#9/ Small Talk with Nuno from the Ripple Collective

So, special edition of the small talk podcast, which I don't know how it's going to go for the user you're doing the introduction, which is a little welcome to small talk, but today you're being interviewed. So, it doesn't work. So, do you still want to do the introduction or should I do the introduction? You can do the introduction. I can just tell. Okay. You tell me how to do it. So, I say welcome to small talk, and then I introduce a guest today, which is no other topic. The founder and CEO of the RippleBlective, which is slash Fabrica, found central and lots of other things. And to special edition, because we're sitting in our space in Tokyo and AOMA, that's correct right? AOMA, discreet. And I guess, so I don't speak too much, you can, well, I don't know if you need to introduce yourself. You can tell us, tell the listeners why we're sitting in Tokyo and set the scene a little bit where we're sitting. Hi. We're sitting in the first floor, as they say in Japan, which is ground floor for us in the UE. Very weird. The first floor of our space in AOMA, a neighborhood where we have a working, co-working, sharing shared working space, plus some exhibition also for our products from Abu Dhabi here. And we are here because we decided, probably nine months ago, to come on this adventure, if testing something completely different to continue this journey of development of the Repo Collective Mission, if you want. And I think, as we always say, when we introduce this, we have no idea if this is going to work or not. So it's week one. I think we're just ending now. Week one of after opening the space and I think we're confident that it's going to work. But yeah, this is pretty much where we are today. It's Sunday. I'm about to jump on a flight back home and you are going to stay here. Yeah. So let's talk about the nine months ago moment before we try and unpack what we're doing here, how did the idea open a space first pop into your head and where did it come from? Look, I travel a lot along and with the family for many, many years. I travel with a team. I traveled with you to many different places around the world. And there are places where you are visiting and you say, yeah, it was cool, but done. There's no reason to come back or even if I come back is for something specific, but I don't want to come back and explore anymore. But there are other places that it doesn't matter how many times you go, you always have the feeling that that place has a lot to offer, sometimes personally, sometimes professionally. And I think Tokyo, Japan in general, but Tokyo specifically, we always have this feeling which is when we're leaving, getting on the taxi to the airport, we're like, I wish I visited this place. I wish I spoke with that person. I wish I, you know, I took that picture, you know, like, and that's point number one. So it's almost an unfinished business. And the other one is the fact that it's one of the places where we feel that what we listen, what we see, the conversations we have, the pictures we take. It's one of the places that we feel that it's more useful back home. So it feels like the things that we grab here, we can with some tweaks, benefits almost immediately from them in Abu Dhabi. So we were coming, so we started this new chapter, which happened in April 2023 when we came post COVID. So it was one of the last countries to open after COVID. And we came to do this dream trip to Ishinomaki to visit our friends in Ishinomaki laboratory. And since then, I've been coming so 23, I came two times, 24, I came four times and 25, it's already probably the sixth time that I came. And we bought the Ishinomaki guys to Abu Dhabi 24. So after your trip, your first trip. We bought the Ishinomaki guys in 2023, 23, so they were the first ones. I became in April and I think May, June, they were in Abu Dhabi, they were in Abu Dhabi. And in fact, every year of final draft since then, we have been having Japanese people, not only speaking but collaborating and participating. So this relationship with Japan became more than just nice, became a little bit deeper. So what happened was it started getting deeper and deeper and deeper. And in the beginning of the year, when I came with Marta or Juana, I don't remember, I had the feeling what if we would have a presence here that would allow us to take this relationship to the next level, which would be going deeper and stop just absorbing the superficial components of going to places and seeing people casually. But going really deeper and really understanding what is behind the Japanese contemporary design identity that could teach us something and give us something to take back home. So that was kind of the idea behind nine months ago when we said, okay, let's do this season one. So that's one of the questions of the outposts. Let's create a place. I started thinking about the name and it was not an office then we thought about using a chapter, the Tokyo chapter, but chapter feels like it's another chapter of what's happening in Abu Dhabi. That's not the case. We thought about design embassy. There were several names and then outpost felt better, felt like, okay, so it's one of our outposts. We're both really going to have more English. And we've been practicing introduction, spiel over the last few days to explain what this is. And you keep mentioning a place to go deeper to take things back to Abu Dhabi, how does Abu Dhabi benefit from this, how does our team benefit from and how does Abu Dhabi and general benefit from us being here? So the introduction we give to people here in Tokyo and even in Abu Dhabi when we try to explain what are we doing here, is not easy, has not been easy. Very darn it, really, no, because we don't really know. But also because I think that every day we change our mind, I think since we opened the space on Monday or Tuesday last week, we have been having different conversations