AbbyShot in Tokyo Part 3!

So the Tokyo Anime Fair began well for AbbyShot. Employees Julia and Mark (your friendly blogger) were nearly overwhelmed on the first day by the sheer size of the event, but soon got into the TAF groove. The story continues on Day 2. If you want to skip the tale and head straight for the amazing pictures, check out our AbbyShot Picasa Web Album!

Tokyo Anime Fair, Day Two: March 23, 2007

We entered the second Business Day of the Tokyo Anime Fair and we were excited. All the information that left us nearly shell-shocked on Day One had now sunken in and we were ready to take on Japan! Next to AbbyShot, Godzilla was going to feel like someone’s pet newt. You could say we were hitting our stride.

Now is as good a time as any to introduce you to the full AbbyShot booth crew!

On the far left, sporting a rugged AbbyShot Mad Max Jacket, was our good friend Gerard from the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters (CME) who are always an immense help to us. Gerard’s international experience also came in quite handy for humble Canadians (like myself) in Asia for the first time.

Next to him, looking divine in a fashionable AbbyShot Kill Bill jacket was Debbie, our consultant in Japan. She did a lot of research legwork for us before the show even started and helped us out in the booth for the first two days of the Fair.

Third from the left was of course Julia, looking great in an AbbyShot Stampede Duster. One of your two friends from AbbyShot here on this adventure!

Next was a new Japanese friend we made who was enjoying her time trying on an AbbyShot Malice Mizer coat. For some reason, this moment just screamed “group shot”, I don’t know.

Second-from-the-right was Andy, our translator, looking striking in an AbbyShot Lobby Trench. He was there for just one day, but did he ever help us break down the language barriers in our meetings with businesses and the public.

And on the end was me, Mark, your other trusty AbbyShot employee! I’m the one who gets to tell you this story.

Something very cool happened on this second day of the show.

The morning brought us a visit from a team of roving reporters that got a real kick out of our AbbyShot gear! They came from a Comcast channel called "Anime Selects" and it seemed like they were having a blast in Japan. Our friendly interviewer was Tasayu, trying on the AbbyShot Mad Max jacket next to Gerard in the picture on the left. The rest of the crew was loving their time in the AbbyShot booth as well, with cameraman Gabe turning in to Mad Max in the picture on the right while producer Megan snapped her own photos.

It was great to talk to this fun crowd of people - it was clear that they were having a great time at the Fair. Check out Tasayu's Blog to see all the fun stuff the Anime Selects crowd did in Tokyo. Talk about using your time wisely! This AbbyShot interview is set to air in May, we'll keep you posted on that one!

And it wasn't just English-speaking reporters dying to get a piece of AbbyShot, we've also got our picture on a Brazilian news site! It really is an international show.

Day Two for me was all about exploring the Tokyo Anime Fair.

Our excellent translator, Andy, was only with us for this one day, so we had to make the most of his skills. This was an incredible opportunity to speak with anime distributors, studios, and promotional firms to gather intelligence and see where AbbyShot can fit into the big picture.

The main lesson is: WOW, there's a lot of anime that comes out every year! There were over 200 exhibitors promoting new or recent anime series or films, and each of these booths had 5 or 10 anime to promote (with some overlap because of partnerships) but STILL, there were hundreds and hundreds of new shows on display!

Some of the excellent highlights include:

- Velvet Underworld at the Wedge Holdings booth, a cool gothic anime as shown in this excellent Anime News Service scoop.

- Zombie Loan and Dragonaut at the ADK booth. The first is a funky high school zombie story and the second seems to be about cool-looking dragons in space.

- Night Head at the GAGA Communications booth, another gothic looking tale about psychic powers, based on an earlier anime from the 90's.

- Darker than Black was making a splash at the ANIPLEX booth, with well-designed bags as handouts (because you need something to hold all the gear you collect!). Another sombre and brooding anime (as the name suggests), I definitely sense a trend here!

- Seirei no Moribito (or Guardian of the Sacred Spirit) from the Geneon booth was the coolest-looking warrior themed anime that we saw at the show, and trust me, there were quite a few of these!

- Finally, a BIG highlight from the show: a Devil May Cry anime TV series is coming! The huge Dante poster at the Toshiba booth was certainly hard to miss!

What about the odd, funny, or downright weird highlights? We've got some of those:

- Hayate the Combat Butler at the Geneon booth. The name says it all.

- Tachiguishi Retsuden or The Amazing Lives of the Fast Food Grifters. I can't begin to tell you what this one's about.

- Finally, it's Getsumento Heiki Mina or Lunar Rabbit Weapon Mina. She's a bunny-girl with two carrots stuck to the back of her. I'll never understand some of this stuff.

