The Worldfolio: Graniph Expands Japanese Pop Culture Through IP Merchandising, Original Characters and Global Growth
JAPANOTHERSASIA-PACIFICJAPANSPECIALTY RETAILPOP CULTUREIP MERCHANDISINGFASHION & LIFESTYLE
Graniph Expands Japanese Pop Culture Through IP Merchandising, Original Characters and Global Growth
Graniph is a Japanese lifestyle brand and “pop culture select shop” that transforms entertainment IP, original characters and graphic creativity into products for everyday life. Having evolved beyond its roots in graphic T-shirts, the company is building an IP merchandising business that combines major collaborations with its own characters while expanding internationally.
AKIHIKO MURATA | CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF GRANIPH INC.
Over the past several years, fashion and lifestyle consumption have increasingly moved beyond simply following seasonal trends. Consumers are using clothing, graphic design, characters, cultural references and entertainment IP as ways of communicating their identities, interests and personal values. At the same time, Japanese entertainment and pop culture are reaching increasingly broad international audiences, creating opportunities for ideas that were once considered niche to become part of the mainstream lifestyle market. As that transition takes place, however, brands also face the challenge of expanding their reach without losing the cultural specificity, creative identity and graphic originality that initially made those ideas attractive. Looking ahead over the next one or two years, how do you expect the relationship between niche culture and the mass market to evolve, and what role do you believe Japanese IP and entertainment will play in reshaping fashion and lifestyle consumption?
I think this is a very interesting question. Looking ahead, I believe it will become increasingly difficult for what we traditionally think of as the mass market to continue existing as one large and homogeneous market. Instead, I think we are moving toward a structure in which many smaller markets coexist. You could describe them as small mass markets, with each one formed around a particular interest, set of values or way of thinking.
Until now, markets for fashion and lifestyle brands have largely been formed around fashion itself and around broader trends. Consumers would respond to a particular fashion movement or trend, and markets would develop around that. What I believe is changing now is that IP and entertainment are increasingly entering those markets and becoming one of the major trends shaping the products people choose and the lifestyles they create.
We have already seen a similar development within entertainment. In the past, when people thought about globally influential films and entertainment, Hollywood and other established international industries had a very strong presence. Gradually, however, works rooted in Japanese culture have expanded internationally and have become increasingly visible to audiences around the world.
I believe that development will no longer be limited to entertainment itself. The same elements are beginning to enter our everyday lifestyles. Japanese IP, entertainment content and the culture surrounding them are increasingly being incorporated into fashion and lifestyle products, which means that entertainment can become an entry point through which people discover something they eventually incorporate into their everyday lives.
That is an important change. It means that the relationship between entertainment, fashion and lifestyle is becoming much closer.
For that reason, I do not see what is happening simply as another fashion trend. I think it represents a broader structural transformation in the market. Rather than having one large mass market in which everybody responds to the same trends, we will increasingly see multiple communities of consumers organized around specific interests and values.
Within that environment, IP and entertainment can become very important because they already contain stories, characters, worlds and communities of people who share a strong emotional connection with them. I believe those elements will increasingly penetrate fashion and lifestyle markets and become part of how people express themselves through the products they choose.
As IP becomes more deeply integrated into fashion and lifestyle products, the relationship between content owners and merchandising partners becomes increasingly important. For an IP owner, commercialization is not simply a matter of placing a famous character, logo or visual onto a product. The owner needs confidence that a partner understands the original work, interprets its creative universe correctly, markets it appropriately and maintains that integrity throughout design, manufacturing and retail. These concerns can become even greater when an IP expands internationally, where the content owner may have less direct visibility over how its property is being presented. From your experience working with IP holders, what do they prioritize most when choosing a merchandising partner, and where does Graniph believe it creates the greatest value in protecting the original world of an IP while still bringing something fresh to the consumer?
For IP owners, I believe the most important priority is protecting the integrity of their IP. They have created a particular world around that property, and they do not want that world or its identity to be damaged through commercialization. I think maintaining that world is one of the most important concerns for many IP holders.
From Graniph’s perspective, when we begin working with an IP holder, one of the first things we consider essential is developing a very deep understanding of the IP ourselves.
Within our company, we have team members who possess extremely detailed knowledge of particular works and characters. You could describe some of them as otaku. They are not simply employees who have been assigned to research an IP for the purpose of developing a product. They are genuine fans who already have a very strong interest in the work and understand it at a deep level.