about different ways of using the space. But we know that it's constant and doesn't change is the purpose of this space, the main purpose. There are multiple purposes. There are different tracks, if you want, of this highway, but there's a main track. And that main track is that this is a place, it's a door to bring knowledge to all of the way. So the main reason and that didn't change, even knowing that it might be a little bit vague and then where we change our mind is on the how, how to bring that knowledge. But the why didn't change, which is, we believe that Japan and Tokyo specifically is an incredible source, very intense, very deep source of design information, culture information that we want to bring to our team. We can't bring our whole team here. So we found a way of taking this to our team. My trips to Japan are, even if I make a big effort to share them with our team, which sometimes I do, sometimes I don't, it's unfair because best case scenario I share 3% of what happened here. The conversations are lost, the visits to places are lost. So I keep them and the people that travel with me keep them, but it's a very tiny percentage of organ. So we wanted to make sure that places like Japan would be more beneficial to our team and that didn't change. What has been changing over the last days is as we open the door, as people come in, as we go to events of the design week, as we keep meeting people, we are changing the [BLANK_AUDIO] How, you know, more exhibitions, less exhibitions, more workshops, less workshops, more books, less books. So we, the way, and I don't think it will be stabilized anytime soon. I think you are staying here two more weeks after I leave and I'm sure over the next week you'll have a lot of insights that will change it again on the how. But the why is this is the door of knowledge to expose, it's almost like, imagine, I, you know, those solar parks that we have in the UAE where we have these mirrors and the sun is reflected towards where you want. It's almost like the repel, the outpost is a mirror that we used to reflect these great things that the Japanese to offer us directly into Abu Dhabi. And so many questions on ask, but without any real order to the questions, what is the best design, crafting, creative stuff that could be reflected to Abu Dhabi? Like, what do you see when you look around and you go, we need that, um, listen or that insight or that way of working? Like, what do you see? I could give, I, there's the short answer and the longer I could give the, the one, the answer that everybody expects, which is, you know, the pragmatism of the Japanese design, you know, the efficiency of their design, uh, the honesty of their design, you know, the fact that they are not trying to please anyone with what they're doing, but they're doing it well because they believe that they should do it well. So those are the things that we all know and the reason why so many people from the UAE keep, keep coming, um, here, the deeper, the deeper question, the, the deeper answer, the longer answer has to do with this search of how did they get here because they were not like this. Yeah. So they were not like this. And yesterday, me and you, we were at this talk that we didn't understand anything. They were saying because it was in Japanese, but we had these, um, people that we spoke with. Um, there was this, this guy that was, uh, we were, we were talking about the contemporary expression of Japanese design that is contemporary, you know, this minimalism didn't exist 100 years ago, you know, and 500 years ago, even, even more, you know, the summarize were the least minimalistic, at least in terms of design, maybe in the way they lived, uh, but not in terms of design. So what, what I'm really interested is to go as deep as I can in understanding how did they get, got here and how did they get here and how it was so effortless, um, to reach this synthesis of their identity in a way that everybody around the world sees a Japanese tool or they see a Japanese building or they see a Japanese, you know, accessory and they say, that's Japanese. Without any reference to it. And we're not talking about sushi, we're not talking about the Japanese temple. Uh, yeah. We're talking about a, a stool, we're talking about a concrete wall and everybody and that's what I'm really curious. And it's, that's even funny because we were talking yesterday. There's like zero effort on anyone with met in Tokyo and maybe Japan and general to communicate that outside of Japan, like they don't care. It's not like there's a massive media campaign underway to export Japanese design. It's just that's how they live it and do it. And then you come here and you like, it's all, I say, it's even worse than that. I think that they don't want to export, you know, I, I, I, the feeling that I have and you saw it when we speak with some people say, do you want to come to Abu Dhabi? Do you want to bring your brother? You know, let's see. There's, that's, that's, that's why it's so interesting is that the design is not a selling pitch. It's not, uh, it's not the facade to look good and for a bunch of people to get it, you know, um, we are fortunate enough, um, to deal with, um, Japanese designers on a regular basis and to represent brands to the fans in Abu Dhabi, to know a little bit more. But even those how long it took for us to get their trust and to get them to say, okay, sure. No, I trust you. We can go to Abu Dhabi. But there's literally that that's the beauty of this, it's that all this that way identify as their contemporary design identity, it's so, it's so intrinsic in the way they express themselves. You know, we, one of the things that for me, it's, it's a great example of that is if you go to a street of Tokyo on a weekday morning and you stop on a, on a street and you just look for five minutes for the people crossing in front of you, 99% of them are wearing black or white or gray or best case on air