I think it's important to point out: There is large variation between different locations of Donki. As the article states, floor staff have a large say in what is sold at each location.
If you go to a location in a crowded tourist spot, then most of the customers are going to be tourists, and the selection of items will reflect that (more throw-away crap). At the Dotombori location in Osaka, for example, it felt like almost every customer there was speaking Chinese, and the staff also spoke Chinese.
Out in more rural areas, in my experience, people primarily shop there for discounted household items. The more bizarre items (and sex toys) seem limited to the urban locations. There is a degree of dichotomy between the two that is worth keeping in mind.
It really is one of the worst examples of a retailer anywhere. Shelf after shelf of semi-disposable, plastic tat, destined for landfill. Crap, processed food. Knock off cosmetics. Crowded, uncomfortable, unfriendly.
I've heard it compared to Walmart in the USA, and having visited both chains, I can see the resemblance, even if it's not obvious at the surface. Walmart's layouts are "big box", designed for automobile users who will carry their purchases to the parking lot. Donki's layouts are compact, for people who will take their purchases(most of them, anyway) onto public transit. Everything else about both stores is built around the premise of a broad selection of low-end goods at low prices.
They are not beautiful, but I am fascinated by these chains as a phenomenon, nonetheless.
One thing about Walmart is that whilst the prices are cheap, the quality is actually reasonable. They're certainly not as bad as say Flying Tiger or some of these purveyors of poorly crafted tat. Most t-shirts and bits and pieces which I've picked up at Walmart have been useful and lasted many years.
I've always referred to crap at discount stores as "future garbage." Sure, that's end-of-the-line for most things, but these discount stores peddle stuff with an exceptionally short useful life. Especially targeted towards kids, I feel! I guess it's easier for a parent to give in to a child's wants when the toy is only a buck.
Is a building kit with magnets 'crap' ?
Is a doll 'crap' ?
Is a hand powered fan 'crap' ?
Are colouring books 'crap' ?
I think a ton of small toys are tremendously fun, can help discover different mechanisms, and help grow a kid's mind. Limiting the variety and amount of toys can end up fine, but from the parent POV it's a bit sad really. Especially when by definition we can't anticipate what for any specific kid will be a hit and what won't.
Despite the best of intentions, fighting societal pressure is hard and has costs. We start advertising to children from birth as to the toys they want and it's difficult to make a 7-year-old understand that they are being manipulated into wanting a crappy landfill toy.
They don't need to understand it. It's not about children, who are not supposed to have everything they want in life anyways, just like regular humans.
I have seen enough kids that age to know that there is no need (or even possibility actually) for them to understand reasons behind boundaries, only the existence of said boundaries.
I also have myself been a kid who grew up with no gaming console in the age of Pokemon, who never indulged in kid music and derivates, who did not wear brands, who did not get to own a pet, and many other things my parents didn't allow, no matter how often I asked for them.
Is it that hard to admit one's own laxism that there's need to resort to badly aged sophisms ?
So, a very long way of saying you have no children. Wonder how I knew that? It shows. If you ever have a kid you’ll understand otherwise continue on being an overconfident asshole I guess
Well I'll ask my parents how they hold on denying me a kitten all these years then. Probably overconfident assholes. Or simply the surreal ability to get over kid whims and tantrums.
But keep convincing yourself that your kid has a dagger under your throat at the toy shop checkout and that people with more will power are assholes. I have been on the kid end at least even if not on the parent one. You seem to have been on neither.
Knowing what you really want, and choosing to buy only something that fulfills your use case, is the actual final optimization. Not buying crap is a useful side effect.
I guess it really depends on the actual location. The one I went to in Iwate was awesome, not multi-storey but a one-floor, jungle-like layout. Very good food section, bought a rug, travel neckpillow, and some crockery, I'm still using them now after months.
It's the one store/retailer I didn't find interesting at all while visiting Japan.
I have to confess that, in small doses (so as not to lose my sanity), I sort of enjoy the all-sorts-of-random-crap stores. I could spend unhealthy amounts of my time in those 100 Yen stores (or whatever they are called, I might be misremembering their names).
