Yohji Files For Bankruptcy Protection, Finds Investor

[Alesha]

sad..
$76m debt is a huge mountain though

Depends on your total annual revenue and EDITDA.

But as one wise and rather rich man said: "Bankruptcy is the process of taking the money out of your jacket, putting in your pants and giving off the jacket"

So I don't think YY is gone. He is just solving a few troublesome issues without dipping into personal assets.

[Fade to Black]

yeah YY the man himself is still technically and objectively here with us. just not the standard of design/quality integrity to his clothing that his fans are used to, even if the flagship sticks around as do the collections season in season out. It's been going downhill for a while.

[mw000]

Valid points in the above few posts since my last - it's all relative...and I'm not sure how much this factors into the entire picture, but I also wonder if the downfall of Yohji's business has to take into consideration his refusal to cut corners like so many other big(ger) fashion entities have. The guy was really pushing hard with top of the line fabrics and utilizing maximum fabric surface area for his pieces (and i don't just mean in terms of the volume of a piece - with the way some of his stuff is constructed it really is requiring more handwork and material). Except he didn't have a trademark global accessories branding strategy to keep him afloat - i get the sense high end "clothes" alone are a loss everywhere. So I'd assert that it's not so much YY wasn't a high end fashion house but rather he wasn't linked in any way to a much larger conglomerate with diversified revenue branches at disposal to keep the machine running.

I think there are some great points in here. It seems like for these fashion houses to become major international players and to actually move units they have to "sell out" artistically and creatively by making the flashy crap that appeals to the general masses.

That is why companies like J. Lindeberg are doing fine. Many / most of their designs are flashy, tacky and simple but this appeals to a very large demographic of younger people who will mindlessly buy due to marketing. This is smart in a business sense to keep the "bread and butter" coming in to keep the company afloat to pursue other lines.

It is great and honourable that YY kept true to his passion and wanted to push the boundaries in terms of quality, fit and fabrics. It is unfortunate that nowadays quality, details and artistic integrity in design often do not sell.

Instead the media puts attention towards the newest, shiniest and most ostentatious junk that is now "IN" and this is what people want.

It is very sad, but it seems to be an accepted fact that you must "sell out" artistically and creatively in order to make the numbers work.

[Faust]

I don't think you must, really. Again, it's all a matter of scale. Some want to make a living, others want to be multi-millionaires.

[Johnny]

yes you don't have to sell out to make the numbers work but you probably do if you want to become a "major international player". there is a contradiction inherent in becoming popular on a worldwide scale and have some sense of integrity that allows you to cater to a niche market. i don't see the problem in this. no one owes anyone a living. if people don't like his product enough, he has to cut his cloth, so to speak, accordingly. sorry, this is all very obvious.

[jcotteri]

If you're going to talk about 'large' fashion houses we should consider that size is relative and compared to YY inc, houses such as Marc Jacobs, Lanvin, Dior have easily more than five times the turnover. A conglomerate like LVMH has 250 times more. Sometimes it's easy to forget just how marginal some of the designers we love are.

sometimes we do forget that they aren't a "big player" but do you really believe that YY was marginal? I don't think I agree with that.

or who are you referring too? Paul Harnden?

[Avantster]

sometimes we do forget that they aren't a "big player" but do you really believe that YY was marginal? I don't think I agree with that.

Well, let's have a look.

mar·gin·al (mär'jə-nəl)
adj.

1. Of, relating to, located at, or constituting a margin, a border, or an edge, the point at which a surface terminates: Yohji works on the edge of fashion.

2. Being adjacent geographically: "Oh, they've moved the Yohji flagship, it's at Rue Cambon marginal to Chanel."

3. Written or printed in the margin of a book: see Yohji Yamamoto: Talking to Myself.

4. Barely within a lower standard or limit of quality: see hot pink fire crotch tiger boxers in WTF thread.

5. Economics

1. Having to do with enterprises that produce goods or are capable of producing goods at a rate that barely covers production costs: unfortunately, see thread title.

2. Relating to commodities thus manufactured and sold: visit flagship stores for aforementioned commodities.

6. Psychology Relating to or located at the fringe of consciousness: When I tried on that Yamamoto jacket, I experienced a sudden feeling of knowing, a sense of familiarity. What secret had he discovered, this Yamamoto?

n. One that is considered to be at a lower or outer limit, as of social acceptability: "Hey, look at that idiot, what the hell is he wearing? Is he trying to wear some big black bathrobe as outerwear?!?" Also see Strangers and their Reactions thread.

So yes, I would say marginal is an appropriate word.