I think that distinction is extremely important.
Because they are fans themselves, they have a strong desire to take an IP they love and turn it into something they would genuinely want to incorporate into their own everyday lives. They can think about what kind of product would appeal to a fan because they themselves understand that fan’s perspective.
They therefore bring both deep knowledge and a very high level of enthusiasm to the development process. They understand what fans might want from a particular property and use that understanding as the starting point for generating product ideas.
Those ideas are then passed to our designers, who translate them into actual designs and products while being very careful not to damage the original world of the IP.
Over the years, Graniph has accumulated considerable knowledge and experience in this process. We have learned how to interpret IP, how to translate it into products and how to create something that can be incorporated naturally into people’s lifestyles without losing the qualities that made the original property attractive.
I believe that accumulation of knowledge and successful experience has created trust between Graniph and the IP holders with whom we work. It has enabled us to develop strong and positive relationships over time.
In fact, some IP holders recognize particularly strong partners through awards, and Graniph has received this type of recognition. Warner Bros. Japan LLC, for example, has given us an award.
The feedback we have received is not simply that we understand the original work well. There have also been cases in which the products we create are recognized for bringing out another aspect of the appeal of the IP or presenting it from a new perspective.
That is something I consider very important. We are respecting the original world, but at the same time we are trying to create products that can reveal another attractive dimension of that property.
I believe the trust Graniph enjoys with IP holders today has been built gradually through the accumulation of those products, those evaluations and those relationships.
Looking back at Graniph’s development, the company originally established its identity around graphic T shirts and the idea that a relatively accessible garment could function almost like a canvas for individual expression. A consumer did not need to purchase an expensive fashion item to communicate something about themselves because a graphic T shirt could already provide that opportunity. In 2021, however, Graniph made a major strategic change and expanded from a business centered primarily on T shirts into a much broader lifestyle brand. At the same time, you were observing Japanese entertainment content and Japanese IP gaining greater international recognition and saw growing potential in the merchandising market surrounding that content. What ultimately convinced you that Graniph should move beyond the traditional apparel market and compete in the broader IP merchandising space, and how important was the decision about which market to compete in when defining the company’s future?
One of the main reasons was that we could already see signs that Japanese entertainment content and Japanese IP were beginning to spread internationally. We believed there was a clear indication that this content would continue expanding globally and that the market for products based on those properties would also grow.
When I joined the company, I spent a considerable amount of time thinking about where Graniph should compete in the future and how the company should grow.
I looked carefully at the strengths Graniph already possessed. At the same time, I considered which markets were likely to expand in the years ahead. The question for me was what would happen if we combined the strengths already existing within the company with a market that had significant growth potential.
It was something I thought about very seriously because I believe market selection is one of the most important decisions in business.
Which market are we going to compete in? That decision has an enormous influence on everything that follows.
In my view, simply choosing the market in which you are going to compete can determine perhaps 50 percent or more of the outcome. Even if a company has strong capabilities, it becomes much more difficult to succeed if it chooses a market where those capabilities cannot create a meaningful advantage.
After considering this carefully, I concluded that Graniph should compete in the IP merchandising market rather than continue defining itself primarily through the T shirt and apparel market.
We already had strengths that could be applied to that opportunity. At the same time, Japanese entertainment and IP were showing signs of increasing international expansion. When we considered those two factors together, IP merchandising appeared to be the market where Graniph could build its future.
So the transition into a lifestyle brand was not simply about adding more categories of merchandise or selling products beyond T shirts.
It represented a much more fundamental strategic decision about the market in which Graniph wanted to compete.
We moved from thinking of ourselves primarily within the apparel market toward thinking about the much broader opportunity surrounding IP merchandising and lifestyle products. That shift became the foundation of the direction we have pursued since then.
That transformation also changes the role Graniph can play for international visitors coming to Japan. When people travel overseas, they often want to discover something that feels genuinely connected to the country they are visiting, whether through food, design, fashion, craftsmanship or popular culture. Graniph describes its stores as pop culture select shops, bringing together well known Japanese IP, collaborations and the company’s own original characters, and then translating those creative worlds into products people can actually use in their everyday lives. As you strengthen major locations in cities such as Tokyo and Fukuoka, what do you want inbound visitors to discover when they enter a Graniph store, and why do you believe the brand can offer them an expression of Japanese culture that may be difficult to encounter or purchase in their own countries?