beige, yeah, you know, and that's it. Every 30 seconds, there's a guy with a color showing by, but so I don't think anyone told them to look cool, you know, I don't think when they pick up the beautiful blazers with the white t-shirt and they're like, what do they, I'm going to look cool. Yeah. You know, it's literally, this is how I express, but that's an effortlessness, effortlessness. You're talking about as I, they don't seem to consider being stylish, but somehow they just like in the dress, what they wear, they're just effortlessly stylish. Yeah, I think probably for us, because we as a company also are very stylish. I was, I wish I wouldn't say that, but we as a company value minimalism and in value that style, because maybe some people might not find that style, I think everybody finds that stylish, they might not find their style, but I think everybody looks at a simple Japanese garment and they're like, oh, that's cool. Amazing. And, you know, I think the three words that we use so often in, to describe what we would like to be the Abu Dhabi design identity, the timeless elegant and sophisticated, you know, all of the, that applies here. Yeah, so, so you see that elegance, I think, you know, you don't, everybody looks elegant. And the most simple, you know, person walking on the surface looks elegant, because they are so, you know, careful in how the composition is made, they also are very sophisticated. And you feel that those pieces could last forever. You know, you buy one of those pieces and it has nothing to do with cost, has nothing to do with brands. You rarely see, I rarely see a Japanese person carrying a brand, a logo, you know, it's very, very rare. You don't distinguish a mugee from a brother, you know, it's like whatever, it's a black jacket, you know. But that's one thing that's been really interesting for me, because I remember texting you. What's happened to you on the, like the first day I was here and saying to you that, oh, this makes sense now, because I'd never been to Tokyo before. And I was like, oh, yeah, like, no, no, must know what he's doing, hopefully, like, it seems like a cool idea to go to Japan, but I had no reference, no real reference, apart from Google for Japan and Japanese design. And then as soon as I stood in our neighborhood where we are now, and I'll try and put a Google pin on the, on the podcast link thing, maybe so you can see where we actually are sitting. Like it all became clear, because you could look around and see things like the signage, which is super minimal, super clean. Like there's no, maybe in Shibuya, we have all the crazy neon and stuff. That's different, but in this neighborhood, even the pride is in the bosses and all these crazy big stores brands, super effortless and relaxed and the way they are in a shout, a known shout to the world, and you look around and you're like, oh, this makes perfect sense, because it's not that no one stands out, but there's this baseline of consistency and elegance to everything on the design that all. And for me, what interests me more is, is, what is under that, because one of the things we learned in the fit out of our space here working with a Japanese contractor that barely speaks English, was that they are also that pragmatic in the way they do things. Not just, it's not just the outcome and the execution or what you see, but to weigh it with the pragmatism, we were joking around about how many breaks they had while they were doing the work. But yeah, in two days everything was done and it was very well done and it was not too much. It was just enough. It was, if anyone comes visit our space here, it looks good. It looks proposal, it looks like, but two weeks before I was here, designing the space with a Japanese architect on a napkin, with the contractor next to us, making decisions and two exploits it was built, and it's the same look and feel of those shops you're mentioning. Probably you can distinguish these from a high end brands around the corner. [BLANK_AUDIO] I think there's that, but then you look and do what is so beautiful that way of here in the other face. You know, the kind of material they used on the floor, on the carpet, it's not plastic, it's not, you know, like, it feels like this space could stay like this for the next hundred years. Yeah. Everything feels very natural and very grounded. And it was very funny because there was just three of us, myself, Michel and Joanna, we're here a week before you watching or trying to watch the space get built in the first, first two days, we just watched the contractors just look at the plans and that was it. And like, for six hours, just kind of move things around and we were really worried that it wasn't going to get done. And then in two days, they just like just did it, just completed it. And I think the decisions that were made, for example, the kind of material that was chosen for the floor, I kept getting messages from them about our natural I wanted to go and what was the system because we didn't know if one day we were going to move to a different place. And they were like, okay, we need to put something that we can remove and whatever. But for me, the reality is that, you know, we, the Airbnb where we were staying because we were staying longer this time, we rented a house and, you know, you look at that fit out and, and probably we wouldn't accept that fit out in the UE because everything is over done. Yeah. So you like you just put more layers and more layers and more layers and more layers. And you look at that house and it's so beautiful. It's so simple. Tatami on the floor, you know, like concrete walls and then the very pragmatic ceilings with all the infrastructure exposed, you know, the AC machine is not here and it's just there. And, you know, and you feel so good and it's so comfortable. And I think that's something that I would like a repo collective and slash specifically to bring more to Abu Dhabi's this sense