“This marks a turning-point in the world of personal technology. For around 30 years PCs in various forms have been people’s main computing devices. Indeed, they were the first machines truly to democratise computing power, boosting personal productivity and giving people access, via the internet, to a host of services from their homes and offices. Now the rise of smartphones and tablet computers threatens to erode the PC’s dominance, prompting talk that a “post-PC” era is finally dawning.”
“In five years we have opened 37 different guerrilla shops with nonfashion partners in unheard-of places or in parts of cities hitherto untrammeled. By partnering with nonfashion people, and requiring that we open only for one year, and limiting the amount of money spent on each shop, we brought a breath of fresh air to retail. And it generated enormous sales! We were selling only the stock we already had locked up in the warehouse anyway.”
“CDG is about finding new ways to do things, so not only with the collections of clothes, but also with our retail strategies, such as Dover Street Market, Trading Museum [a museum–retail store hybrid in Tokyo], Good Design Shop [CDG’s latest Tokyo venture, a collaboration with Japanese housewares designer Kenmei Nagaoka] and the guerrilla stores. The basic idea behind Dover Street Market was believing that by gathering various kinds of creation together, and giving free reign, the “fashion of now” would become chaotic, and within that chaos, through synergy and accident, each brand would shine more brightly and with a different power than when all alone.”
