“Majerca”, a shop selling specially-selected products

Editorial department

Introduction

On a corner of a shopping street in Tokyo’s Kichijoji district is “Majerca”, a shop selling specially-selected products made by people with disabilities. We talked with Mitsuhiro Fujimoto, a representative of Majerca, about their work.

My encounter with attractive, independently-developed products made at welfare work centres

Majerca is a shop dealing in a variety of specially-selected, independently-developed products made at welfare work centres (hereinafter, “work centres”) around the country.

It was around ten years ago that I encountered independently-developed products made at work centres. At the time, while working as a buyer, I came across some attractive, fantastic miscellaneous items quite by chance. I learned afterwards that these items were made by people with disabilities. This prompted me to look into products developed independently at work centres, and I found out that such products are being made at work centres in each region of the country. However, at that time, independently-developed items made at work centres were mainly sold at bazaars or welfare shops and bought by disabled people themselves or people related to them, such as their families and acquaintances; there were almost no opportunities to connect with other people.

Starting from a desire for more people to learn about these attractive products, I decided to open Majerca, a shop selling specially-selected items made by people with disabilities nationwide. This was in 2011.

Activities to promote “welfare trade”

At Majerca, we evaluate the value of these independently-developed items fairly, and set appropriate prices worthy of these items when selling them. If the items sell, this is reflected in the wages paid to the people with disabilities who made them, raising their motivation to work even further, promoting their social participation, and spreading disability awareness. We understand this system as fair trade in the welfare sector, and call our activities “welfare trade”.

Making items that people want to buy

We usually carry items from around 50 work centres in our shop. Since Majerca started until the present, we have dealt in items from around 250 work centres. Around the time the shop opened, I went round visiting work centres and bazaars nationwide, looking for items in which to trade. Now, I also receive messages from work centres wanting me to handle their products.

The items in which we deal at Majerca are of course carefully made, but above all, we place a lot of weight on whether or not they are attractive and valuable as products, seen from a customer’s perspective (not a welfare perspective). Our product range is made up of items that customers feel they want to buy, rather than buying out of charity. Sometimes we make proposals to bring out an item’s appeal, making the most of the maker’s skill and the materials. On the other hand, sometimes it is the welfare centre that makes a proposal to us. For these reasons, it can take a long time until the products go on display in our shop, and in some cases, we cannot reach a consensus with the welfare centre and the item does not end up becoming a product.

Photo 1 The shop entrance

Choosy about the shop’s location

I want these attractive products, gathered from around the country, to be bought by many people. I was choosy about the shop’s location for this reason. The shop which opened in 2011 was in Nishi Ogikubo, in Tokyo’s Suginami Ward, but we moved to our present location in Kichijoji in 2014.

The Kichijoji shop is on the corner of a shopping street. A shop which customers enter without realizing that we deal in items made by people with disabilities, and where they buy things that take their fancy – this is my aim for the shop. Items chosen with attention to the season are displayed at the entrance, and we have devised various ways to make the interior easy on the eye and welcoming to enter. Since the way in which items are displayed makes a big difference to how they sell, we also adjust the display layout daily.

Photo 2 Flower brooch

Passing on customer feedback

When customers enter the shop and purchase something without knowing about Majerca, I try to casually mention that it was made by a person with disabilities. The responses from customers upon learning this, such as "Then I’ve made a good buy”, or “In that case, I’ll treasure it even more”, all make me really happy and leave an impression on me. Passing on feedback from customers to the people at the work centres leads to the creation of even better items.

This feedback also helps me to realise things. Customers who are moved to learn that people with disabilities made the items say “You could sell it for a higher price...”, but people from the welfare sector say “That’s quite pricy, isn’t it?” How to expand sales of these products in the midst of such different opinions is one issue for us.

A variety of activities

Besides sales activities, we also hold seminars and workshops on independently-developed products that sell, at the request of work centres, companies, or local governments, and plan sales exhibitions of independently-developed products. We hope that the participants in these events will take on the challenge of independently developing and making attractive products.

New initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic

Sales have been falling during the two to three years since COVID-19 infections became widespread. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of customers coming to the shop has decreased, impacting on sales, and we are still in a tough situation. In order to survive the pandemic, we are focusing even more on our online shop. We post comments about the attractive points of the items, and introduce the people with disabilities who make them. We are also proactively making use of social media in an effort to spread information.

Conclusion

By seeing and learning about the assorted items on display at Majerca, people like my former self who do not normally have any opportunity to get involved with disabled people and know nothing about them come to learn about people with disabilities. I hope that this will become a venue which serves as such a catalyst for many people.

I think that even if they do not learn to have a particularly deep understanding of people with disabilities or take any actions towards them, it is enough for them simply to look at people with disabilities kindly and experience them as a familiar presence in the same society. I also think that when such people become more numerous in the world, society will probably become welcoming to everyone.

Majerca’s website: https://shop.majerca.com

(Postscript to the interview)

We visited Majerca at the end of July 2022. The interior of the shop was packed with T shirts, bags, accessories, crockery, and so on, giving the impression that it was overflowing with colourful goods. Bags with a great use of colour and T shirts with highly original illustrations caught our eye, making us feel that we would like to go back later and look for the things we wanted at leisure.

However, we have sad news. Mr. Fujimoto of Majerca contacted us to say that their Kichijoji shop would close at the end of November 2022. The physical shop will disappear, but they will carry on with sales through the online shop. Recently, sales formats have diversified, and online shops have become standard. We hope that Majerca will make the most of the advantages of an online shop and introduce their attractive products to even more people. Information about non-sales activities, such as seminars and workshops, will also be made available on the Majerca website. We wish them every success with their future activities in this new format!