BEAMS, Japan's Ultimate Retailer, Went Back to Where It All Started: America
The story of BEAMS is the story of Japanese retail. Founded in 1976, BEAMS is about as old as Japan's contemporary consumer culture and remains its single best ambassador, at least as far as style is concerned.
For the past several decades, BEAMS was content to reign at home as one of Japan's simultaneously coolest and hugest fashion retailers. It's dallied with Asian expansion but the vast majority of BEAMS' nearly 160 stores remain within Japan, packed with in-house labels, rare imports, cult streetwear lines, and so many collaborations that they had to be collated in a Rizzoli tome.
Then, BEAMS hit middle age.
On the cusp of BEAMS' 50th birthday in 2026, Yo Shitara, BEAMS president and son of founder Etsuzo Shitara, decided that it was time to make the move to America. There had been no prior plans for Western expansion or at least no well-defined goals, just Shitara grappling with the notion that BEAMS spent the past half-century absorbing American style. Suddenly, it was time to go straight to the source.
"BEAMS America is a very intentional step into the American market," says Travis Fujitra, general manager of BEAMS America. He acknowledges that the birth of the BEAMS America project was "rather sudden" and effectively didn't exist "until last year," which makes some sense given its relatively modest scope thus far. But, from the POV of anyone who enjoys Japanese clothing, it's pretty crazy that BEAMS never considered world domination.
Because whenever I think about Japanese clothing — even just the phrase "Japanese clothing!" — BEAMS immediately snaps to mind. As writer W. David Marx pointed out in his essential book, Ametora, BEAMS is inextricable from the Japanese clothing market that it helped create. It is to Japanese style as Ralph Lauren is to Americana. Hell, Lauren himself is apparently a BEAMS admirer, according to Shitara himself.
"I think in Japan, the expectation is there is no [Western] awareness of BEAMS," Fujita continues, "but what we're finding is that there is a core fan of BEAMS, especially among people interested in fashion."
BEAMS evolved into a truly global brand without ever leaving Japan, thanks primarily to the widely exported BEAMS PLUS line and imminently popular collaborative products created with companies like Arc'teryx and Levi's, some of which is so in demand that it's occasionally sold internationally to keep up with hype. BEAMS America got a taste of the pent-up demand when it began testing the waters with American pop-up shops in late 2024. The consumer response has been so tremendous that an official BEAMS America web-store will roll out by summer to allow Western fans to make direct purchases (BEAMS' Japanese website encourages would-be foreign shoppers to use third-party proxy services).
"Japanese companies tend to be conservative, and it's always a risk entering America," Fujita says. "It's a huge challenge."
For the past six months, BEAMS America pop-ups have ping-ponged between America's East and West coasts, sometimes as standalone storefronts and sometimes alongside pals like NOAH. Cities as far flung as Chicago and Houston are on BEAMS America's radar though America's midsection remains uncharted territory... for now.
The end goal? A permanent American BEAMS store, preferably in California, the retailers original stylistic touchstone. The first-ever BEAMS store, a small nook in Harajuku called American Life Store BEAMS, was fastidiously styled to look like a UCLA dorm room.
BEAMS America's temporary shops are more in-line with modern wood-paneled BEAMS outposts, offering a heroically expansive selection of BEAMS sub-labels. This includes BEAMS PLUS, regular ol' BEAMS (the line that collaborates with Arc'teryx, Levi's, and all the rest), the BEAMS BOY womenswear line, craft imprint BEAMS Japan, and homegoods brand fennica. And don't worry about sizing.
"We're planning to explore more international sizing," notes Fujita. "We're also exploring creating an original brand that would be more tailored for the body types that we see globally."
That would be BEAMS' 33rd or so sub-label, mind you, indicative of just how gargantuan this company actually is. And they're not all fashion imprints, either. That's the thing about BEAMS: It doesn't merely sell clothes.
BEAMS is instead a purveyor of culture, anchored by a firm grasp on great style.
Its Japanese stores offer varied but artfully curated selections of clothing, shoes, books, art, tchotchkes, collectibles, even cookware. Shopping at BEAMS is like shopping at a department store if everything was awesome. It's a concept store without a narrow point of view, simply encompassing everything stylish, everything tasteful, everything aspirational. The Japanese notions of open-mindedness and quality, the American expectations of heritage and timelessness.
"There wasn't really a strategy behind the breadth of BEAMS' offerings," Fujita says. "It was more like, if somebody within the company wanted to explore a certain thing, they would start an original brand. Everyone is a nerd about something. So, there's a BEAMS PLUS buyer who's super into outdoor parkas. there's someone who's really interested in pop art working with BEAMS T [the graphic T-shirt brand]. BEAMS is not limited to fashion, that's just where it started."
Finally, too, BEAMS is not limited to Japan. That's merely where it started.
