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NEWS
Lexus opens luxury designer space in Tokyo
High concept shopping experience boosts prestige brandToyota’s luxury brand is offering much more than a showroom filled with expensive cars at the all-new INTERSECT BY LEXUS outlet in Tokyo’s ritzy Aoyama district.
It’s offering a newly conceived Lexus lifestyle that highlights café culture, art, fashion, literature, technology, trendy food and wine and even the odd car.
In fact, the only hint of actual product you will find anywhere in the three-storey building is the LF-CC concept car /news/2013/lexus-continues-high-end-coupe-tease-35904 that points to future styling cues for road-going and racing cars. Similar in concept to Toyota’s Rendez-vous store on the Champs Elysees in Paris, INTERSECT aims not to sell cars, but to boost the image of the Japanese luxury brand.
“We have built cars around quality for over 20 years but have not really focused on brand development,” said Lexus International president Kiyotaka Ise. “With Intersect, we will redefine the brand.”
At a media opening on August 23, one week before the outlet’s official opening, Ise commented that the company needed to solidify its brand image, especially among a younger crowd, while at the same time, appealing to a wider potential customer base, and INTERSECT was a major strategic step in that direction.
To achieve the desired aim, Lexus commissioned the founder of renowned interior design company Wonderwall, Masamichi Katayama, to create the first INTERSECT BY LEXUS outlet. Surrounded by exquisitely designed Prada, Cartier and Louis Vuitton boutiques, INTERSECT holds its own with a glass front design that cleverly incorporates a bamboo mesh design that takes its shape from the company’s signature spindle grille. The building features a cafe, a one-car showroom, a 3D wall art display made out of Lexus car parts, a shop and library lounge serving modern “Tokyo-themed” food and wine.
Mark Templin, Lexus International EVP, tells us that Katayama was inspired for this project in a very unique way.
“To put Katayama in the same mind set as [Toyota president and CEO] Akio Toyoda, he was invited into the president’s office in Toyota City to check out the paraphernalia and car culture that clutters up the boss’s office.”
Katayama says that he “envisaged a diverse space that could be used in different ways, along the lines of a progressive British gentleman’s club. It should be a stimulating place where the atmosphere would be defined by the people attending.”
He sees Intersect as a “third place,” after your home and office.
“I created it as a place where you can get away from your daily routine, where you can feel at home. And Lexus would, in a subtle way, be an integral part of that comfortable space.”
To give INTERSECT the depth of culture and character it needed, Lexus commissioned several companies to create a unique “Crafted by Lexus” line of products from Italian leather handbags to shoes, coffee cups to summer shorts, and even scarves, hats and USB sticks.
Wanting to deliver a unique, special experience to all visitors, Templin tells us that Lexus staff even scoured Tokyo’s cafes for the city’s best coffee. With origins in Norway, Fuglen Coffee was selected as delivering the best balance of flavour, aroma and acidity while the menu upstairs in the lounge encompasses some of Tokyo trendiest dishes and wines at prices that won’t break the bank.
The lounge also doubles as a library and features a large selection on luxury marques and racing books that would look at home in any enthusiast’s study. Branding is all about perception. And one look at the book titles on Aston Martin, Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini, Mercedes Benz SLS Gullwing, Maserati Zagato and even Fine Wine and Le Corbusier, reveals that Lexus is ‘imprinting’ its luxury pedigree on visitors and suggesting that the name Lexus can be spoken in the same sentence as all Mercedes and Porsche.
By creating INTERSECT, and focusing not on cars but on fashion, food, art, interior design and café culture, Lexus is elevating the emotional level of the brand above its “Japanese” status, and giving it a more international “borderless” flavour that fits with any luxurious environment. The concept has been well thought out and executed and should become a magnet for all walks of life from scruffy teenagers to high powered business men to musicians and designers.
Similar spaces are set to open in New York and Dubai, while “certain elements of the new initiative” will be incorporated into Lexus brand promotions in Australia.
Picture shows Akio Toyoda
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Written byPeter Lyon
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