Kawaii
The cute side of Japan. Plush, cute characters, dolls, gacha and blind boxes.
Our Story
From a few rolls of washi tape to two shops in Norwich.
I’m Lauryn, and oshoppu began with me selling Japanese stationery through a little Etsy shop. It has since grown into two shops, a warehouse and a team of ten. This is how that got slightly out of hand.
It started with stationery.
Before oshoppu there was Bramble House, my first business, which specialised in Scandinavian and mid-century modern design. Japanese stationery started appearing because, to me, there was a really natural correlation between the two. It was full of good design, often quite Scandi-led design at that. Beautiful everyday objects, good materials and thoughtful details. All the things I was already drawn to.
Washi tape was my first big investment. I started selling it through a little Etsy shop, and one of my earliest Etsy customers now works for us as our Inventory and Warehouse Manager. I don’t think either of us would have predicted that when she placed an order all those years ago.
Alongside the stationery, I started adding plush and other small kawaii things. I was completely taken with Sekiguchi’s Mokomoko Pokémon range. We had a Stuffle that I sold and still regret selling because I’ve never seen it again. That is the nature of selling Japanese goods. Things appear, disappear and sometimes never come back. There is a constant temptation to keep things for myself. I mostly resist it.
Then things got a little out of hand.
After we moved into our first proper office, I had my first big shipment. I thought it was enormous. Looking back at it now, it was tiny. It contained figures, Pokémon Plamo and all sorts of things that were taking us much further beyond stationery.
We’re not very good at staying put. The stock kept growing, the team kept growing and every time we found more space, we eventually filled that too.
I think it might be time to stop growing for five minutes.
- Home office
- Storage unit
- Yorkshire office
- Royal Arcade shop
- Arcade warehouse
- Kakkoii and its dispatch space
Coming home.
I’m a Norwich native, although we were based in Yorkshire for a big chunk of the business’s life. I really wanted to come home. Norwich is what I call my natural habitat.
The Royal Arcade had been one of my favourite places as a teenager. When I was particularly homesick, I used to dream about walking through it. In 2023, I came back with Seth and our two children.
There is something quite strange and lovely about eventually opening my own shop here. Again, it comes back to design. The Arcade is beautiful, but I also love its community feeling. It is full of independent businesses and people who know one another. It feels like somewhere oshoppu belongs.
So what is oshoppu, anyway?
I don’t really think of us as an anime shop, although we absolutely love anime. oshoppu is a Japanese design and pop culture shop with three different sides.
Kakkoii
The cool side. Mecha, robots, model kits, die-cast vehicles, shōnen characters, fighting and what we affectionately call our muscle dudes.
Deco
The creative side. Stationery, pens, stickers and things for your desk and creative life. It has the most direct line back to where all of this began.
What we’re building.
For a long time the entire business was me. I did everything. Seth joined me a few years later and now works alongside me full-time, running lots of things behind the scenes. When we opened our first physical shop, we had three part-time members of staff. We now have ten employees, most of whom are full-time. I’m incredibly proud of that.
I don’t pretend I’m a perfect employer, but I care enormously about creating somewhere people are treated like people. I want our team to grow with us, to be good at things I could never do myself, and to have some ownership over what we’re building.
The thread running through everything has always been good design. That might be an exceptionally good pen, a beautifully manufactured figure, a plush where somebody has absolutely nailed the expression, or a tiny plastic thing from a capsule machine that serves almost no useful purpose whatsoever. Good design doesn’t have to be serious. Occasionally the reason for stocking something is simply, this is ridiculous and I love it. Those things usually do quite well.