of, we don't need to overdo it. We need to deliver on the vision. And, and we, we shouldn't be afraid that something looks simple because a lot of times we get these comments from our clients, oh, I looks too simple. Maybe you should add something on top of that, you know, it's too clean. It's too. And in the end, that's exactly what brought their identity to the place. Yeah, where they are. So explain this neighborhood a little bit then because assuming that a lot of people listening haven't been to Tokyo, why did we choose this space in AOMA and what's around us? So I visited a lot of spaces. Last time, not last time, I can't two times back, I came with Marta, we visited some spaces and then I kept the conversations with the real estate agents and our friends in, in Japan over the last six months, I think. And we had kind of, I had kind of shortlisted three locations if you want. So AOMA, which is where we are now, Omotesando AOMA, so the, the kind of Omotesando spine that comes up and connects to AOMA, even knowing that the Omotesando area is, is to be seen to commercial. Yeah. And, but there were some areas not far to the left of, so between Omotesando and Shibuya that we thought it would be interesting, but still very commercial. But that was, this area was my favorite. And the other one was Dakanayama, so where the, the T-sites, where the bookstore is, some embassies are also there and they pay same old shop and best, so I waited there this morning. Oh yeah. So we had the toast, toasty, really good, nice. So in the, the, the, the sandwich shop is by Nakameguro, which is the river, Yedakanao down. Well, they're cherry blossom, yes, and with the, yeah, and, and then the other option would be to go northeast where KG's office is, which is kind of a, a way quieter location, where a lot of cool shops are openings, studios are opening there, it's less busy. That was the other option. The reason why we chose here was because since the main purpose of this outpost is to expose our team to people and to conversations and to places and to shops and to museums. We felt that by being here, that was effortless because we're just surrounded by all of that. So literally, we work here, me and you last week and without any advertisement, without any people just come in, yeah, and they just ask about this because this neighborhood, we are surrounded by other galleries and other places. The issue with Nakameyama is that is really cool, really, really cool. We love that place, but there's less people walking by. We would need to be really close to the tea sites for that to exist. And the same thing with the north. If we would be opening a design studio in Tokyo, which is not the case, this is not the design studio, if we were opening a design studio in Tokyo, probably I would go to one of the other two sites because it's a little bit better for that quieter, for work and so on, but because the purpose is to expose our team and the people that are here, this was the best. And it's funny as you're talking about people looking, I keep looking over your shoulder because these people, no, a constant stream of people, we have a post up outside, which has the title of our season at Ripley to this year. This is a good thing to take time as Arawika has Japanese, which the Japanese was a chat GPT Japanese that I think we might have corrected before we enter print, but I hope so. It's on the wall and the shop front or the store front or the art post front is a massive glass window and heaves the people, just keep stopping taking photos of the poster, looking in the window, we've had quite a good flow of not random people because they're not random, but passes by, stopping and it'd be very, very curious about the word Abu Dhabi on the window and about what we're doing here, what do you think is interesting to have a little bit of Abu Dhabi displayed in Tokyo, like what does it mean to have our design language? More than interesting is fundamental, is part of our identity, we are very proud of being from Abu Dhabi, it became a fundamental part of who we are as a group of people and professionals. I can't say we lost all our Portuguese, you know, previous 40 years living in Portugal, but almost, I think we have committed ourselves to find this Emirati design identity and to put it in our, at least our version, of the Emirati design identity and put it in the work that we do. So it's fundamental when we open a space in Tokyo and we need to introduce ourselves to the people that walk in, that they know where we come from, why we love Abu Dhabi so much and what is Abu Dhabi? We, what we learned over the last three years of constant flux of people in and out of Abu Dhabi from Japan, visiting us, is that they don't know anything about Abu Dhabi at the Middle East and it would be really strange to open a space of a company from Abu Dhabi that wants to import, to absorb all the possible knowledge to Abu Dhabi from Japan and not say who we are from Abu Dhabi. So it is very, very important we have on our, on my left, on your right, a big poster with a picture of a lady from Gidfa and many other images around the space of crafts of the UAE and architecture of the UAE and it's very, very important. But not important, it's fundamental that we say where we come from which is Abu Dhabi. And let's talk a little bit about the triangle because that's why, one of the reasons why the space exists, we have on the wall, I'll, I'll try and attach a photo to the podcast small talk thing, but it's a triangle which has Abu Dhabi in the middle, it has Tokyo to the far right and then it has Copenhagen and the far left and like you said, there's a bunch of images, the design brochures, posters, notes starting to go up on this wall, it's like one of those detective scenes from a movie where someone's being kidnapped and we've got to figure out who it is, but without the kidnapped people and we're not detectives. But why do you say no way we are