But Don Quijote was just garish and uncomfortable. It was even difficult to walk the aisles. Everything about it screamed to me "get out of here fast!". I can't understand how it is successful.
PS: while on the subject of these crap/budget stores, can someone from the US tell me if my hunch is right about the following? While visiting the US I discovered those Five Below stores (everything between $1 and $5) and I think I figured their trick: while the advertised price range is true, this doesn't mean what they sell is actually cheap! For example, I'm pretty sure I saw Hot Wheels cars at about $3 when everywhere else the same toys were near $1. Am I missing something?
All retailers play the same game though, with products priced as loss leaders to get traffic in the door in the hopes you don't notice you're paying 1.5x as much for anything else you grab while there.
The dollar stores take it to the next level (as you noticed). They thrive on the financial illiteracy of poor and rural demographics.
Look at the price of paper towels. Only $1, right? But it's half the size of the $1 rolls at Walmart.
Other stuff is just poor quality. $1 for a gallon of watered-down "bleach", versus $3 for the real deal elsewhere.
God help you if you swing a dollar store hammer around. Those dollar safety glasses will be about as effective as taping an actual dollar across your eyes.
Like a timeshare salesman or casino, they make you think you're winning to keep you coming back.
I would not be so casually disparaging of the intelligence of the poor. Sometimes you know its crap and more expensive in the long term but just don't have the funds to buy the better version. Poverty in the United States is an endless series of traps and gotchas to take advantage of people too weak to properly defend themselves.
Not to mention “rural”? You’re rural so you’re financially illiterate?? Might make sense to follow some farmers on twitter if you think rural means financially illiterate.
I wandered into quite a few last week mostly just looking at all the types of goods you just don't see in Australia. Bought a lot of weird flavoured Kit-Kats.
I live in NYC and this sounds exactly like what we call a '99 cent store'. They became super popular in the late 90's and 00's and sprang up everywhere. They are usually small mom and pop shops in local neighborhoods.
Crowded and uncomfortable? I never really felt it was that bad. I lived in Hyogo-ken and would sometimes stop in at one on my way home from university. It was a fun place to be, a sensory overload perhaps though you get used to it pretty quickly. I usually just bought snacks there, a halloween costume... It's like an upgraded dollar store.
it's not crowded for a typical japanese store and not crowded for a typical east asian megacity store. i've seen "supermarkets" that have just as much walking space. that's just the nature of the use of space in that part of the world.
also i feel like almost every city will have a business like this that sells everything under one roof that does very very well. japan itself has a lot of these kind of businesses - daiso, tokyu, etc. places like donki just happen to be the most well known of them all.
Mmm Daiso. Guess it depends on what you're looking for. I love it because it has all sorts of useful things you can repurpose as a maker that you wouldn't find anywhere else locally. (Or at least not cheaply.)
Large silicone mat for $1.50, Nice bamboo slab for $3, stainless steel rulers, fine-point dry erase markers, etc... There are some gems in there.
Daiso is a step up from Donki. I have a holder of Daiso pens and other stationary in front of me now which is decent quality and has lasted me a few years (including the holder!)
In Daiso anything without a price tag will be 100 yen plus consumption tax. Tags are only for things 200 yen or more. Thus you will only see tags saying 200, 300, or 500 yen.
How do you solve a shop being crowded (= successful basically) ?
The uncomfortable and usually unsafe part is something that could be worked on, but otherwise it has tremendous value for single purpose products or appliance where required quality level is extremely low (e.g. takoyaki sets).
It straightly goes against the romantic “buy it for life” idea, but I think asking people to care about every single stuff they buy is a tall order anyway.
is it just uncomfortable to your non-japanese sensabilities? lots of things are small and cramped in Japan. They rent 4.5 tatami apartments for example. Toilet stall doors often open in with zero room for a person between the door and toilet to get out (50% of the time I end up rubbing my pants along the toilet since there's no room ... yuck!)
I agree, it makes the dollar store in the USA feel like a high end retailer. They sell absolute junk. Things you would find in the garbage that other stores might throw out.
The problem isn't that they sell no useful items, they just sell so many items that even if a small percentage (it's not a small percentage) are destined for landfill then they're creating an astonishing amount of waste.
