Brands and their racism: do you care?
Just wondering if the overseas community cares about this. Maybe I care because I live in Tokyo and I'm slapped with it every single day, but I read something this morning while drinking my coffee that pissed me off sooo bad.
So, whether you guys know or not, in Japanese Lolita circles, foreigners are basically all thought to buy stuff only for the sake of reselling it. This is especially thought of for Chinese, but really for anybody. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a big red wall of text on a Yahoo! Japan or Mbok auction saying something along the lines of "I don't accept bids from foreigners because I don't believe in resale" or something like that.
Now...what really irks me is the number of Japanese people who buy stuff for resale in the first place. How many people go to the release of stuff, buy it up, then list it on Mbok for 3 times the value- Japanese people are not above this behavior AT ALL. And yet...for whatever reason foreigners get discriminated for it and Japanese people don't.
I personally think the problem lies with the brands (especially AP) making their stuff "too exclusive". I mean it wouldn't be hard to do what they did for Day Dream Carnival and accept "made to order" orders once something is sold out, not just once, but as an ongoing service until demand dies down. They don't make enough garments, that's why they get bought up and resold like concert tickets. The problem lies with them, THEY create it.
On that note, here's what I saw on the Tokyo blog for Angelic Pretty this morning, regarding the Holy Lantern series:
以前、元々スタンプカードをお持ちの海外のお客様で、違う名前や「持っていない」と虚
"In the past, there have been lots of foreigners who own point cards but lie and say they don't own one or who try to use a different name. Please stop this behavior".
First of all calling your customers liars is not the way to run a business. Second, there are plenty of opportunistic Japanese people who I'm SURE do the same thing (people pretend they don't have point cards so they can buy at several shops more than the limit of items), but singling out foreigners like that is disgusting. It makes me not want to shop there at all, and confirms that my feelings of not being welcomed when I go into the shop are founded. If Angelic Pretty doesn't want to deal with foreigners then they should close their other foreign shop, close their international orders, and put a big sign in front of the shop (like brothels do) saying NO FOREIGNERS. It would be a lot classier than a disgusting blog post like that. Just because some foreigners go in to resell stuff (and honestly AP creates that market themselves by not making enough garments in the first place...) doesn't mean all foreigners deserve to read an accusation like that on their blog. Instead of saying "foreigners" they should've simply said "customers", because plenty of Japanese people are guilty of the same thing.
Thoughts...?
So, whether you guys know or not, in Japanese Lolita circles, foreigners are basically all thought to buy stuff only for the sake of reselling it. This is especially thought of for Chinese, but really for anybody. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a big red wall of text on a Yahoo! Japan or Mbok auction saying something along the lines of "I don't accept bids from foreigners because I don't believe in resale" or something like that.
Now...what really irks me is the number of Japanese people who buy stuff for resale in the first place. How many people go to the release of stuff, buy it up, then list it on Mbok for 3 times the value- Japanese people are not above this behavior AT ALL. And yet...for whatever reason foreigners get discriminated for it and Japanese people don't.
I personally think the problem lies with the brands (especially AP) making their stuff "too exclusive". I mean it wouldn't be hard to do what they did for Day Dream Carnival and accept "made to order" orders once something is sold out, not just once, but as an ongoing service until demand dies down. They don't make enough garments, that's why they get bought up and resold like concert tickets. The problem lies with them, THEY create it.
On that note, here's what I saw on the Tokyo blog for Angelic Pretty this morning, regarding the Holy Lantern series:
以前、元々スタンプカードをお持ちの海外のお客様で、違う名前や「持っていない」と虚
"In the past, there have been lots of foreigners who own point cards but lie and say they don't own one or who try to use a different name. Please stop this behavior".
First of all calling your customers liars is not the way to run a business. Second, there are plenty of opportunistic Japanese people who I'm SURE do the same thing (people pretend they don't have point cards so they can buy at several shops more than the limit of items), but singling out foreigners like that is disgusting. It makes me not want to shop there at all, and confirms that my feelings of not being welcomed when I go into the shop are founded. If Angelic Pretty doesn't want to deal with foreigners then they should close their other foreign shop, close their international orders, and put a big sign in front of the shop (like brothels do) saying NO FOREIGNERS. It would be a lot classier than a disgusting blog post like that. Just because some foreigners go in to resell stuff (and honestly AP creates that market themselves by not making enough garments in the first place...) doesn't mean all foreigners deserve to read an accusation like that on their blog. Instead of saying "foreigners" they should've simply said "customers", because plenty of Japanese people are guilty of the same thing.
Thoughts...?