detectives because we're trying to figure something out? What's, what's this triangle, what's the theory and what are we doing to try and solve the mystery? Look, this, this is not an academic exercise, this is not, we're not hoping to write a white paper, we're not, you know, that, we're not confirming the, the confirming the Japan thing that everybody talks about, festivals, which, by the way, I learned that people in Japan don't, don't like that and I think maybe also in Scandinavia, it's a very interesting approach to the, to that connection between Japan and Scandinavia. So we're not any of that. So the triangle is because over the last, I would say, most five years, but maybe in the last 15 years since we're in the UE. Very naturally, without any effort, without any strategy to do it. We found out that both Japan and Nordic countries, not all Scandinavia, have been a really good source of inspiration for our design, being it architecture, product design, graphic design and so on. So we very naturally keep going to those places to get fads by them and then we took it to the next level by going to the design weeks, inviting people from those places to come and work with us in Abu Dhabi, representing brands from those places in it found. So very naturally, we realized that connection was happening. Now, there was a flip moment where we said, wait, wait, wait, wait, if this is happening without effort, maybe we should put some effort in it. And we start kind of manipulating that triangle in our favor if you want. So we started saying, okay, so let's say that it's real, that inspiration and that just make it official. Now we would like to justify things at RIPO Collective, we would like to have a strategy to support our decisions. And these may, when we were having a final draft, was having a very interesting, a lot of very interesting conversations as usually with Chatil, the founder of Snowhead, in fact, I think we were recording this same podcast with him, and you're off. And I started explaining to Chatil about the plan to open Tokyo, the decision was made and also to open Copenhagen in the future. And I was explaining him the connection between these identities and how we were targeting to bring a little bit of that framework that works for Tokyo for Japan and Scandinavia to us. And he told me, no, no, it's not completely nonsense because there are a couple of things that can justify that connection. And he mentioned the word that he mentioned was scarcity, which when he mentioned the word for me was like, I don't understand, it doesn't make sense, it felt like none of these countries has any kind of scarcity, so why? And then he explained that, and I'm oversimplifying for the sake of the podcast. But in a few words, what he said was that the current design identities of these places that we take as references came from scarcity. So it was not a design exercise, it was not, let's put, let's see it all together and decide that concrete is cool, or let's see it all together and decide that would minimalistic use of you would is cool. In both cases, their current identity came from crisis, I don't know if it's the right word, but if we think that, you know, 100 years ago, houses in Japan were much closer to the temple kind of building, you know, the very adorns, you know, ornamented in very decorated, you know, houses. And now we are doing minimalistic concrete and wood and how we got there was through all the challenges that Japan went through in the 20th century, including, you know, new regulations on construction, because wood was dangerous for fires and stuff like that and then concrete came on. But what is interesting is that that scarcity of materials on the post war, that scarcity of import goods, that scarcity of tools and labor and, you know, ishinomaki laboratory is the best example of that, you know, this is 2011, it's not scarcity time, you know, so it's, it's, it's, it's when a tsunami had, well tsunami hit Ishinomak or the east coast and then Ishinomaki was one of the most hit cities. And when you look at it, you know, the way they rebuilt the city was by putting their heads down and say, okay, let's do this, we need to do this. And when people came to help in this case, KG and his crew to come and do, they did it in the most pragmatic possible way, which is using, you know, two by fours and two by six pieces of wood and just building furniture. But he did it in such a beautiful way and in such a timeless way, effortless way, if you want, so much so that became a brand and today we, we represented brand in, in the UE. But again, scarcity, the moment of crisis led to this creativity, yes. So there was this almost painful process to get, to get to that and if you think about Scandinavian, you think about the Vikings were not minimalistic people in their expression of design, yes, so, you know, the helmets and the, sorry, the hats or helmets, I don't know what I think it was a helmet, that they're clothes, the hairstyles, you know, all that stuff. It was quite complex. And then we get to a 20th century that, you know, with a lot of, at the beginning of the 20th century, with a lot of changes in, in Norway, in Sweden, in Finland that was between Russian and, and Sweden and going back and forth and back and forth. And then they have to start the country from scratch and they do it from scarcity, you know, in a very extreme environment. And they had to, they have to just use what they have and what do they have? They have wood and then they, and they needed houses and they were quite pragmatic in the way they use it. In fact, Finland's specificity is super interesting because in our last trip, to my last trip, to the Venice Biennale, their, their, their, their pavilion was explaining their shabby house, you know, your version of the shiny house and yeah, which was very similar to the shabby house because it was modular, it was very pragmatic and it was modular also because of, okay, we