午夜剧场

After spending 17 years in the world of investment banking and investment funds, I jumped into the fashion industry three years ago.

In the financial industry, I had the opportunity to work with many companies through M&A and fundraising. It was a great learning experience to see firsthand how various business leaders grew their businesses and sometimes overcame difficulties. On the other hand, during that process, I never consciously considered becoming someone on the side of "creating an industry."

However, at one point, I met Yusuke Takahashi of CFCL—a designer who will surely leave his name in fashion history. As we began talking about building a global brand together, my life took a major turn. Until then, I had only been involved in the fashion industry as a client or an investment target, but through my meeting with him, I gained the perspective of creating things and expanding them globally as a business.

In the fashion industry, Paris Fashion Week, commonly known as "Paris Colle," is always considered the pinnacle of creativity and serves as a stage where brands from around the world present their new collections. Japan is one of the countries that produces the most brands for Paris Fashion Week. However, compared to Western brands, the business scale of each brand is small, and currently, only a limited number of companies possess the management foundation necessary for long-term development.

Furthermore, many of the Japanese companies that are influential in the world today were founded decades ago, and it is difficult to say that a new generation of companies is sufficiently growing. In the field of fashion—and more broadly, in industries centered on creativity—I hope to build businesses that can compete globally and pave the way for creative ideas to take flight in the world.

My career has certainly not gone exactly as planned. Nevertheless, the reason I am able to do such fulfilling work every day is thanks to the accumulation of unexpected encounters. From now on, nothing would make me happier than to plant as many seeds of wonderful coincidence as possible in the world and contribute to helping more creative talents bloom both inside and outside of Japan.

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.