Why this shop exists

Walk into a character-goods shop in Taipei and most of what is on the wall has never had a British stockist. Not rare things - ordinary, beloved things. An acrylic standee by an illustrator with thousands of readers. A phone charm somebody strung by hand that afternoon. Sticker flakes sold by weight out of a sack. A whole collecting culture, and no address in Britain to buy any of it from.

Japan is half-known here. The big franchises made it over; the small studios did not. The maker turning out one perfect run of can badges, the prefecture-only snack tin, the washi tape in a colourway that never leaves the country - those are the good bits, and they are exactly the bits that fall off the edge of the map somewhere over the Bay of Bengal.

The clothes are the other half of it, and the gap runs the same way. Barbour’s waxed cotton, made to be re-waxed rather than replaced. Westwood’s orb, and the cut underneath it. British labels a reader in Taipei knows the name of and cannot easily stand in front of - and, on the next rail, the pieces we draw ourselves.

Those are the gaps this shop was built into.

What we carry

Plush with weight in the base, so it sits up on a shelf rather than slumping like a bath toy. Sealed blind boxes, still sealed. Acrylic pieces by illustrators whose names we print instead of ours. Stationery too nice to write on. Snacks that only exist in one place. Four origins - Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Britain - each stated on the item, because where a thing was made is a fact about the thing, like its colour.

Most of the job, honestly, is refusal. A shop that will carry anything is a warehouse with a logo, and there are several of those already. What ends up on these shelves is a much shorter list than what could.

Both directions

The trade runs two ways. Character goods come into Britain, and British goods go out to Taiwan - the shop-floor things you can only pick up standing in the shop, and the clothing labels that never opened a counter there. Neither leg is a favour to the other. They are shelves picked for the people who will actually love them.

The rail we drew ourselves

Everything above is found - the character goods and the clothing labels alike. One rail is not: the cropped half-zip with pink ribbon lacing, the pinned wrap skirt, the flaming heart small enough that you have to be close to read it. It is the outfit the whole brand was shot in, and the one thing here we did not have to go looking for, because we drew it. Our own name is woven into the neck tape rather than printed across the chest.

Cute with teeth. That is the whole brief, on every shelf.