need to build the houses as soon as possible for our family, but, but we know that we need it to be adaptable. So we need to make sure that obviously the materials were completely different than the shabby house, but, but the principle was there. So, Chatelle helped us create this connection that, well, if you then you go to the UAE, to the original moment of creation of the country. So the, the pre foundation of the country, pre 70s and, and then the beginning of the 70s, in theory, not in theory, it was, there was scarcity of materials. There was scarcity of labor, there was scarcity of architects, there was scarcity of everything. And in reality, that, you know, that, that initial kick in the construction of, of, of, in kickoff in the construction of the country was kind of a patchwork in the sense that yes, we had the division of his highness, shexia, that was very pragmatic in, not, not pragmatic. It was very clear in the way of what you wanted. But then the resources to build that vision were what they were, you know, it was, and so there was scarcity. It was not the bandits. It was not like you had all the materials in the world available in Abu Dhabi. You had all the architects in the world in the Abu Dhabi. So that was the, the, the connection that we kind of are using now for these three dots on this triangle that you mentioned that you see here on the wall. And that we're trying to understand, in our case, obviously, we are coming from a moment of abundance, you know, which were, you know, the last 30, 40 years in the UAE where there's a lot and, and maybe that abundance led to a little bit of delusion of the identity in many different expressions that happened, that happened over these decades. But now I think what we feel at, especially at slash, but not only at slash, at rupe, at the whole group of collective is that there's this search for what is the future representation of this identity in the UAE? What will be that synthesis in 100 years time when we sit, not me, but maybe our grandchildren, you know, doing this podcast and they talk about, you know, the design identity of the UAE. I think everybody in the UAE wants something that lasts independently. We might not agree in the execution of that identity. And I think everybody wants a first and I did it that lasts second and I did it that is recognizable because I think that's the beauty of Japan and Scandinavia's identities that when you look at it, you say, oh, that's Japanese or that's Scandinavian places. So imagine the dream of, in 30 years, someone seeing something and they say, oh, that's Emirati, you know, all called that would be, yeah, as, yeah, and I think you and I were both in the room for the same conversation of someone special from the UAE who said, made the comment that kind of Emirates were the original minimalist because everyone's in a desert, you can kind of only carry what you can fit on your camel and that approach to life of not having a lot, but making the best use of what you have that's aligned to the Japan and the line was, was Scandinavia's all, yeah, I think, yeah, no doubt about that. I think, look, I think there is a correction going on. We feel that with a lot of young emeritus that we are our friends and we collaborate with and we work with. That there's a correction in terms of K, we went through the. So we are fortunate to live in a blessed society in the UAE where we have enough for us and for our families. And we probably went through a period where we were enjoying that abundance maybe in not with a very clear identity. And I think now there's a correction and what do we feel in the new architecture that is happening already in a lot of the neighborhoods in Abu Dhabi in the way people express themselves in design. That the muggies are becoming more popular, IKEA is becoming more popular and by the way Mouji and IKEA, which are probably two of the biggest references. And we have in terms of affordable design in Abu Dhabi, one is Scandinavian, the other one is Japanese, and found we see with fond the amount of people that are interested in this kind of design. And it's funny how the amount of crafts people and designers are met even in the last week here who have no concept that people in Abu Dhabi or the UAE could be interested in their work. We met a guy the other day, a guy at a studio who had this amazing system of household goods made from wood that you could attach to a wall hanging system, super practical, super cool. And we're kind of saying, I have to be amazing in Abu Dhabi, imagine if the house has had this. And he was kind of almost confused like people outside of here would enjoy this, which goes back to the export thing of, I guess, them not the Japanese people, not realizing how amazing this place is. I think, look, one of the things that people that are listening to this podcast might notice is that we say Abu Dhabi a lot, we don't say UAE a lot. And I think that it's on purpose because Slash is a company or a group of companies from Abu Dhabi. Yes, Abu Dhabi is in the UAE and we are very proud to be part of the country UAE. But the reality is when you refer to the US, you don't say, oh, can I bring this brand back to the US? You say, can I bring to New York or can I bring to LA or can I bring to Miami? If you talk about Scandinavia, you don't say, can I bring this brand back to Sweden? You say, can I bring it to Stockholm or to Malmo? So I think also the beauty of the UAE is that even knowing that geographically is a small country, the cities and the Emirates have their identities, which is such a beautiful thing, it's a strength, not a weakness. So in our case specifically, I think that because Dubai has the merit, huge merit of creating such an iconic identity over the last years, that everybody around the world, I was just watching, not watching, reading sufferings, tourist, best cities to visit in the world. And Dubai has been growing every year, and now I think it's in