A well-deserved success!

I wish I could come to visit the shop one day!

(And I wouldn't complain having the whole Mokuhankan staff for me alone...)

Have you done an analysis of people who do come up the stairs? How many didn't know about you but were pulled in by your signage vs. how many planned to visit you in advance.

Well, we haven't got a 'clicker' counting everybody … no official 'analysis' going on here yet. It's a mix of three different types, and they are perhaps roughly equal in number:

1) people who hunt us up (internet fans, visitors to Japan who knew in advance that we are here, etc.)

2) people coming from nearby hotels/hostels, who have seen our pamphlet there

3) random off-the-street visitors

The first two types are pretty much exclusively foreigners, and the random visitors are both locals and visitors. Group 1) is going to steadily increase over time, especially as we become featured in guidebooks, etc. Group 2) will only increase to the extent that we are able to get the pamphlets in place, and that's not turning out to be easy. Small hostels love to have them, large hotels are not interested at all. Tourist bureaus all want payment (some considerable) for allowing our pamphlets to be in their racks. Group 3) will never increase as long as we are up on the 2nd floor, but we knew that when we started this; we'll just have to bide our time on that until we can wrangle the downstairs space.

So at the moment, our efforts are aimed at increasing Group 1) people, by trying to do what we can to get blog posts, feature stories, TV appearances, etc. etc. It's just going to be a slow - but hopefully steady - process ...

Dave, Are you thinking of using your beautiful wave print as signage for your store one day? It would look great on the front of the store.

signage …

My current thinking is not to do that, for a couple of reasons. One is that this image is already in use all over town, by all kinds of businesses that have nothing to do with woodblock printmaking. It is so generic, that it won't signify 'Print Shop!' to most people.

The other reason is related to something I was told one day many years ago, long before we ever considered having our own shop. I was talking to the owner of a shop that sold prints, and which was located near one of the older major hotels. He told me that over half of his entire sales income came from one particular image …

Now perhaps that's a reason for using it as our sign, but I would like to think - I may be mistaken - that we will be able to offer something more to the community than just this single item. (Although I fully admit that Hokusai did indeed help us out of a jam when we needed more money to build the shop last year!)

500,000! Now that's a print party!

Congrats!