The history of BEARS' Vol.2

From around 2004, BEARS' sales started to grow.
Around 2006, Kikuchi joined the company, and BEARS' sales also grew rapidly, so I was very ecstatic at that time. Haha
I was busy and had few days off, but I had more days off than at the beginning.
While sales were growing, my salary increased, and I got completely cocky.
However, it is during times like these that life turns around. Haha
Just when BEARS' and I were doing so well, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and the global recession occurred.
And we were easily defeated. lol
Not only did our sales, which had been growing, stop, they dropped sharply.
That year, sales fell by about one third.
The next year, they fell even further.
BEARS', which had been doing so well, was knocked out in an instant. Haha
The other employees were gone, and it was just me and Kikuchi.
But we worked tirelessly.
Our salary dropped significantly, and the slightly increased holidays were gone again.
And the unpaid overtime hours just kept increasing.
I continued to work despite the harsh conditions until 2011.
But in 2011, Japan was hit by an unprecedented disaster.
The Great East Japan Earthquake.
Tokyo wasn't that bad compared to Tohoku.
But it was still so hard that people couldn't stand, and all public transport was paralyzed that day.
That day, the trains in Tokyo, which were rarely delayed, came to a complete halt.
I remember going to see the girl I liked at the time right away, and walking with her to her house for about two or three hours, and then dropping her off.
The roads were more congested than I'd ever seen, and there were more people walking on the sidewalks than I'd ever seen before.
Most people were walking in silence.
I still vividly remember the fear and helplessness I felt that day.
But the damage suffered by the people of Tohoku was not on that level.
Of course, it wasn't just the trains that stopped.
An incredible number of people lost their homes, their jobs, and even their lives.
Such a disaster struck eastern Japan.
Naturally, the recession was serious.
Our main sales were through the website even then, so that year, orders from customers in Tohoku dropped sharply.
Orders from other cities also dropped.
That was only natural.
There were so many people who had no time to buy jeans.
My heart almost bursts when I think of those who lost their lives or family members in this disaster.
Just as we were slowly starting to recover from the effects of the global recession, this disaster occurred, and our business suffered devastating damage.
From then on, sales continued to fall every year.
The world economy was not doing well, and to be honest, my heart was also damaged.
Still, Kikuchi and I hung on desperately, with only one day off each month.
Those were really tough times.
No matter how hard we worked, things didn't improve.
I lamented my own powerlessness and incompetence.
I can't count the number of nights I cried alone in frustration.
I even seriously discussed closing BEARS' down.
But we continued to look forward, and Kikuchi and I supported each other to persevere.
The events of the past few years have created a special relationship between me and Kikuchi.
We are no longer employees, but like brothers.
However, even after the hellish year of 2011, things did not improve for us.
The next few years were truly hellish.
Even though I was in my 30s, my salary was lower than in my 20s.
I had no days off, and I still had to work overtime.
But sales were still on the borderline to stay afloat.
A ray of light shone into those hellish days when we stocked almost all of the many length sizes of RESOLUTE.
At the time, we had little sales and not much money, but we decided that if we were going to fail anyway, we would go all the way and fail. Haha
And so we began to stock nearly 100 different sizes, including length sizes that we had not stocked before.
Then, RESOLUTE's popularity in the world increased steadily.
When RESOLUTE became very popular, there were not many stores that stocked all the product numbers and sizes.
So at that time, BEARS' was able to take the first step towards recovery.
From then on, sales started to grow little by little again.
Then, around 2016? Maybe 2017?
We started Instagram.
Instagram brought us a big trend.
It connected us to people who had never heard of BEARS' before, and people who had heard of it but had never used it.
This led to even more sales growth.
And then in 2020.
RESOLUTE is releasing a 10th anniversary model of white denim.
I bet everything on this. Haha
This was the largest single order I've ever placed in my life.
I think it was about 800 pairs in total.
It was a huge gamble that made me tremble.
If we had lost this gamble, we probably wouldn't have been able to recover.
It was such a big gamble. Haha
We won that gamble and we've completely recovered.
But it's been a long journey to get here.
Kikuchi and I have been through 10 years of hell.
But I was able to continue this work without giving up because I love jeans and I love BEARS'.
And it was also great that I got the best partner in Kikuchi, who supported me and persevered together when times were tough.
Thanks to this, our sales returned to what they were before the global recession.
But the cost of selling has become incomparably higher than it was then.
We have to pay for shipping.
We also have to pay for points.
The fees we paid were so high that we were in a sad situation where we had sales but little profit. Haha
But even so, BEARS', which considered bankruptcy at the worst time, was able to get back on its feet.
It was all thanks to Kikuchi, who fought alongside us, and above all, the customers who used BEARS'.
So I don't want to betray Kikuchi and our customers.
I've decided not to.
So this post has gotten very long again.
But it's inevitable that it will get long when we're looking back on more than 30 years of history. Haha
So, I would like to continue this story in the sequel. Haha

This is unrelated to the story, but this is the new BEARS' logo on the tent. Haha