the top three world wide. And why? Because Dubai developed an identity that it's so recognizable and that people around the world want to know, that's right. Now that's not what we are talking about here in the ripple collective and in the ripple outpost in Tokyo, we're talking about Abu Dhabi and the identity of Abu Dhabi. And that's where I think we hope also to do a little bit, one of our three main themes for our outpost is design diplomacy. And we hope to do a little bit of design diplomacy here on explaining to people in Tokyo, what we as ripple collective, we don't speak on behalf of Abu Dhabi, but we speak on behalf of the ripple collective. And what we would like to bring to Abu Dhabi through our channels, and that's where they get confused. Like would this work totally work? And just to finish up, and this is a little bit different, but you just mentioned people here not really understanding what we're doing. Mostly because we also are super clear about it in practical terms, but we've mentioned a few times of this been a terrible business decision, as far as like spending all the money we've spent on getting a space, sending people here establishing this is not a good business decision if we were trying to make money, but can you as a CEO, as the person who kind of push the decision to come here, explain why you think it's such a good decision, like why you're willing to invest the money in this space. So one of the most fundamental components of our identity as a company, as a business, is thinking long term. So that's a fundamental couple, which goes against the current way of doing business. And everybody wants to return on investment very quickly, everybody wants, you know, they measure success mostly through B&L. We as a company need to have profit, it's fundamental. Without profit, we're not healthy as a company. We can't provide for our team, for the shareholders, we can't, you know, open a design outpost in Tokyo. We need to make money, but we make money as a consequence of thinking long term. So that's a fundamental component. No, when we all the great decisions, all the best decisions we made over the last 30 years of repo collective were the long term ones, not the short term ones. Usually short term ones are patches are just, okay, we need to solve a problem very quickly, go solve it next. But moving to the UAE was exactly the same thing. When I visited the UAE in January 2010, and I said to George and Martha, and I said, okay, we're going to open an office in the UAE. We didn't make any sense. We were so happy and so healthy and wealthy in Portugal and Angola back then. And we were doing well, you know, like why are you doing that? And then we realized how important that decision ended up to find our home as we found. And here is completely different because we are not opening an office as we open in the UAE. We are not opening, you know, we're not planning to work in in Japan. This is a door for Abu Dhabi, but if we think long term, the most valuable assets of our companies, our people by far. So the computers, you buy new ones, offices, you rent new ones or build new ones, our people is the most important asset that we have. That delivers on that long term vision. No, the UAE and specifically Abu Dhabi because of its younger, young age, and knowing the unbelievable effort that the leadership in Abu Dhabi has been doing to bring culture to Abu Dhabi. And you know, just in one week we have the naturalist and museum opening we have in two weeks, the national museum opening in one year, the Google and I'm opening. Even knowing all that effort, what we know is that our designers, our people, not only the designers, are in an island, literally, but also non-literally, where getting access to Japanese design, to Scandinavia design is a luxury. It's not something that everybody from our team can say, okay, so next vocation, I'm going to talk to you, spend a month in Tokyo learning, you know. So when we made this investment, and this is an investment, this is not a spending, it's above all an investment in development of our team. What will happen is that our team will benefit from, you know, coming here, not all of them will come here, but I hope a lot of them will come here. They will benefit from the people that we're meeting here, that we're going to take to Abu Dhabi, and we are already taking them to Abu Dhabi to speak in our events, to collaborate in projects with us. They will benefit from the constant connection and the brands that font brings in, and the craftspeople that fabric brings in. So this is an investment in development. So the KPI, the way we measure success of the outpost is not by number of visitors, is not by revenue, but it's by how much reach our people will be, how much reach our people will be. Because of this, you know, going back to the analogy, I told you of the mirror that reflects this energy, you know, what happens in the solar parks is that not only you target the Sun. Yeah, so you choose exactly if well, and you say I want the sunlight, the beam to go exactly to that location, but also you amplify the Sun beam. So the Sun beam, after hitting the mirror, goes to the Sun beam. much stronger to the place where you're aiming at. Because the sun was already heating that spot. But it was not heating with that intensity. So this outpost is like that. So it's going to heat our studio and hopefully our city with much more energy than it was before. If Johnny would have come to Japan alone without the outpost, without, no, no, without what we are providing here, you would have a much weaker being. Yeah. I would have been a tourist looking on Google Maps and just randomly popping around the city. But now I'm in a way, I guess here for work, but I come with like a design lens on that makes me look at everything and then try and translate it into a set of insights. And I'm constantly thinking like, how does this make sense for Abu Dhabi? Or like how, not how