So much fun new anime, but of course we had to walk by the greats - click for bigger views of the cool booth designs!

This last business day gave us lots of great insight into the Japanese anime industry, but the clothing at the AbbyShot booth still gots lots of amazing response from the attendees! Our translator Andy became our own Japanese-speaking AbbyShot salesman as you can see below.

We made lots of great business contacts on this second day, including our first meeting with costume retailer CANDY ONE who we'll certainly be talking about a lot more in the coming weeks! As we happily finished up this last Business Day of the Fair, we didn't quite know what we were in for with Day Three: the first PUBLIC DAY! When the gates open and fans come screaming in!

Lots more to come in the next AbbyShot in Japan blog post!

Did you hear of any great upcoming anime that we should know about, that we might have missed? Let us know in the comments!

AbbyShot Squall Jacket Gets Its First Customer!

No sooner did we have our finished batch of new leather Squall jackets than we had our first happy customer! Melissa, one of our talented sewing staff AND AbbyShot's resident "lover-of-all-things-Japanese", took one look at our new Final Fantasy VIII inspired Squall Leonhart jacket and instantly knew that she WANTED it. So she bought the first AbbyShot Squall Jacket ever.

It was a momentous occassion and certainly a deserving photo-op, and she didn't mind us sharing these two "sneak preview" pictures with you, the readers of this blog! As our newsletter subscribers already know, this jacket is slated for a full release at the end of April and will be offered for the excellent price of $229.00 USD. There is also a surprise accessory to go along with it, but we're sworn to secrecy until the actual product launch!

We can't wait to do our full photo-shoot for this amazing leather jacket!

AbbyShot in Toyko Part 2!

So our AbbyShot crew (Julia and myself, Mark) arrived safely in Tokyo, had a bout of Metro-shock, were graciously welcomed by our Canadian Embassy, and showed off our AbbyShot gear to great reviews at a special reception for Canadian companies. All this before the Tokyo Anime Fair even started! The adventure continues…

Set-up Day: March 21, 2007

The main priority for the day was to set up our booth for the rapidly approaching Anime Fair, so after a quick breakfast we were back on the Tokyo Metro with luggage (yay!) heading to the Canadian Embassy. Thankfully, the lovely people at the Embassy had arranged a bus for companies exhibiting under the Canada Pavilion, so we had a much nicer ride to the Tokyo Big Sight, where the show was being held.

The Tokyo Big Sight really lives up to its name, with the operative word being BIG. It is an ultra-modern convention centre located in the bay area in the east of Tokyo with its most distinctive feature being the huge inverted pyramids of the “Conference Tower”. We didn’t set foot in there because we were afraid this architectural wonder would turn into a Transformer, plus the actual Fair was being held in the East Exhibition Hall down below.

After a pleasant bus ride, we could finally take our first look at our venue for the next 4 days: the Tokyo Anime Fair 2007 (TAF 2007) was taking shape before our eyes. We gazed around to see armies of construction workers putting together booths both large and small for all the biggest names in the anime world. Electricians were wiring up banks of screens, microphones, and sound systems. Booth workers practiced their routines in some of the more elaborate setups. Overhead, large balloons were being inflated in the shape of Japanese icons such as Pikachu and Pac-Man.

Luckily for us, AbbyShot doesn’t need a pile of fancy gizmos to make a great impression: our clothing speaks for itself!

After a whole lot of walking through the massive convention hall, we finally found the Canada Pavilion. It was quite the location, situated near the main entrance to the hall, with separate booth space enough for 8 Canadian companies, along with a Reception Desk on one corner and a meeting area in the center. They were even inflating a large balloon over the Pavilion printed with the word “Canada” and our flag. Immediately we were impressed with the effort our Embassy put into planning this venture, kudos to all involved for sure!

So Julia set up the booth while I snapped pictures (I’m kidding, I helped!) and we were already feeling excited about the first day of the TAF to come. Once we had everything set up, we were free to explore a bit of Tokyo. We knew where we had to go.

Akihabara! The center of otaku culture, the holy land for anime fans, and the mecca of manga. AbbyShot could not take a trip to Tokyo without checking this place out. It used to be known as "Electric Town" where you could get all the latest electronic gear, but the anime influence seems to be taking over. This particular Wednesday was a bit out of the ordinary because the Japanese have a national holiday for the first day of spring, the Vernal Equinox, which they call Shunbun no hi. It's traditionally a holiday based around the admiration of nature and the love of living things, but the crowds in Akihabara were admiring the natural beauty of figurines and loving the latest manga. The main road was closed off and the crowd stretched as far as the eye could see.

