store, and what products they’re picking up. My approach is strictly customer-led. There’s nothing I especially set out to do.” Yet even with this personality, when he took over the store manager role where the store manager had been carrying lots of customers, he sometimes felt the pressure was going to crush him: “this was too much for me.”  But he stayed consistent in not letting the job overwhelm him, not overdoing it, and remaining natural. This approach of Shirasaki creates a comfortable sense of rhythm with customers as they shop and evaluate products at their own pace, and generates a lot of customer good will. He applies the same approach to the staff around him, bringing out each one’s unique personality at work. 

Since becoming store manager, Shirasaki has been unstinting in his efforts to study and improve his business skills. "Especially now, given my position, I’m studying up on the latest management theory and things like that. Put simply, I’m a fanboy (laughs). If you ask me if I can imitate these things right away, that’s impossible, but in my mind it’s better to have that knowledge than not, and some day it may come in handy. Also, it bothers me not to know what’s being practiced at other companies. If others are doing it, I want to do it too, and I feel like this will keep our company on the right track. Not just in the narrow category of the eyewear industry, but for our existence as an individual company. I want to be able to say at all times, “I work for a good company!”


PROFILE

Takashi Shirasaki

Born and raised in Tokyo, Shirasaki has loved clothes since high school, and after graduating from university started working as staff in a popular vintage clothing store in Harajuku. He then continued to work in the apparel industry, and in 2004 he joined Inface Co., Ltd. and entered the world of eyeglasses. Four years later, when the store closed, he joined KANEKO OPTICAL. After serving as store manager, he is currently area manager for the Chiba and Saitama regions.