adidas Japan opens its first football-and-lifestyle store, betting the World Cup mood lasts in Shinjuku

adidas Japan has opened its first store built around blending football with streetwear, a two-floor, 388-square-metre shop a minute's walk from Shinjuku Station's central east exit, the company said. The store, built to a "Football Culture" concept, opened on 31 July.

The two floors split roughly along that line: 116 football items, from national-team and licensed club shirts to boots and accessories, sit alongside 219 pieces from adidas Originals, the lifestyle line built on the Superstar and Samba silhouettes, according to the company. Both floors carry men's and women's ranges. A customisation counter prints names and squad numbers onto shirts, including Japan national team kit and a number of club jerseys, and the opening stock includes limited-edition boots and collaboration pieces.

The pairing is the point. adidas has largely run football and lifestyle as separate retail propositions in Japan — performance kit through team stores and club tie-ins, Originals through its streetwear-led shops — and this is the first Japan store built to sell both from one till. The bet is straightforward: this summer's World Cup should have widened the pool of people willing to wear a football shirt, but converting that into repeat, everyday apparel spend needs a shop that doesn't read as a fan-goods counter. Putting the customisation service and the Originals wall in the same room is adidas trying to make one visit do both jobs.

A companion pop-up at the Sanagi Shinjuku event space, running to 9 August with a recreated European streetscape and photo spots, is doing the launch marketing. Whether the format earns a second location depends on whether the football side of the shop keeps selling once the World Cup recedes from the news cycle.