As the end of the year approaches, Japanese who like to use hand books begin to replace their hand books for the new year. As an indispensable stationery for decorating hand books, many people also begin to consider buying new paper tape.
Paper tape is a kind of industrial protective tape with strong stickiness and no trace on the surface of stripped adhesive. It was first invented by 3M Company in 1925. It is widely used in construction and automobile industry because it can cover parts that do not need color or paint during industrial painting.
The reason why the name and paper tape has the word and paper, only because the original Japanese protective tape is made of paper, compared with ordinary protective tape, and paper tape is thinner and more transparent texture, this feature has also become the biggest innate advantage of paper tape to enter the stationery market. In 2007, about 80 years after the birth of paper tape, kamoi processing paper, located in Kurasu City, Okayama Prefecture, Japan, extended the use of paper tape to the field of stationery for the first time, and established a well-known brand "mt tape".
The birth of "mt tape" also starts from an email sent by consumers.
"We like paper tape very much, and we have made all kinds of works with paper tape. If possible, could you allow us to visit your factory?" The e-mail was sent by the owner of an art gallery coffee shop in Tokyo and two regular customers of the coffee shop. In addition to the mail, they (all three were women) also sent handmade mini-books made of paper tape to kamoi. The shopkeeper usually likes wall painting and motorcycle painting modification, and the rest and paper tape are used in the store. The shopkeeper will use paper tape to seal shopping bags and send letters to artists or other galleries, and paper tape often appears on billboards in the store. over time, she fell in love with the joy of combining different colors and paper tape into different effects.
The story of the other two regulars goes like this: one is a collage artist who, in addition to using paper tape in her own work, decorates envelopes with paper tape in order to make envelopes cute. Another is a graphic designer who is very interested in the way collage artists use paper tape. In 2006, graphic designers suggested that shopkeepers and collage artists should display books on introductions and how to use paper tape in a mini exhibition in the gallery cafe, so the trio worked together to design a mini-book called Masking Tape Guide Book, which sold out in two weeks.
The highly acclaimed trio of the mini book planned to launch a new project related to paper tape, so they contacted kamoi to visit the factory. In fact, the trio sent mini-books to all eight major paper tape manufacturers in Japan, but only kamoi responded and put them into action.
The founders of kamoi mt project, Yukichi Taniguchi and Shin Takatsuka, were confused when they first received the mini-book. After all, they knew that paper tape was industrial products, but the received paper tape mini-book made them aware of the possibility that paper tape could be popular as a decoration.
The concerns of other manufacturers mainly stem from the fact that industrial use and paper adhesive take away fewer varieties and mass production routes, while stationery and paper tape are produced in large quantities and need special personnel to be responsible for tape pattern design. In addition, industrial and paper tape is quite different from stationery and paper tape consumer groups, and paper tape manufacturers who are used to B2B customers need to open up new distribution channels that have never been touched before. After thinking twice about the benefits of innovation, kamoi hatched a 2 billion yen market for stationery and paper tape after mt project,4.
The original mt tape was a soft Japanese traditional 20-color series, which was immediately welcomed by consumers as soon as it was launched. Today, the product line of mt tape has been quite rich, about 300 kinds of brand-new products are launched every year, and various patterns and limited cooperation funds emerge one after another. Mt Tape also often holds various exhibitions, which is the best platform for kamoi to listen to consumers' opinions on improving products.
Despite the fact that the price of a roll of mt tape is less than 400 yen, fans of mt tape will lose control of the buyers whenever they encounter the limited new products launched at the exhibition. Take the "MT × G8" exhibition in August 2014 as an example, mt tape launched more than 100 kinds of tape, including restricted products, and the per capita consumption on the first day of the exhibition was 6350 yen, so each person had to buy 14 rolls of mt tape.
The rich and lovely mt tape is very popular with Japanese stationery lovers and DIY enthusiasts. It can be used to decorate handbooks, mobile phones and other personal items, as well as for filing and sorting, and even for manicures.
Mt tape with a wide range of uses has also been favored by overseas consumers, and the popularity of mt tape has also added a new member of cultural and creative products.
