BEAMS opens its first sports concept store, at Tokyo's redeveloped Meiji Park
BEAMS is opening its first dedicated sports concept store at Tokyo's Meiji Park on October 12, bringing a UK running label to Japan for the first time — a format bet, on one of the capital's most closely watched redeveloped sites, from one of the country's largest select-shop groups.
BEAMS said it will open its first sports-focused concept store, BEAMS SPORTS, on October 12 at Tokyo's Meiji Park, according to a release dated October 2. The opening falls on Health and Sports Day, a national holiday, and brings UK running label R.A.D RUNNING into Japan for the first time.
The store occupies the ground floor of Building A at Meiji Park in Shinjuku ward, near the National Stadium, and opens daily from 10am to 7pm, the company said. Its focus categories are running, trail running and basketball, and the line-up also includes a Winiche & Co. collaboration with basketball apparel brand AKTR, alongside a selection of 1990s vintage sports graphic T-shirts. BEAMS SPORTS will carry eight store-exclusive original pieces, including T-shirts, sweatpants and socks.
The shop adjoins a BEAMS-run cafe, Parklet Meiji Park, serving freshly baked bread, baked sweets, specialty coffee and ice cream from 9am to 7pm, and the company plans a launch party on opening day from 6pm to 9pm, the release said.
It is BEAMS's first store built entirely around sport, rather than sport folded into a general select-shop edit — a format bet as much as a merchandising one, and one it is making on a site that carries its own weight: Meiji Park's redevelopment, tied to the National Stadium precinct, is among the most closely watched new retail addresses in central Tokyo. A UK running brand's Japan debut and a bakery-cafe attached to a sportswear floor both point the same way: BEAMS is betting that athletic retail now needs its own destination and its own reason to linger, not just a rail inside a bigger store.
Whether BEAMS SPORTS becomes a format it rolls out elsewhere, or stays tied to this one site, will depend on whether Meiji Park's redevelopment delivers the everyday footfall a holiday opening cannot show on its own.