Eh. My parents have had their Billy bookshelves since they first came out.
I’ve had Ikea stuff for over ten years easily. I still work off of a solid pine Ikea kitchen table I got for $60 CAD about 11 years ago(I bought two! My parents are using one). It’s my home desk.
Some of it is worse than other stuff but I’ve never had the problem of having to junk it so soon as all that.
They've moved with them multiple times. 3 house moves in different cities/towns and many times throughout their current house!
Though, to be fair, they used to laminate them in real wood.
That said I've had some mac-tack $10 Ikea bookshelves (I bought 4!) for over 4 years and I've moved them once, taken them apart and put them back together multiple times with no problems . I store my entire mini library on those. All good.
If you're careless with the connectors and screws then you're going to have a bad time. Definitely watch how much torque you put into any action. I also wouldn't treat them as a jungle gym. They won't compare to a dovetailed hardwood shelf mounted to studs, but they hold up alright with care.
Interesting that you say it lasts such a short period of time. I've had the opposite experience. My billy bookcases have moved countries and lasted more than 20 years, as have my tables. I think the lack of glue in their construction (most of the items, can't speak for them all) actually makes them more durable than boutique furniture if you treat them with a reasonable amount of care.
Not all ikea is particle-board, and the point was that there isn't glue holding joins together. The weakest part of furniture is the joins but ikea pieces usually use screws or pegs.
Donki actually has plenty of useful stuff. The quality might be cheap but I lived in a mostly donki furnished apartment for 6 years. Bookshelves, kitchen table, lots of utensils, no issues. I've also bought lots of foodstuffs, some clothing, stationary, and lots of toiletries and cleaning supplies.
If you want a company that makes completely useless landfill stuff see Flying Tiger from Sweden. That store is nothing but trash and deserves your wrath far more than donki
I absolutely despise Flying Tiger and its array of absolutely useless one-time use non-recyclable plastic-glitter-trash and am perversely gladdened by its spread across Europe as it means my partner can no longer use it as a one-stop shop for last minute gifts, as the recipients now have a branch in their town so she'd be caught out.
As an aside, it's from Denmark, not Sweden - either/or would be surprising to me - my ignorant British perspective is that Scandies tend to be more Calvinistically-prudent and Gaia-centric and not beholden to landfill crap.
H&M, the global benchmark for disposable clothing, also hails from Sweden. And Ikea's cheaper particleboard furniture ranges are also pretty disposable.
I've heard the complaint but I can't help but wonder if that complaint is propagated by expensive clothing makers upset their over-priced clothing is not selling.
I've bought clothing from H&M and had zero problems with it. Same with Uniqlo, Zara, and other cheaper/cheapish clothing places.
I feel like there is a big difference between H&M and Flying Tiger. H&M actually sells useful items. Shirts, Pants, Jackets, Jeans, Suits. They all work. I haven't found them to be of poor quality.
Flying Tiger on the other hand seems to sell mostly useless stuff meant to give away at a white elephant gift exchange and then thrown in the trash.
As some economists will argue, being able to by clothing for less allows poorer people to buy clothing and allows all people to spend more money somewhere else (food, shelter, education, entertainment, ...) so it's hard for me to see how H&M is hurting things but maybe I don't have all the facts. I know they do have a recycling program. I suppose you could argue that's part of the problem though.
> They all work. I haven't found them to be of poor quality.
It does works but the quality control is questionable. You will often find poorly done and finished sewing or pieces which are cut approximately. They also often use the cheapest fabric they can get away with. It leads to clothes which really don't age well.
Where I agree with you is that a lot of brands which present themselves as mid range actually don't do much better and are just selling over-priced pieces.
There's a difference between the junk that many countries pay Chinese factories to make and ship, which is garbage almost immediately upon manufacture, and particle board furniture and fast fashion clothing which, while lower quality, is still useful and in the common case gets as much use as the expensive stuff. IKEA is disposable but not quickly disposed of. Considering it uses less and cheaper material, and ships efficiently as flat pack, it's an ecologically sound alternative to heirloom furniture.
