Beyond Export: How Collaboration Can Bring Japanese Craftsmanship Into Global Markets

When Japanese craft or manufacturing companies think about expanding internationally, the conversation often begins with export: who might distribute the product, which trade show to attend, or where potential buyers can be found.

Those are important questions, but they are not always the first ones a company needs to answer.

For some companies, the first step into an overseas market may not be distribution at all. It may be collaboration.

Working with the right designer, brand, architect, hospitality group or project can create relevance in a new market before a conventional sales channel has been established.

A recent collaboration connected to Soho House Tokyo offers an interesting example.

From an interior project to a new collaboration

Soho House Tokyo opened in Aoyama in April 2026 as the group’s first House in Japan. Its interior brings together contemporary Tokyo with Japanese craft traditions, incorporating materials and techniques including washi, locally produced mosaics and urushi lacquer.

Domhnall Nolan, Soho House’s Senior Interior Designer, became interested in Japanese lacquer during the project and worked with Makino Urushi Design, a Kyoto-based lacquer maker, to experiment with finishes. Those experiments eventually became part of the design language used across the House.

That relationship extended beyond the building itself. Gallery stoop later presented a further collaboration between Nolan and Makino Urushi Design under the name PINSTRIPE.

The project combines Japanese urushi lacquer with British metalwork by UK-based studio RubinoWilson. The resulting lounge chair and side table draw on both British furniture references and Japanese decorative technique.

What interests me most is not the furniture itself, but the route by which the collaboration came into existence.

The exportable asset may not be the product

One recurring challenge for companies entering overseas markets is that they naturally begin with what they already sell.

The question becomes:

We have this product. How do we sell it overseas?

There is another question that can be equally important:

What capability do we have that could become valuable inside someone else’s project?

For a craft company, that capability may be a finishing technique. For a manufacturer, it might be precision fabrication, prototyping, material knowledge or customization. In other cases, the capability may be something the company has never treated internally as a product at all.

The exportable asset may not be the existing product. It may be the capability behind it.

That changes the market-entry conversation.

Collaboration can create context before scale

A traditional export model often asks a foreign market to understand an existing product.

A collaboration can work differently by placing a company’s capability inside a context that the new market already understands.

In the PINSTRIPE example, urushi is not presented solely as a traditional Japanese craft object. It becomes part of a contemporary furniture proposition shaped by Japanese and British techniques and design references.

This does not diminish the Japanese character of the technique. Rather, it creates another context in which that capability can be understood and valued.

There is also an indication of how such design language can travel beyond a single project. Soho Home’s latest collection takes visual cues from Soho House Tokyo, including the deep burgundy lacquer used throughout the House.

The collection is not presented as a direct continuation of PINSTRIPE, but it illustrates how a locally rooted material vocabulary can influence a broader commercial design environment.

For a company considering international expansion, that distinction matters.

What a well-chosen collaboration can create

The immediate commercial return from a collaboration may not always be large. Its value can first appear in other forms.

Working with a relevant designer, brand or project can give a company a credible reference that communicates capability more effectively than a conventional sales presentation. It can also place a specialized material or technique into a context that overseas buyers, designers or partners understand more readily.

There is a network effect as well. A real project can create contact with designers, architects, buyers, media, fabricators and other participants around the work, while also revealing what the market values, what needs adaptation and where expectations differ.

In some cases, the collaboration may even expose applications for a company’s capability that would never emerge from simply exporting its existing domestic catalogue.

These are all potential forms of business development.

The collaboration itself is not the strategy

At the same time, collaboration should not be romanticized.

A prestigious-looking project is not necessarily a useful market-entry opportunity. The more important question is what the relationship can create beyond the project itself.

I would want to understand whether the collaboration places the company in a market or network that actually matters, whether the resulting work can become a credible reference, and whether the counterpart is relevant to the company’s longer-term direction.

I would also look at what remains after the project ends: whether the relationship can lead somewhere else, whether the company retains meaningful commercial and strategic value, and whether the learning or capabilities developed through the work can be applied again.

The point is not simply to collaborate. The point is to understand whether the collaboration creates a bridge to the next commercial opportunity.

That is what can turn an interesting creative project into part of a business-development strategy.

Distribution is one route, not the only route

I recently wrote about the difference between choosing a distributor and working first with a business-development partner.

The underlying issue is similar: companies can move too quickly toward a channel before they have learned enough about the market.

For some businesses, particularly in design, craft, materials and specialized manufacturing, the step before distribution may be even earlier.

It may begin with identifying the right project, the right counterpart and the right application for a capability that is already strong in Japan but has not yet been translated into relevance in another market.

Distribution remains important when the business is ready to scale.

But market entry can begin before distribution.

Sometimes the first step is a connection

International business development is often described as finding buyers, distributors or agents.

Sometimes it begins earlier, by finding the right context and the right reason for two capabilities to meet.

That connection can become the first step into a market.