We had a few hours to spare, so we checked out as many shops as we could to see what's hot right now. The two main categories of collectibles seemed to be a) Robots or b) Scantily-clad women, with MANY shops devoted to one or the other. I was surprised by the abundance of merchandise for relatively older anime (such as the seemingly immortal Neon Genesis Evangelion - there were PLENTY of Asuka and Rei figurines around), and the apparent lack of merchandise for certain more recent anime (such as Fullmetal Alchemist - I ended up buying some small Elric and Mustang keychains).

Julia was very impressed by the great use of space in the various stores - in North America we think of our space horizontally, but in Japan everything is vertical. The ground floor of many shops had a simple layout of white vending machines stacked up all over the place with a great variety of toys from different anime. The Japanese take their vending machine toys VERY seriously! Every store had plenty of stairs to climb, and sometimes you don't even know that you're going from one shop to the next. We "accidentally" ended up in one of Akihabara's famous Maid Cafés, where a lovely lady dressed like a French Maid with cat ears (don't ask me!) beckoned me inside. Julia was not impressed and quickly snapped me back to reality and we moved on.

A completely different spectacle awaited us outside, as you can see in the picture above: Japanese Crossplay! We didn't see as much costume play (cosplay) on the street as we had hoped, but those who were dressed up went ALL OUT! I later heard that Sunday is the big day for cosplay in Akihabara, so we know for next time. At 5:00pm on the button, the road opened again and cars were soon speeding down the road, honking their horns to get the crowds of pedestrians out of the way. It was a little scary. We ducked off the main road and followed the flow of human traffic until we stopped to gaze at the amazing place they were headed.

This was the biggest shrine to Electronics I've ever seen: the nine-floor monstrosity called Yodobashi! Click on the bigger version of the picture to see the cool Kingdom Hearts 2 ad! We walked in there for about 20 minutes because that was all that we could handle - the place was ridiculously packed. The amount of people on every floor was unbelievable! Any Mac-loving readers will be happy to know that iPods were moving like hotcakes. We took enough time to buy some funky computer mice and quickly made our exit.

In the evening of this busy day, the executive commitee of the Tokyo Anime Fair had arranged what they called a "Business Matching Party" before the start of the convention. It was a pleasant evening where MANY many business cards were exchanged in the very formal and respectful Japanese style (make sure to pass the card with two hands, that's the key!). We met lots of interesting people, including Takayuki Matsutani, the President of Tezuka Productions (the studio behind Astro Boy!). Members of the very active Singapore Cosplay Club were present, as well as the organizer of the upcoming World Cosplay Summit in Japan. We also met a very friendly Australian by the name of Guill Bastias, who we found out was the brains behind Guilty Comix, a cool-looking interactive comics site. You really never know who you're going to meet at receptions like these. Soon enough we had to call it a night - we knew we were going to need lots of energy for the first day of the Tokyo Anime Fair to come!

Tokyo Anime Fair, Day One: March 22, 2007

The moment we were waiting for had finally arrived: The Tokyo Anime Fair 2007 had finally begun! The Fair was arranged in two parts, where the first 2 days (Thursday and Friday) were considered Business Days, and the last 2 days (Saturday and Sunday) were open to the general public. The reason is that the Public Days are pure madness, so you need separate days to get any business done.

So the first Business Day was meant to ease us into the Fair, but it still just overwhelmed us! There’s actually not much I can write about this day because it went by like an absolute blur. The highlight was definitely seeing people try on AbbyShot clothing for the first time at the Anime Fair; the reactions of our new Japanese fans were amazing. One thing we noticed was that EVERYBODY wanted to be Edward Elric, and this was a recurring theme throughout the show. The first (but certainly not the last!) picture of someone performing an Elric “transmutation” in a new AbbyShot coat is below! A true Kodak moment.

We were certainly overwhelmed on this first day, but that didn’t stop us from making a few new friends. Julia got to know the scary Skull Man from the anime series of the same name who visited our booth for a few minutes.

Meanwhile, I wandered around in an AbbyShot Alucard Ultimate trench and met a much less scary sight: one of the lovely Fuji Television booth babes. I know how to prioritize my time!

Throughout the first day, we eased ourselves in to the way the Tokyo Anime Fair worked and became a lot more comfortable talking to people who only speak Japanese. As I said earlier: we’re lucky that AbbyShot clothing is amazing enough to speak for itself!

Tune in next time as AbbyShot delves deeper into TAF 2007! If you REALLY can't wait for the next part of our epic story, we've uploaded ALL of our pictures from this awesome trip up on our new AbbyShot Picasa Web Album. Until next time!

