Inside the Quiet Japanese Factory Powering Onitsuka Tiger’s Global Rise
The head of Onitsuka Tiger, Ryoji Shoda, has spent the past few years taking the 77-year-old Japanese lifestyle brand on a whistlestop worldwide tour. 2025 alone saw the opening of an all-red concept store in London’s Covent Garden, a yellow counterpart in Tokyo’s high-fashion shopping district Omotesando, and a new flagship on Paris’ most famous shopping street, Champs-Élysées. On top of all that, Onitsuka Tiger also launched an “Italian Made” product series, complementing its regular spot on the Milan Fashion Week schedule. Not bad for what was, until recently, a niche brand best known outside of Japan for its viral Mexico 66 sneaker.
But Shoda has not forgotten where it all started. In the quiet coastal area of Tottori, the least populated prefecture in Japan and the birthplace of the label’s founder, Kihachiro Onitsuka, Onitsuka Tiger is investing in its future. Here you’ll find the Onitsuka Innovative Factory, a brand-new hub where Onitsuka craftspeople work develop its most ambitious projects, demonstrating the historic footwear brand’s ever-growing ambitions. While its younger peers lean into high-tech newness, Onitsuka Tiger is devoted to age-old craft.
“Craftsmanship is something you cannot make into data and store and pass on to someone. It has to come from other craftsmen,” Shoda tells me as we tour the new factory. “We needed a base so that this craftsmanship will be passed on to the next generation and then the next generation. And it had to be in Japan.”
The Innovative Factory is a sizable black square structure accented in every detail, down to the window sills, with yellow paint. After all, yellow is Onitsuka Tiger’s signature hue, notably found on the Onitsuka Tiger Mexico 66 sneakers that Bruce Lee iconically wore in 1978’s Game of Death and Quentin Tarantino immortalized in Kill Bill, where Umma Thurman paid homage to Lee by wearing the same yellow shoes and a matching outfit. Over two decades after Kill Bill, the Mexico 66 again supercharged Onitsuka Tiger’s popularity, having popped up on LYST’s quarterly ranking of the world's hottest products and been worn by celebrities from Bella Hadid to Conan Gray. Its inimitable low-top shape was a major inspiration in the modern slim-soled shoes revival and it was one of the shoes that Phil Knight sold from the trunk of his car before founding Nike.
Only the very finest Mexico 66 shoes are made in Tottori, where made-in-Japan sneakers are produced for Onitsuka Tiger’s NIPPON MADE line. These shoes are handwashed and artfully painted using the sap from lacquer trees, a traditional Japanese technique. But the Innovative Factory is also tasked with going beyond Onitsuka Tiger’s most famous shoe.
“In the last 10 years, I was aiming to do the complete opposite of what other [footwear brands] were doing. For example, when they were doing chunky shoes, I was keen on selling super low platform shoes, such as the Mexico 66,” says Shoda. “Now, as you can see, all the brands are doing low platform shoes, so I’m thinking of the next move. We’re looking for something that we can do differently. Whatever sneakerheads look for, we always want to do the opposite to penetrate a new area.” And what’s the opposite of a sneaker? A black leather dress shoe, the other style of footwear produced by the Innovative Factory.
The Onitsuka is the brand’s formal range, though its output has touches of contemporary ingenuity. It proposes brogued derbies with a thick ripple sole, for instance, and its debut offering of leather bags utilized high-quality materials like the leather left over from Japan’s famous Kobe beef.
Beyond the production itself, Onitsuka Tiger’s Innovative Factory also handles designing and product development. It also offers a few special D2C services, including a bespoke shoe service, the only one Onitsuka Tiger offers in the world. Here, customers choose the colors of shoes that’ll be custom-made on the factory floor next door. The building also houses an auditorium where events are held for both locals and international visitors.
In this way, Onitsuka Tiger’s Innovative Factory is a reflection of the brand as a whole, tangibly demonstrating its delicate approach to self-aware growth. While this is a craft-focused sneaker factory tasked with upholding Onitsuka Tiger’s most popular product, it’s simultaneously a source of newness, which has in turn inspired fresh ventures that include perfume and those fashion shows in Milan. No other footwear brand is doing what Onitsuka Tiger does and customers are clearly interested, with profits going up tenfold between 2019 and 2025, hitting ¥48 billion (over $303 million).
“The core of the brand is footwear. The footwear is one of the things that we don't want to change,” asserts Shoda. “There are some elements that we want to change, we want to grow. We’re always looking for things that other brands don't do.”