Its only ecologically sound if you throw away your heirloom furniture after 10 years just like you have to throw away the IKEA furniture. If you still use the same table your great-great grandma used the heirloom furniture is better ecologically.
Considering the amount of glues and plastic required to make IKEA furniture I'm not convinced even at the 10 year mark IKEA is better ecologically, but that is a complex question that I wouldn't know how to analyse (if anyone tries I expect a few years latter someone will find a significant factor they didn't account for, and again a few years latter...)
Arguably, hiring a moving truck just to ship my grandmother's dining table across the country every 2-3 years is less ecologically sound than buying a flatpack from Ikea when I arrive and selling the furniture used when I'm ready to leave.
Why? I don't have that much stuff to begin with, and I try to buy used when I arrive in a new place. The only added cost is the plane ticket, and I probably fly less than the average vacationer.
Even if you're right, moving frequently is a fact of life for young people who grew up away from the west/east costs. It's the only way for young people who grew up in the midwest to launch a successful career.
Hometown --> college --> internships --> back to college --> grad school --> first job --> second job --> etc.
anyone with particle board furniture that's breaking: get yourself a bottle of polyurethane glue. a dab at the seams and breaking bits and You can easily turn a 3 year lifespan yfurniture into a 10 year life furniture.... assuming you never need to take it apart again.
I've been in a few and also assume it's deliberate.
To be honest, I get a huge kick out of funky/odd/slightly off translations. I know they're trying their best and I seriously appreciate that, but I still find it humorous when it's really bad, just as I expect them to find humor in me goofing up trying to say something in Japanese.
On the really bad note, I saw what I assume to be donation box on the memorial to mobilized children in Hiroshima that said 'Please Help Yourself'. I had to do a second read of that and it conjured up a mental image of some American digging around in the box for spare change to the sheer horror of Japanese onlookers.
But who knows, maybe that was the proper translation and it was for the poor who couldn't quite make the change they needed for something essential. But when I see a box of money bolted to a memorial, I generally assume it's either for the people being memorialized or upkeep of the memorial.
Other interesting translations from my Japan vacation:
I visited a Don Quijote for my first night in Japan. I went for a stroll at 3am as I was jetlagged. I stumbled upon one Don Quijote. The music was playing very loud among the empty aisles. I stayed there for a while, completely bemused by the sheer level of noise and lighting.
It isn't literally a continuous loop, not in all locations at least. The ones I visited when I was touring last year were playing a more typical department store tracklist, but I did hear the theme at least once.
To me they are like a bizarre Japanese take on a Wal-Mart. Prices are cheap, the aisles are narrow, there's tons of Chinese-made crap, but they also have really inexpensive food too (steaks that are gigantic by Japanese standards....I think mostly imported American meat, pumped full of hormones and whatnot).
I like to go there at 2am (no traffic = short travel time) to buy food, or maybe some small tools (socket wrenches, etc..) that I need while working on my cars at night or even radiator fluid. You can also go earlier in the evening (around 7-9pm) and scope out the makeup section, try some "nanpa" with the kabakura girls before they head to work.
Between Aeon MaxValu (supermarket), DonQ, and Family Mart convenience stores, you have access to easily 90% of the consumable products you might need in a typical month, and available 24/7. Clean stores with all-hours convenience like this are one of the highlights of living in Japan compared to some other places in Asia. Ttry buying batteries at 2am in Hanoi...
I've been witnessing a new store being built very near to our house.
A typhoon tore away the sign of a pachinko place near us (it hit a nearby building), and apparently instead of fixing their store they decided to close it down and sell the building to Don Quijote.
Seems like a good match for them, as the pachinko place is huge, with 6 wide floors that used to be gambling machines shoulder-to-shoulder, but I guess will now be tightly packed cheap goods instead.
Everyone here is excited by it, as we have no interesting stores otherwise nearby. The first I heard the rumors was from wife's barber, and they quickly spread and other random people started telling me about the new store.
Don Quixote is infamous. Murakami (the other one) highlighted it in his long essay on Japan and pop culture, 'Earth in My Window', as emblematic of post-WWII Japanese consumerism: https://www.gwern.net/docs/eva/2005-murakami
I had the best time in this store in Ikebukuro. It is a bit trashy, but what a rats-nest of wierd. Bought a pikachu makeup/cleanser face mask for somebody, they wore it for christmas and looked like a zombie...
