Onitsuka Tiger opens Japan's second-largest store, a Nagoya Station flagship
Onitsuka Tiger has opened a two-floor flagship in front of Nagoya Station, ASICS said, its second-largest store in Japan and a fast follow to July's Shinjuku flagship as the heritage brand builds out beyond Tokyo.
Onitsuka Tiger opened a two-floor flagship store in front of JR Nagoya Station on 7 August, ASICS Corporation said in a release — the heritage sportswear brand's second-largest store by floor area in Japan, opening barely a month after the Shinjuku flagship it called the largest Onitsuka Tiger store in the world.
The Nagoya store, at 1-2F, 4-8-18 Meieki in Nakamura-ku, brings together all three of the brand's collections under one roof: Heritage, its reissued archive designs; Contemporary, drawn from its Milan Fashion Week runway shows; and Formality, its dress-shoe line, ASICS said. The Italian architecture firm Studio Dini Cataldi designed the interior, pairing terrazzo and steel with luminous ceiling boxes on the ground floor that the company said take their cue from traditional Japanese andon lanterns, while the upper floor is finished in Rosso Lepanto marble for a more intimate setting.
ASICS positioned the store as Onitsuka Tiger's anchor for the Tokai and Chubu region, drawing on shoppers from Aichi, Gifu, Mie and Shizuoka prefectures rather than competing directly with the Tokyo flagship for the same customer.
Opening a second flagship this large this soon after Shinjuku's is a statement about where Onitsuka Tiger thinks its growth now sits — not just in Tokyo's tourist-heavy centre, but in the regional hub cities that feed it. A store built to anchor four prefectures' worth of demand is a bet that the brand's heritage appeal now travels well beyond the capital, and a marker to watch as it keeps expanding its physical footprint in Japan.