Erina Kobayashi has been waiting since the previous night for a Tokyo warehouse packed with nearly new designer goods to open.
The 23-year-old Japanese clerk already owns six or seven Vuitton handbags, but is so determined to buy another that she camped out overnight in a cardboard box to ensure she was first in line.
Japan's economy might be slumping but the flood of young women to this sale, organized a few weeks before end of the year festivities, demonstrates their insurmountable passion for foreign-brand handbags, wallets and other luxury goods.
PHOTO: AFP
At exactly 9:30am the doors of the warehouse open and the race begins.
A surge of young women, Erina leading the way, rush inside and gather as many trendy handbags as they can out of a huge mountain of Vuitton, Chanel, Coach or Guccis.
This warehouse event is organized twice a year by a group of 70 pawn shop owners in Tokyo to sell the authentic goods they have bought at a quarter or even a third of the original price.
"Beforehand items offered for sale, largely clothes or jewellery, had been pawned by men in return for credit," said Sasao Makoto, an official from the sale.
"But now we have lots of Vuitton or Chanel bags pawned by young women because they have received too many of the same version as presents or they have gone out of fashion," Makoto said.
In four days, the consortium of pawn shops will between six and seven thousand handbags out of 100.000 items generating a total turnover of between Japanese Yen 800 million and Japanese Yen 1 billion (US$6.6 million to US$8.3 million).
"It is my third trip here, I am looking for a particular Vuitton bag, varnished and brilliant," gushed Erina. "I am a bit of a collector," she admitted.
Erina is the perfect target customer for big fashion labels: she is single, lives with her parents and earns Japanese Yen 170,000 per month. She uses half of it to fund her taste for expensive accessories.
Tadako Mizuguchi, 58-years old, has been queuing since six in the morning to enter the warehouse in the hope of finding a Rolex watch.
"I go to Las Vegas for some fun four times a year with my 29-year-old daughter who is married and also loves designer labels," she said.
"The last time we went was in June when the yen was quite strong so we bought a Hermes handbag in our hotel," she boasted.
Mizoguchi's remark fits a theory held by Yoko Kawashima, a director of marketing research at Itochu Fashion System.
"The 25 and 30 year-olds spawned from Japan's second baby-boom often buy pricey items under the influence of their mother, typically aged 50 to 55, who were children of the original baby boom era [that occured just after World War II]," she said.
The other two generations who go crazy for brands are the 18-24 year-olds, and the reckless 30-35 year old "banana generation" who live one day to the next like the popular author Banana Yoshimoto, according to Kawashima.
"Since marriages in Japan started happening later and later the banana generation has not left their parents' home. These women have a good salary and a lot of disposable income with no rent and no food bills," she said.
Since many have money, there is a kind of general attraction to luxurious handbags "not limited to the bourgeois middle-classes like in France."
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