The traditional 100yen shoppe is more my speed, but this place is where you need to be, if its random gift time, as long as neck-pillows for airlines and trains, in the shape of a crotch with red undies are your idea of a random gift.
I've been into these shops a couple of times when traveling in Japan, and while I mostly didn't end up buying much, they're definitely a lot of fun to browse.
I like Muji, I like Daiso (branded as Living Plaza here, and which I always describe to people as "what if Muji did a pound shop?") and I'm looking forward to the first Don Quijote store opening in Hong Kong later this year!
While not explicit, I do get the sense that they are trying to glamorize these atrocious stores. If you are American just imagine a 6 story "Big Lots!" that happens to also sell designer bags and sex toys.
Those stores are a mess inside and I can only imagine make a profit because they sell everything. In central Tokyo, most of them are just tourist traps at this point.
They’re certainly not tourist traps; they’re a staple for people living in central Tokyo.
Many years ago I lived in Shibuya and Donki was the only place I could get a lot of basic supplies, including even groceries, at a reasonable price. Now I live somewhere else in central Tokyo and don’t go nearly as often thanks to Amazon, but it’s still the only place to buy a lot of items.
I went to the Akihabara location while in Tokyo, mostly to see the gamers. Went up 6 escalators and was not disappointed by the intensity of local gaming going on up there. There were dudes who’d brought their own electric fans and towels to keep them comfortable while they DDR’d the night away.
Perhaps not many years ago, but they are certainly full of tourists now. Check out the Shibuya or Roppongi Donki on any given day, and the number of tourists is far greater than that of locals -- same with Daiso, recently.
Also my comment doesn't preclude Donki having some daily necessities. As for calling it a "staple" for central Tokyo, that's a bit of a stretch. If you said outside of the 23 wards, then I would agree.
You're taking the two places that have the most tourists and lowest residential concentration in Tokyo. Obviously it's going to be mostly tourists in the shop.
Go see a Donki in a residential neighborhood and it'll be full of locals. I live in Shirokane, an upscale highly residential neighborhood off of Meguro station, and even if it's reputed as one of the richest place in Tokyo there is a Donki and it's packed with local families shopping.
Ditto Nakameguro, a tony neighborhood with both lots of tourists and a dense residential population. The local store is, by casual observation, mostly people from the neighborhood buying shampoo, coffee, liquor, and sundries.
Fair enough. I also live in a upscale residential area of Minato (Azabu Juban). I'm actually considering a move to Shirokane, as Juban is getting a bit too crowded.
I admit I am biased in that my nearest Donki is the Roppongi location.
This makes me feel good about my life's goal of starting a parody store of Linens 'n Things called Batteries and Shit that just sells random crap that doesn't really go together.
As a Japanese individual, Donki is the best store if you wanted to do midnight disappearing act.
Some typical bikes, junky foods and meat and vegetables to energize, a lot of liquor, battery for smartphones, some condoms for emergency, hangers and clothes to live in the new place, travel luggage, most general amenities, lightbulbs, contact lenses, bandage, medicines, and some funny stuffs ... they are all there!
You can also buy an adorable doll named DonPen there during the act.
Of course I have it.
"Store managers control merchandising, negotiating prices directly with suppliers"
This sounds like it ought to make scaling to different countries difficult. If you don't have a unique supply chain, then what advantage do you have over a mom and pop discount store?
Uniqlo, Muji, and Daiso (which is less well known but has quite a few US stores) seem to source centrally, just like other global retailers.
> If you don't have a unique supply chain, then what advantage do you have over a mom and pop discount store?
In the article it mentioned those managers dictate what gets on the shelf and mention how they chase after surprise hit (wax nose hair). It seems they're more agile than their competitors and let managers living in those area decides what products to stock.