[jcotteri]

haha....

but before we knew of this imminent closure or bankruptcy, I mean say in late 07 early 08.

did you think his profit line was marginal?

I certainly didn't expect to see this happen, I know compared to say CDSA, LVMH or PPR, YY is a small company but I didn't see his company barely scraping by..

I saw the company as being quite successful..

[Avantster]

I was a little surprised and saddened by the bankruptcy too, but to be sure it was not out of left field. All one really needed to do was to look at the stores - have you ever seen his flagships busy?
YY inc is run more like a family business than anything else, and as a Japanese company is by culture heavily reliant upon the head, obviously Yohji, for direction - in the last few years his health apparently wasn't so great. The company itself has undergone a lot of change in the last few years. We saw a serious downsizing in permanent staff for marketing and press in Europe, and the exodus of the brilliant Koji Nagano (head of design at Y's who worked at YY for 18 years) as well as the CEO at the time. So internally they were definitely going through some challenging times.

[jcotteri]

Yes I know.. I have never seen the flagstore busy but I have only been to one, in japan. I would love to have seen Paris... I was looking forward to touching every piece in the store, especially womenswear.

I guess there was always hints, but as I saw things start to fall apart I was still surprised and quite saddened, then only waiting for this bankruptcy.

I still hope to be able to go back and try and buy some beautiful garments as I wasn't really impressed earlier this year... Never was one for the cryllic accents. It was the first time I have been able to see a decent amount of his work on the rack.

Yohji was my first real introduction to this lovely world.

[lowrey]

They opened huge stores in too many big cities and small cities (London OK but Antwerp wtf?!) without the advertising/sales to support them.

Look at CDG, a much MUCH bigger brand but they only have what? A few flagship stores and the rest are all pop ups which open and close in months to avoid long term fixed contracts. Even the fixed stores usually sell a host of other brands to appeal to a wider customer base and get more asses through the door. In contrast, I don't think I've ever been in a Y store with more customers than staff...

You're a bit off here.

as far as I know, Yohji has 5 flagships - tokyo, london, paris, new york, antwerp. Comme has 7, I think (tokyo, osaka, fukuoka, kyoto, HK, paris, nyc). if you count Corso Como and DSM in Tokyo, which are actually more like CDG boutiques with not much other labels like DSM London, that makes 9 boutiques. then theres DSM London, Perfumes in Paris, several pop up / guerilla stores... so I'd say they are definately ahead in that front.

I do agree that several extremely expensive store location with not enough revenue to match might've been what has nailed YY, but lets try to stick to a bit more facts here..

In contrast, YY tried to do the same thing but it wasn't successful. Look at the Y-3 Adidas label, those things are skankier than skank.

whether Y-3 is skanky or not, I'm pretty certain it has been a succesful venture.

[chameleon]

I have to admit that I love how quiet are his shops...

Yeah, come to think of (in regards to avanster's point as well), whenever I went to his Aoyama store - more than several times since I lived in tokyo at the time - I was always alone save for like one time when there was one other customer there as well. Didn't reflect upon this at the time (probably too obsessed with being surrounded by so much of it, and just touching everything) but it does seem odd in retrospect.

[jcotteri]

I was actually with more people at the Shinjuku Isetan ministore/space than the flagstore..

[agentred]

You're a bit off here.

as far as I know, Yohji has 5 flagships - tokyo, london, paris, new york, antwerp. Comme has 7, I think (tokyo, osaka, fukuoka, kyoto, HK, paris, nyc). if you count Corso Como and DSM in Tokyo, which are actually more like CDG boutiques with not much other labels like DSM London, that makes 9 boutiques. then theres DSM London, Perfumes in Paris, several pop up / guerilla stores... so I'd say they are definately ahead in that front.

I do agree that several extremely expensive store location with not enough revenue to match might've been what has nailed YY, but lets try to stick to a bit more facts here..

whether Y-3 is skanky or not, I'm pretty certain it has been a succesful venture.

No doubt that Y-3 was successful, it's an example that YY likes to make money as much as any other designer so people saying that CDG sold out but YY didn't was unfair.

My mistake for not counting YY stores, but according to the website he has two in New York, two in Paris and several (4?) in Japan, totalling 10 stores selling nothing but YY. In contrast, CDG's DSM stores help defray fixed costs by selling other brands = smart business sense.

Apologies if I got carried away, but I think we both agree on the fundamentals.

[lowrey]

you're right about the multiple locations, did not count those, though I think the other jp locations are within department stores. but anyway, both labels certainly have their fair share of retail space