Tokyo Design Studio New Balance: A Global Creative Culture

Copywriting | Content Ideation

New Balance are a brand on rapid ascendency: much-loved for their essential sneaker rotation supplying everyone from your casual grandad, olympic athletes, and streetwear natives looking for their next collaborative fascination. From the idyllic surroundings of the Flimby factory in England to the streets of the USA, via the mysterious site of Tokyo Design Studio’s ‘T-House’, the Boston-based outfit have become a cultural obsession on a worldwide scale.

Marrying connections with global measure has allowed New Balance to shed their skin from past eras. This longstanding relationship across continents has put the brand at the forefront of relevant marketplaces, consumers, and trends to place themselves at the very helm of footwear, from Boston to Tokyo. A product of such process is Tokyo Design Studio. Established in 2012, Tokyo Design Studio (TDS) began developing items for global release in late 2014, four years later TDS launched Tokyo Design Studio New Balance in autumn 2018, where utilising unique specifications and branding of existing New Balance product gave people something to sit up and take note, before it would really start making moves.

Although situated in the hub of Tokyo’s Nihonbashi Hamacho area, Tokyo Design Studio New Balance is regarded as a worldwide affair. Comprising of members from the Japanese and USA design teams – Shugo Moritani, Design Manager of Tokyo Design Studio and T-House, and James Lee, Senior Footwear Designer for Energy Lifestyle offered SEVENSTORE an insight into the workings of Tokyo Design Studio, the global connection of New Balance and the platform in which the inventive Niobium Concept 2 was built on.