Gushi X Hachimi

Client Interview: Insights

When we were interviewing Shinji, some of the insights that we got from him regarding the direction that he wants to take the business is that he wants to promote Gushi to be a cultural fusion of Toronto and Japan. He currently has two store locations and sometimes does pop-up locations at the Royal Ontario Museum for special events but he wants to franchise his business more. As we were doing the interview, we got a walk through of his restaurant operations and how his food was made.

Generative Toolkit: Mood board

Although we interviewed Shinji gather key insights that would gauge how we could help him, there were certain pieces of information that we felt would be more clearly communicated if we had visual involved. We arranged a mood board activity to get a better feel of what he is thinking. Going into doing this mood board exercise, my team and I were considering an idea of designing the takeout containers of his food to better promote the Gushi brand, but he really wanted to push for a way to create more meaningful interactions with his customers. So our packaging idea was scraped.

Bring The Element Of Storytelling

One of the key insights that we got from the mood board activity with Shinji, involved one of the products that he sold at his restaurant on the side. He has a spin off brand of dry spice bottles that is home made but is not very well advertised. What really intrigued us about the spices bottles was the story behind the name and the logo, “Hachimi”.  After hearing this story, my team and wanted to push forward to tell this story to Gushi’s customers.

Moving Forward

Conceptualizing

As a group, we began to ideate on different ways to communicate the story of Hachimi in a way that would attract more kinds of customers to Gushi.

Hachimi & Art

One of our first ideas to helping Gushi advertise their restaurant was to tap into art culture in Toronto. Taking the Hachimi spices bottles, we wanted to create a collaborative opportunity for different artist in the city.

Result

This would involve Shinji and his business create buzz on social media to have artist submit a design of the Hachimi spice bottle label in their style of art. Artist would be provided a white label template to work off of. The different Hachimi label designs would be released annually or seasonally in limited edition runs. Each label will have art print information such as edition number and series.

The Campaign: Hachimi Brand

According to Shinji, the name came from the famous Japanese story of a loyal Shiba Inu dog named Hachiko and the number eight in Japanese being “Hachi.” The number eight aspect of the name was more of an inside joke between friends referring to how these spices was the eighth secret spice from the “Seven wonder spices for a healthy life” that is only sold in Gushi.

Introducing "Hachiko"

Hachiko and his owner Hidesaburo Ueno, had a very close bond. Everyday when he went to work, Hachiko would follow him to the Shibuya subway entrance and see his owner off. Hachiko would then proceed to wait there patiently for the entire day until Ueno would come back from work at 3pm. There bond was so strong that nine years after Ueno death, Hachiko would still continue to wait for his owner at the station.

Platform

Pocket sized Hachimi spice bottles would be carried around with the customer to spice up their lives. This is also the stage where social media interaction and hashtag promotional strategy from 0.1 would be in the product lifecycle.

Gachapon Machine

What we learnt from out generative toolkit activity with Shinji is that there was a need for the generation of an unique memorable customer interaction. This would be a system to distribute products and creates an extra level of intrigue when purchasing Hachimi while contributing to brand loyalty and customer retention.

Results

The result of this was the creation of customized Gatchapon machine distribution stations as well as two refill options.

Distribution

Eye catching Gatachapon machines would be stationed at different locations not just at the physical Gushi stores. Customers would be able to purchase Hachimi bottles with randomly selected art label as a part of an effort to make the Hachimi line into a collectible commodity. We thought of taking inspiration from novel machines like souvenir penny presses and mini automated donut makers.

Usage

Pocket sized Hachimi spice bottles would be carried around with the customer to spice up their lives. This is also the stage where social media interaction and hashtag promotional strategy from 0.1 would be in the product lifecycle.

Loyalty Program

What we knew early on from interviewing Shinji is that customer feedback and interaction was greatly welcomed and encouraged. He already had a strong stamp card system in place. After the interaction with the prototype and further discussion we discovered his desire to create more of a membership system that would bolster his customer base loyalty.

Result

What we knew early on from interviewing Shinji is that customer feedback and interaction was greatly welcomed and encouraged. He already had a strong stamp card system in place. After the interaction with the prototype and further discussion we discovered his desire to create more of a membership system that would bolster his customer base loyalty.

Mosaic Of Bond

Creating instore installations using the customer stamp cards would be a great way to house customer feedback and responses. Taking inspiration from leaving wishes and dreams at Japanese shrines, Gushi can became a home to the multicultural Mosaic of people that makes Toronto distinct.

Feedback

A great way to add more meaning to the interaction is to have different prompts to get customers to comment on.