Whilst possibly overwhelming or discomforting, walking through Donki gives an honest display of consumerism, and manages to make it exciting. Like Walmart, it's essentially an incredible variety of stuff jumbled together. But Walmart is an Amazon warehouse in which the customers do the picking. It's systematic and depressing, and one feels like they might be in an item in a production line. Donki is chaotic, musical and risqué. It's not uncommon to see well-dressed couples on dates swinging tipsily through, because it's somehow conducive to romance, or at the very least, not a very shameful place to be seen. A store will have a variety of atmospheres, not all of them pleasant, but I much prefer the honesty of the chaos to the censored productions of most consumer 'experiences'.
It just looks like a regular Chinese bazaar store except Japanese. Do they sell pens that dries out after a few weeks? USB cables that starts glitching after two weeks? Shoes that fall apart after a few days?
Pretty much, but Donki's main selling point is the incredible array of completely off-the-wall shit in no discernible order. For example, this pic has rubber chickens, an exploding hat, a helium dispenser for making your voice squeaky, gorilla plushies, retro gaming consoles, sexy maid costumes, a giant robot toy, a RC helicopter and a waffle iron:
I think they intentionally put these in nightlife districts, so they can be a sort of drunk man's IKEA where you always end up buying more than you planned to.
>I think they intentionally put these in nightlife districts, so they can be a sort of drunk man's IKEA where you always end up buying more than you planned to.
The chain is based in China, but one of Miniso's founders is actually Japanese.
I recently ran into a "Yubiso" in KL, meaning there's now a Malaysian clone of a Chinese clone of Japanese stores (Miniso is basically Uniqlo and Muji mashed together).
Reminds me of Christmas Tree Shops.[0] Small isles, home goods from China but unlike the big box stores it's not quite one stop shopping for the junk you need.
The Hawaii stores were taken over from Daiei (Japanese supermarket chain) and I don't think they've changed that much, still a different animal from the Japanese Donki stores I've been to. In comparison they've opened a couple Daisos in Hawaii recently and the goods are identical to what you find in any Daiso in Japan.
I had a coworker once bring back everyone some decorated chopsticks from Daiso after a trip to Japan. We worked across the street from a Daiso that got the same chopsticks in stock about a week later.
> Floor staff should have near-total autonomy to decide what to sell. Store managers control merchandising, negotiating prices directly with suppliers, and decide how to change sales displays...
Does that scale? What's the point of a mega-corp at that point, beyond providing capital to start a local store?
For Australians, I'd compare this place to a red dot store, just a little larger. I wasn't really that impressed by it, didn't seem like it's doing anything better than other stores. Maybe it's unique in Japan because other stores are so organised and neat.
My impression was that in Japan, retail establishments are typically expected to be elegant, cute, neat, etc. How did Don Quijote become so popular while going so heavily against this trend?
If you go to an supermarket or any department store in japan you will see that’s not the case. Maybe the touristy stores are neat (that’s the case everywhere) but the stores people use in their daily lives are more or less just filled with stuff from top to bottom.
Somehow I feel even the basic 7/11 in Japan is more elegant / neat compared to the 7/11 in the US. I don't know, maybe it's just some subconscious bias on my part.
I don’t know how it is in america but coming from the northern europe for me most of the stores here are borderline messy and hard to navigate even if i know the language.
Further marching towards the dystopian future where a certain class of people can only afford cheap easily broken trash that creates landfills the size of the himalyas
Bloomberg is paywalled so I wasn’t able to read much of the linked article; Reuters, however, wrote about Don Quixote in August 2018 [0].
Interesting retailing concept. I do wonder if Japanese consumers will ever tire of the novelty. Then again, 29 years of growth might suggest otherwise.
sounds like an alternative to the 'flying tiger' stores here. with more sex toys. they're ok to walk through with friends and chase them with unicorn dolls and the like. but i never bought a thing there.
If you go to a location in a crowded tourist spot, then most of the customers are going to be tourists, and the selection of items will reflect that (more throw-away crap). At the Dotombori location in Osaka, for example, it felt like almost every customer there was speaking Chinese, and the staff also spoke Chinese.
Out in more rural areas, in my experience, people primarily shop there for discounted household items. The more bizarre items (and sex toys) seem limited to the urban locations. There is a degree of dichotomy between the two that is worth keeping in mind.