The Sunstalker Farewell Sale!

Picture this. You're out on the town with friends, and a certain someone has been giving you the eye all night. And you've been giving them the eye right back. There's definitely some chemistry there. Sparks are flying. BUT you're afraid to talk to them - you're a little bit nervous. The night goes by too quickly, and soon enough you're hearing the last call! This is the last chance my friend! You've got to make your move now or never!

Such is the situation RIGHT NOW with the AbbyShot Sunstalker trenchcoats: in one month these bad boys will be gone forever! But there's never been a better time to own one of these amazing BLADE inspired trenchcoats. ALL of our Sunstalker designs are on sale for over 20% off starting TODAY, Friday, April 13th until Sunday, May 13th. After that date, they'll be gone forever! Now is the time to act!

Here's the lowdown:

Pleather Sunstalker 1
Was $531 USD - Now $399 USD! (25% off!)

Leather Sunstalker 1
Was $1,140 USD - Now $875 USD! (23% off!)

Pleather Sunstalker 2
Was $558 USD - Now $399 USD! (28% off!)

Leather Sunstalker 2
Was $1,140 USD - Now $875 USD! (23% off!)

Other trenchcoats are just trying to ice-skate uphill. These screen-accurate designs look just like the ultra-cool coats as worn by Wesley Snipes in the first two BLADE movies. And they're now selling for the best prices EVER. Who says Friday the 13th is unlucky?

Remember, after May 13th they'll be gone for good! There's no reason to wait, check out the AbbyShot BLADE Clothing Page now for all the info!

Customer E-mails - April 2007

AbbyShot is adding a new feature to the blog this month: Customer E-mails!

We get lots of excellent feedback in our Inbox every day, but our favourite e-mails are the ones where happy customers write in with a review (and hopefully a picture!) of their new AbbyShot garment. Our whole team works very hard to make the highest quality clothing, so it's always great to hear how much people enjoy what we do!

Our first e-mail comes from Pablo in Spain who has actually bought three coats from us in recent months! He got one of the last Continental Stampede Dusters from an Ebay sale, as well as an Enigma Trench and a Lobby Reloaded Wool coat! I think it's safe to say that he likes us.

"hello!!!

it seems a miracle yet it is true! the coats have at last made their way to Spain !!! i must admit that it was worth it for the coats are as terrific as i was expecting.

the lobby trench is most wearable and practical and the enigma coat is just...wonderful!!

just for bugging you a little, i would say that the ornaments clinging to the hood in the enigma coat look slightly (very slightly) smaller than the ones in the game. heheheh not that i am complaining at all! the coat is absolutely screen-accurate and wonderfully made. flawless, actually. and ideal for our current rainy weather.

well, thats all, guys, thanks again for your great job. ill be looking forward to seeing your new products for 2007 (i beg that someone hears my prayers and decides to make devil many cry 3 dante's superb coat for once!!!! )

best wishes for you.

Pablo

P.D. by the way, you have become very well-known around here for nobody knew that such cool stuff was sold anywhere. it wouldnt be strange you get more spanish customers soon!"

Very cool e-mail! And awesome pictures too, I think he might be a future "Stampede Duster" model!

Our next batch of pictures came from Mad Max fan Doug McQuillin from Ontario, Canada. He took these shots at a recent car show in front of his very own SWEET Mad Max car. Doug is on the right (sporting his AbbyShot Mad Max jacket) with his son in the middle (cool kid!).

In the next shot, Doug's friend Wayne models the AbbyShot Mad Max Jacket. I still can't take my eyes off that car! Doug has spent years perfecting this automotive masterpiece as you can see on his site, MadMaxCar.com.


Thanks so much to Pablo and Doug for the great pictures! More customer e-mails and photos to come next month!

AbbyShot in Toyko Part 1!

Wow. So much happened that it’s really hard to put it into some kind of order. But we’ll try! It was an amazing time in Tokyo…

Travel: March 18-19, 2007

It all started with two lucky AbbyShot employees (Julia and, yours truly, Mark) on what felt like the longest flight in the history of air travel. Almost 14 hours in the air from liftoff in Canada to touchdown in Japan. Long lines at the Narita Airport led to a relatively quick ride on the Narita Express train down to a grinding halt once we hit the Toyko Metro System.

My god, have you seen the map of this thing? It’s a combination of colours and twists and turns that ends up looking like a deranged bowl of spaghetti.

Eventually we did figure out how to navigate this beast of a subway (why is it owned by ten different companies each with their own sets of tickets?) and the week could truly begin!

We ended our first evening by taking some pictures in the colourful Roppongi area where we stayed, along with eating our first (and certainly not last) bowl of noodles in Tokyo!