When we travel overseas ourselves, I think many of us naturally look for things that allow us to experience something distinctive about the country we are visiting. That can be food, products or different expressions of local culture.
People want to encounter something that gives them a sense of that particular country.
Graniph operates under the concept of being a pop culture select shop. We work primarily with Japanese IP, ranging from very well known properties to our own original IP, and we develop products using characters and creative works that have emerged from Japanese culture.
What is particularly important is that we do not simply present those characters as entertainment content. We translate them into lifestyle products that people can actually use in their everyday lives.
I think that combination is quite unusual internationally.
When you look at the individual characters and works we handle, many of them originate from cultural contexts that are very distinctive to Japan.
For example, we are currently collaborating with Shigeru Mizuki. His works and characters come from a very distinctive aspect of Japanese culture. There is something extremely original and culturally specific about that creative world.
Graniph takes that kind of work and develops it into products that people can use as part of their everyday lifestyle.
I believe this can be particularly interesting for international visitors because they may encounter products here that they cannot easily find in their own countries.
There are things that people may only discover because they have actually traveled to Japan, entered one of our stores and encountered them directly. In some cases, these are products they would not normally see or be able to purchase at home.
That is the kind of opportunity I would like us to provide.
For inbound visitors, Graniph can become a place where they discover Japanese pop culture through products that are not simply souvenirs, but things they can actually incorporate into their own lives after returning home.
They can encounter a character or creative world that is distinctively Japanese, discover it through Graniph and then continue living with that product in their everyday life.
I think that is one of the unique experiences we can offer international visitors.
The inbound opportunity is already visible in the performance of some of Graniph’s major locations. You mentioned that the Graniph Tokyo store and the Fukuoka store are currently among the company’s strongest stores, with each generating approximately 450 million yen in sales. At the same time, the international customer base appears remarkably diverse, including visitors from China, Taiwan and Korea, as well as Europe and North America. Rather than demand being concentrated around a single nationality, Graniph appears to be attracting people from many markets who share an interest in Japanese culture. What are you learning about the profile of the inbound Graniph customer, and as you develop this business further, is nationality actually less important than a consumer’s affinity with Japanese entertainment, characters and pop culture?
Among our flagship stores, the Graniph Tokyo store and the Graniph Fukuoka Tenjin store currently have the largest sales. Both are at approximately 450 million yen.
When we look at the inbound customers visiting these locations, they come from a very broad range of countries and regions.
We see customers from China and Taiwan, and there are also visitors from other parts of Asia, including Korea. At the same time, we receive many customers from Europe and North America.
The composition can change depending on the season and also depending on how customers are reaching us, so there are periods when visitors from certain countries may be more visible than at other times.
Overall, however, there is not one particular country that consistently represents the overwhelming majority of our inbound customers. The customer base is relatively broad and balanced across different countries.
For that reason, we are not specifically thinking that we need to increase customers from one particular country.
What is more important to us is whether people have a strong interest in Japanese culture and, more specifically, in Japanese entertainment and pop culture.
There are countries where we know that interest is particularly strong. Within Asia, for example, people in Taiwan and Thailand have a very high level of interest in Japanese culture, especially entertainment related culture.
But that interest is certainly not limited to Asia.
We also see it among people in France and in other European markets, and North America is another example where there is strong interest in Japanese entertainment and culture.
Japan has many different forms of culture, but within that broader cultural landscape there is a particular audience that is strongly interested in what we would describe as pop culture and entertainment culture.
I believe those people have a particularly strong affinity with Graniph.
Our concept is a pop culture select shop. We bring together many different expressions of pop culture within one retail environment.
Therefore, rather than defining our target primarily according to nationality, I think the more meaningful connection is shared interest. People who love Japanese pop culture, entertainment, characters and the creative worlds surrounding them are naturally people with whom Graniph has a strong affinity.
Those are the people we would particularly like to encourage to visit our stores.
Taiwan appears to have provided Graniph with an especially important test of whether the business model could travel successfully outside Japan. The commercial response significantly exceeded the company’s initial expectations, with the transcript indicating that one location achieved approximately 55 million yen in sales in a month, around 300 percent of the original plan. Yet perhaps the more strategically important discovery concerned what customers were actually buying. Before entering Taiwan, you expected internationally recognized collaboration IP to be the strongest driver because those properties already had established awareness. Instead, Graniph’s original characters, which had comparatively little recognition overseas, also performed extremely well and the overall sales composition was close to what you see in Japan. What did Taiwan teach you about the international potential of Graniph’s original IP, and how has that experience changed your confidence in taking the Graniph model into additional overseas markets?
