Pass the Baton: The most random recycling shop in Tokyo?

With thick-rimmed glasses and summery plaid tie, Masamichi Toyama looks more like an art director than a businessman. But his roots are corporate: he became director of Soup Stock Tokyo during his time at Mitsubishi Corporation. Then four years ago he branched out into neckties. “I wanted businessmen to be more confident, to have more presence and style,” he explains. His latest venture is Pass the Baton, a “new recycle” shop combining consignments, antiques, imperfections and new items made from scraps or slightly-flawed bits and bobs. 

Funky style and a creative bent are two things Pass the Baton president Masayoshi Toyama doesn't leave home without.

Paraphernalia paradise

It sounds unwieldy, and it is. If the kitsch-loving, garage-sale stalking aliens in Corey Doctrow’s space western started a museum, it would look like Pass the Baton Omotesando, opened in April. Designed by Masamichi Katayama of Wonderwall Inc., the shop is an open, surgically lit space, walls lined to the ceiling with a neatly organized, copious trove of random artifacts. 

One of the company’s key concepts is the “pass counter.” Sellers put up items on a 50/50 consignment, attaching a note about themselves and their items. Things which would pull a ridiculous amount at auction (i.e. an Olympic athlete’s running shoes) are sold at a normal price. The consignment system also avoids the usual recycle and brand shop tactics of purchasing based on condition or brand regardless of style or the seller’s feelings.

Toyama hopes all kinds of people will toss a piece of their “personal culture” into the mix. It seems the perfect idea for a city whose inhabitants are famous for their punctilious accessorizing and propensity to turn tiny bars and one-room apartments into idiosyncratic style shrines.

The Pass the Baton store in Marunouchi

Designer donations

The shop can feature as eclectic a selection as it gets, since it’s no loss if the items don’t sell. Some things, like the haul that A Bathing Ape creator Nigo brings in every two weeks, can be expected to fly off the shelves. (A small room in the store is devoted solely to Nigo; Fans apparently turn up the morning after a delivery.) Others are surprising: a number of shoe lasts (basically, wooden feet to keep the shoe shape) collected by a shoe designer found a home through the store’s online site.

Aside from the consignment items, Pass the Baton also refurbishes and repackages flawed or dead stock. B-grade Dean and Deluca tote bags spruced up with a little embroidery are one of their current offerings. 

When asked about the perfectionist tendencies of Japanese shoppers, Toyama says that they can lead to harsh business conditions. “All of the burden falls on the producer … if the buyer rejects the product then there’s nothing for the producer to do.” By giving imperfections a pick-me-up, buyers and producers both win.

Old teacups repackaged with biscuits are among the shop’s most successful items. The cups had been sitting in a warehouse in Seto, a city in Aichi famous for ceramic production, for 30 years. After selling about 700 a month, the original stock sold out, to the joy of the elderly owner. Coral broaches and traditional fabric are among the other items the company has acquired from ailing businesses and plans to remake. 

Nostalgia is order of the day at the original pass the baton in Marunouchi

A gallery for bargain hunters

With ever-changing items, there is freedom from the rigid winter-spring-summer-fall collection mindset, says Toyama. But it would seem that creating a constant turnover of worthy hand-me-downs would be just as difficult.

Toyama sees the store’s style as organic: if people come and see what’s there, they will get an idea what they can sell there. He also has the curious habit of thinking of his brands “in terms of characters. If there was a person called ‘Pass the Baton,’ what would that person be into?”

Luckily Toyama’s fictional “person” has wide-ranging tastes, a place to indulge them, and a fat Rolodex. The small gallery space inside the shop has a new display every two or three weeks. The last few featured over-dyed garments by Minä Perhonen and re-printed T-shirts by Japanese designers via The Tee Party. September and October 2010 will see collaborations with Brutus and Spectator magazines as well as Hermès Paris.

“The Edo period was really the age of recycling,” when people valued their daily objects and passed them on, says Toyama. He hopes to rekindle the flame at his shop. He also plans to eventually open shops in other countries, creating an international exchange of objects and their implicit stories.

Omotesando Hills West, B2F 4-12-10 Jingumae Shibuya-ku, Tokyo. Tel. +81 (0) 3 6447 0707. www.pass-the-baton.com