Canadian Embassy Day: March 20, 2007

It was our first full day in Tokyo. We slept in happily and then got ourselves ready for a day at the Canadian Embassy. AbbyShot was registered for the Tokyo Anime Fair as part of the “Canada Pavilion” that our Embassy was setting up, and there were a few activities planned outside the Fair itself. The day was officially named the “Canadian Animation Technology and Contents Seminar”, but basically our amazing Canadian Embassy gave all the Canadian companies in attendance the chance to present themselves to lots of interested Japanese business people.

We had quite an impressive Canadian contingent as you’ll see!

Laurent M. Abecassis, Emmy Award Winner for his work as CGI Supervisor for the Pilot Episode of LOST, presented his animation software company Di-O-Matic. Their 3D character animation tools have been used for everything from Disney characters to the video game versions of Batman and Spider-Man.

Ben Colling presented some amazing works from the Vancouver Film School, and told us all about their awesome rankings and ratings on YouTube.

Comic creator / artist Didier Arpin showed us all a great preview of a fun animated show in the vein of the original Transformers that he has called The Hizashi Project. He wants to bring the adventure back to Saturday morning cartoons, and it looks like one to watch out for.

And let’s not forget a certain Canadian company called AbbyShot Clothiers! High-quality clothing based on movies and anime – you know, that might just work!

Once all the presentations were over, a reception awaited us where a Canadian Mini-Trade Show was held. Already many Japanese people were anxious to try on our AbbyShot gear – it was a good taste of what to expect at the show to come.

We also met some interesting people including Michelle Fukushima, the unforgettable model / essayist / photographer / party critic, and her good friend Yoshimitsu Banno who directed one of the Godzilla movies from the seventies! Specifically, it was the controversial one where Godzilla takes on a monster made out of pollution – it’s apparently the only film where the 300-foot-tall Godzilla manages to fly. I think I need to see this movie now. Banno-san told us he’s working on a 3D Version of Godzilla right now for IMAX theatres. Should be cool, but no word on whether the big green guy will fly again. We can only hope.

Great times – and we haven’t even gotten to the show yet! Next update we’ll cover the setup day, a visit to Anime mecca Akihabara, and the first day of the show!

Stay tuned…

AbbyShot Convention Hopping!

AbbyShot is a company that loves to travel. It's always a thrill when we get beautiful photos of AbbyShot coats being worn by happy customers all over the globe (keep those pictures coming folks!), and it really drives us to get ourselves out there too! Nothing compares to seeing first-hand the reactions of people trying on an AbbyShot garment: they really transform themselves into a movie or anime hero! The best part is that an experience like this transcends all language barriers.

In the past month we were lucky enough to attend two VERY different but very fun conventions in two different parts of the world.


1. The Toyko International Anime Fair 2007

We've definitely got a lot more to write about this one later in the week. From March 22nd to the 25th, over 107,000 visitors came to the Tokyo Big Sight convention center in the capital of Japan for the latest and greatest on all things "anime". The two staff members that we sent have gotten over their jet-lag and sleep-deprivation, but are still having trouble putting their thoughts into words other than "AWESOME!"

It was a fantastic show that proved to AbbyShot that Japan loves our high-quality anime-inspired gear - what better compliment could you hope for? To see Japanese people happy and excited as they tried on coats like our Trigun inspired "Stampede Duster" or our Full Metal Alchemist inspired "Elric Coat" was such a great feeling! A perfect example: we saw the Edward Elric hand-clapping transmutation maneuver every time someone tried on this character’s striking red coat. One AbbyShot employee loved this move so much that he turned it into his personal trademark for the rest of the trip!

Exactly a week later, a different show awaited us in a different country.


2. Sci-Fi on the Rock

Let's hear it for our hometown! Just this past weekend, our very own city of Mount Pearl, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada played host to a first-time convention called Sci-Fi on the Rock. It was quite a success, especially for the first try in a relatively small city like ours, attracting almost 800 people in one day (April 1st) according to the local news.

Anime was one aspect of the convention but certainly not the focus, as most of the events here involved light sabers in some way, shape or form. Our aforementioned roving AbbyShot employee hesitated to admit that he was soundly beaten by a nine-year-old girl in a vicious light saber battle. Unfortunately for him, Edward Elric’s hand-clap move doesn’t work magic in the harsh world of “Star Wars”.

The running theme of both shows was apparent however: people were just as amazed and excited when trying on AbbyShot garments! It became clear to us over the last few weeks that cool clothing just might be the new international language, understood by all. Maybe we're onto something here! More news to report on Tokyo soon...