A: Taiwan gave us a very important insight into the potential of our business outside Japan.
Before entering the Taiwanese market, we had a particular assumption about what would sell.
Graniph has products based on collaborations with well known IP, and at the same time we have our own original characters. Because the collaboration properties already have recognition and existing fan bases, our expectation was naturally that those famous collaboration IP products would sell particularly strongly overseas.
We assumed that our original characters would be in a more difficult position because, outside Japan, many consumers would have little or almost no previous awareness of them.
That was the expectation we had when we entered Taiwan.
However, the actual results were very interesting because the sales composition was almost the same as what we see in Japan.
Our original characters, despite being close to unknown in the overseas market, also sold extremely well in Taiwan. They became an important part of the sales rather than being secondary to the recognized collaboration IP.
For us, that was a significant discovery.
It showed us that consumers do not necessarily need to know an original character in advance in order to find it attractive.
They can encounter the character for the first time, respond to its design and originality, find something appealing in it and decide that they want the product.
That gave us a very important sense of confidence.
What we began to feel was that something distinctive that has emerged from Japanese culture can have an intuitive appeal to people overseas. The consumer may not know the character or its history beforehand, but they can still immediately feel attracted to the creative identity of the product.
That possibility is extremely important for Graniph because it suggests that our international opportunity is not limited to selling products based on famous collaboration IP.
Our own original IP can also become part of that international business.
The combination of collaboration IP and original IP is therefore very important to our model.
Taiwan demonstrated that the balance between those two categories can work overseas in a way that is surprisingly similar to Japan.
That experience has given us greater confidence in the potential of our original characters and in the possibility of taking this business model into other international markets.
We are continuing our expansion in Taiwan, including the development of additional stores, and at the same time we are beginning to consider opportunities beyond Taiwan.
Taiwan therefore offers one possible blueprint for Graniph’s international development, but expanding into additional countries will inevitably require different approaches depending on local conditions. In markets where the operating environment allows it, you have indicated a preference for directly managed stores because they give Graniph greater control over the brand and customer experience. In other markets, however, regulations, operating complexity or other local conditions may make a partnership more practical. You also mentioned that several Asian countries have already entered the evaluation stage, with members of the company traveling to different markets, examining potential properties and continuing to assess possible locations. How do you determine whether direct operation or a local partnership is the appropriate model, and what can you tell us at this stage about Graniph’s expansion plans beyond Taiwan?
Where the conditions allow us to operate a business ourselves, our preference is generally to manage the operation directly.
There are advantages to being able to operate directly because we can manage the business ourselves and maintain control over how the brand is presented.
However, we also understand that conditions are different in every country.
If the operating environment is particularly difficult, if there are significant regulations or if there are other circumstances that make direct operation challenging, then working with a local partner can also become an option.
So we do not believe that there is only one model that must be applied in every market.
Regarding expansion beyond Taiwan, we have already begun considering several countries in Asia.
At this point, however, those plans remain at the evaluation stage, so I cannot give you a specific announcement about which country will be next.
We are actually going to different countries and examining the markets directly.
When potential properties become available, we go and look at them. We are also continuing to travel to other countries to evaluate additional possibilities.
That direct observation is important to us.
We want to understand the actual local environment, see the locations ourselves and determine whether there are properties in places where we believe Graniph could operate successfully.
For markets beyond Taiwan, the decision will therefore depend on finding a good location and identifying an environment where we believe the probability of successfully opening and operating a store is high.
Several countries are already being considered, and we are actively looking at possibilities.
But we are still in the stage of visiting those markets, examining potential locations and determining where the conditions are right.
When we find a good location and an environment that makes sense for the business, that can become the basis for moving forward.
Graniph’s collaborations with recognized entertainment properties give the brand access to established creative worlds and existing fan communities, but the company’s original IP plays a fundamentally different strategic role because it allows Graniph to create characters, graphic identities and communities that belong directly to the brand. During our conversation, you clarified that original IP currently represents approximately 72 percent, compared with around 50 percent four years ago, demonstrating how significantly that part of the business has expanded. Taiwan has also shown that these original characters can attract consumers even when they have little previous awareness of them. Why is owning and developing original IP so important to Graniph’s long term business model, and how do you see the relationship between original characters and major licensed collaborations evolving as the company grows internationally?
