LONDON — Seiya Nakamura has spent 12 years building a global fashion business that reaches beyond wholesale.
His namesake company, Seiya Nakamura 2.24, handles distribution for brands including Jacquemus, Paloma Wool, Satisfy and Toteme, managing sales to more than 1,600 stores globally, while developing retail and consulting work alongside its sales and public relations services.
The company has opened a number of stores, pop-ups and an event and exhibition space, and it has more than 10 retail projects in the pipeline for the Japanese market for 2027.
Now Nakamura is taking that broader approach into China. The brand set up a Shanghai office and showroom in 2019 serving more than 30 accounts, including Courrèges, Isabel Marant, Jean Paul Gaultier, Amomento and Gimaguas, as well as Chinese brands such as Shushu/tong and Feng Chen Wang for overseas sales.
From October, the company is planning pop-ups for Paloma Wool within the historic former French concession and The Frankie Shop at the upscale shopping mall Réel near Jing’an Temple in Shanghai, WWD can exclusively reveal.
Paloma Wool spring 2027
Courtesy of Paloma Wool
The projects mark a step from supporting brands through sales and public relations toward 360-degree localized brand development and developing retail experiences in China.
Nakamura said the company wants to adapt its service to each label rather than transfer a single model from Japan.
“We don’t want to be just a copy-and-paste model that other companies have been doing. We really want to understand the purpose of the brand, to really tailor the services in each project that we are actually working on,” he said during an interview in Paris.
The China expansion builds on a multibrand retail strategy in Japan, where it has developed relationships with major retailers and shopping centers to negotiate better terms and locations.
The Seiya Nakamura showroom in Paris.
China, however, is not simply a larger version of Japan.
Nakamura said the company has worked in China through brand activations, but the pop-ups give it a more direct opportunity to test retail development there. The objective is to understand what works for each brand and how to build a local connection, rather than use the same format everywhere.
“We can really understand the purpose of the brand, to really tailor the services in each project. We are not, let’s say, a typical distributor. We are not typical sales agents. We are not a typical PR company, and we are not just a retail developer. For me, 2.24 is a platform,” he touted.
He sees purpose and customer engagement as essential to physical retail.
“It’s not just a store,” he said, adding that brands need more than a location to attract shoppers in a highly developed market like China. “Every brand, every store, if they don’t have a purpose, then they’re gone.” Customers, he added, want engagement and brands need to build community.
The hoarding of The Frankie Shop pop-up in Shanghai.
That emphasis on local understanding informed Nakamura’s view of China’s broader fashion opportunity.
He sees potential not only for international labels entering the country, but also for Chinese designers looking to grow. He pointed to the country’s supply chain, the international experience of many designers, and the scale of the domestic market.
The company’s approach also relies on being present in the markets where it works. Information may be easy to find, Nakamura said, but it cannot replace meeting people and experiencing a place directly. Case in point: for the past few years, the company hosted a cocktail reception at Mi Shang, the restaurant within Prada Rong Zhai, during Shanghai Fashion Week to engage with local heavyweights and global visitors.
Nakamura launched the company 12 years ago as a sales business because wholesale was a simpler way to start, but selling products was never the full plan.
“I always wanted to do brand development, which is like sales and PR, marketing, retail consulting,” Nakamura said. He sees those services as connected parts of a business, with the showroom serving as a platform threading through the value chain.
With three global offices and a 27,000- square-foot Paris showroom, the company has worked with around 80 brands and clients, with some seeking public relations, others consulting and others sales support. The level of involvement can vary by brand.
Nakamura told WWD earlier that wholesalers could add value by understanding the market and making a brand’s values tangible. He also argued that young labels need more than design talent to grow sustainably.
The T.T. Taiga Takahashi store in Kyoto, Japan.
Courtesy
That thinking is visible in 2.24’s work with T.T. Taiga Takahashi, the vintage-inspired label founded by the Central Saint Martins-trained designer, who passed away in 2022.
Nakamura recalled encouraging the designer just before the COVID-19 pandemic to build a business around his own interests and strengths, and focus on direct relationships with customers.
“I told him, ‘Let’s do retail. You don’t need to have maybe 200 people, 1,000 people, 1 million people. Let’s just talk to 20 people every day,’” Nakamura recalled.
The partnership developed into a Kyoto retail concept combining a store with a tea house. Nakamura said the space has become a destination and the tea house has been fully booked months in advance.
After Takahashi’s death, continuing the brand was difficult, but the team felt it was important to carry forward what the designer had built. In 2027, the brand will bring its tea house concept to Tokyo, and a full range of fashion and lifestyle offerings.
Seiya Nakamura
For Nakamura, that kind of work is part of brand development: understanding a designer, shaping a concept and connecting it to an experience customers can take part in. It is an equally meaningful role to placing collections with retailers, and one he hopes to extend through his company’s presence in China.
The company’s next phase, Nakamura said, is about yielding harvest from the soil it has nourished in the past 12 years, giving the brands the knowledge and attention needed to grow.
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