From the perspective of a business operator, I believe having our own original IP is extremely important.
If our business depended only on IP owned by external content holders, there would naturally be limits to the originality that Graniph itself could express.
We can create excellent products through collaboration IP, and those collaborations are an important part of our business, but ultimately the underlying IP belongs to another content holder.
Having our own original IP gives us a different opportunity.
It allows us to express Graniph’s own originality and graphic identity more directly. It also gives us the ability to develop fans who are not simply fans of a particular collaboration property, but who become fans of Graniph and of the characters we have created ourselves.
I think that is extremely important for us as a business operator.
Our original IP currently represents approximately 72 percent. Four years ago, that share was around 50 percent, so it has increased considerably over that period.
That growth demonstrates how important original IP has become within the business.
At the same time, I do not think this means that we should choose one side and abandon the other.
Collaboration IP continues to be important. It connects Graniph with famous works and existing communities of fans, while our original IP allows us to create something that belongs more directly to Graniph and can develop its own fan base.
Taiwan has also given us greater confidence in this approach.
Before entering Taiwan, we assumed that famous collaboration IP would naturally be much stronger because consumers would already recognize those properties. Instead, we discovered that our original characters could also sell extremely well even though many customers had not previously known them.
That is very encouraging because it suggests that original IP can have appeal beyond Japan based on the strength and distinctiveness of the characters themselves.
For Graniph, developing original IP is therefore important both creatively and commercially.
It allows us to express our own identity, expand the number of people who become fans of Graniph itself and create intellectual property that can potentially grow with the company over time.
Graniph’s relationship with Tohokushinsha potentially introduces another important dimension to that IP strategy. An IP centered business can generate value through far more than physical merchandise alone. Intellectual property can potentially be developed through audiovisual production, distribution, merchandising and licensing, creating several different channels through which the same creative property can reach audiences and generate revenue. How do you see the potential synergies with Tohokushinsha, in terms of expanding the ways Graniph’s intellectual property can be developed and monetized? Could this relationship eventually create opportunities for Graniph’s original characters to move beyond merchandise into audiovisual or other forms of content?
More broadly, the relationship is particularly interesting when we think about the nature of an IP based business itself.
When you own IP, there are many different ways in which that property can be developed and monetized.
Merchandising is one of those methods, but it is not the only one.
An IP can potentially be developed into audiovisual content. There can also be revenue opportunities through distribution. Merchandising can continue to play an important role, and licensing creates another potential channel.
In other words, a single IP can have several different means through which it reaches consumers and generates value.
That is where I believe there can be significant synergy.
Graniph has built considerable experience around merchandising and around translating IP into products that people can incorporate into their everyday lives. By working with a company that has capabilities in other areas, the number of ways in which an IP can potentially be monetized increases.
That creates more possibilities around the IP itself.
So when we think about the relationship from the perspective of an IP business, I believe there are many areas in which synergy can be created.
The important point is that owning IP gives you several possible channels. There can be audiovisual development, distribution, merchandising and licensing.
Being able to connect those different possibilities can strengthen the overall value of the IP, and I believe that is one of the most important areas of potential synergy in this relationship.
Finally, Graniph today sits at the intersection of several different audiences and cultural movements. You are speaking to design conscious consumers who regard clothing and lifestyle products as forms of personal expression, fashion customers looking for originality, anime and entertainment fans with strong emotional connections to particular creative worlds, international visitors discovering Japanese pop culture, and retail and lifestyle industry decision makers observing how IP is reshaping consumer markets. At the same time, Graniph is combining established collaboration properties with a growing portfolio of original characters while taking the brand beyond Japan. If you had to bring all of those dimensions together and describe in one simple idea what Graniph represents, both as a company and as a brand, what would you most want an international audience to remember?
Our mission is “To give color to the world with a sense of playfulness.” That is the idea that expresses what Graniph wants to be.
I would say that we are a company that seeks to give color to the world with a sense of playfulness, and Graniph is the brand that embodies it.
For us, that sense of playfulness is something that can exist across all our activities as we unleash our creativity.
It can be expressed through our products, through the characters and IP we work with, through design and through the experiences people have when they encounter Graniph.
So when people ask what encompasses Graniph as both a company and a brand, I think our mission expresses it most clearly.
We want to give color to the world with a sense of playfulness.
For more information, visit their website at: https://graniph.co.jp/