with this copy of pace, go ahead, that conversation a lot as well as it's not being here is not to grab ideas, copy them and paste them onto Abu Dhabi. But it's to learn lessons that we can then adapt to Abu Dhabi and make sense. But it's a completely different way of experiencing Tokyo and Japan as being here with the outpost as the reason for being here. Yeah. And I think that, you know, the biggest outcome of that is the people that you're meeting, that there's no way it's completely impossible. You would have met any of them if you were here as a tourist. It wouldn't happen. No. So and you met in just speaking about the previous week, not the set up week, but in the previous week, easy 10, 15 people that are really cool contacts for us to bring stuff to. Yeah. Given away a lot of business cards, because I didn't think you were joking when you talked about the business card thing. I thought it was like kind of funny, every single introduction. It's not possible. It's just not possible. It's literally impossible. It's funny because we stop using business cards in Abu Dhabi with COVID. So I remember clearly that until COVID, we were printing regularly business cards and I had a three boxes that I used like once, like one card. But I was using mine. I was a lot pre pre-proved. Yeah. Then COVID was not cool to give business cards to people. So we stopped doing that. And since we recovered from COVID, we didn't give business cards anymore. So now we like give a number or that old phone or whatever, you know, it's done. Here, it's just not, it's just not possible. It's just every, every thing I go introduction is hi, my name's Johnny. And he's my guy. No, even before, yesterday I was noticing that with the guys that we met, several people in the same place, before they shake your hands, they give the business cards. And it's always three hands, two hands. Well, I learned something that we have been doing. So you need to face the letters. So yeah, I gave it a few times. You say with the black side and the slash. And as I was giving it, I was like, I know. Because what you saw is that we give the card. And then they shake your hair. Right. Yeah. Like the guys. Because the cards is the first day that you immediately go to the pocket. But it's a good thing because we were here to meet people above all. We're here to meet people and be a mount of people to a lot of cards we have in front of us. Yeah. No. Of people that we met is huge. And then you have to remember who the person was. Yeah, it is a big problem. Yeah. What the conversation is. Which is the value you're doing right, which is we need to write immediately on the business card. Yeah. Because yeah, the names are not easy for that tracking. Last question. What is the biggest challenge going to be in having an outpost for in general, but also for the people from our team that will be traveling? I would say that it's not one is many. And we will find challenges, I think, every week. I think most of the challenges are good, are not like bad challenges are good challenges. So I would say that the biggest challenge is being flexible in adapting to what we're going to find. Because we don't know this, you know, every single person, I don't want to say this is a world's first, but every single person, I talk about this, they said, I've never heard anything like this. I never heard the company saying that they're opening a place not to do business. Yeah, like not selling if they're not selling if they don't teach it, it's all and so on. So that I think is the biggest challenge is navigate this boat as as we are moving forward and and making being flexible and and lean and easy to adapt and adjust as we go, because we don't really know what we're doing and we need, if we are stubborn, we might not be very good for this. I would say that the first challenge is being extremely aware. I would say the second challenge is is guaranteeing that the influx of information gets to Abu Dhabi. And I think there's either we like it or not, the distance is a bottleneck. Yeah, so there's things being lost between the moment you meet a certain person, you get the business card, the business card, you start the connection. I would say you experienced this this week. How many of those conversations can you translate us to Abu Dhabi? And not even now, I think I've told you this. It's a privilege being here in Tokyo and I always feel like when I share stuff back with the team, because it's you always share the stuff. It's cool. I went to this exhibition and it was amazing. And you kind of feel like you're just giving your holiday photos back to the team. And even in Abu Dhabi is like, yeah, there's Johnny on holiday, like enjoying himself. And at some point, how much is too much for people to absorb without being here? How do you give enough context? I would say that time, as with everything in with Repo Collective, we'll solve that. Once you have 10 people in Abu Dhabi that have been here and spent time here, they will understand better when the input comes. So when they see a picture, they understand, oh, that's cool. So I think it's, again, this is not a sprint. We're not doing this to be here three months. It's not a pop-up. This is a long young lease. But this is a proper commitment that we're doing. And we believe that we don't know. I can't see clearly and focus what the end of the district is. I don't know exactly what will come. But I'm super confident that we are going to take, we, Repo Collective and we, Abu Dhabi, are going to take a lot of benefits from it. I hope that, for example, not only Repo Collective people, but also Abu Dhabi people. Yeah, I was just going to say that because it's not, it's a ripple collective space, but you've been very, very clear about the door being open for anyone. So what's the, what's the invitation to the Abu Dhabi community? And anyone from Abu Dhabi, from the UAE, but I would say mostly from Abu Dhabi, is welcome to use our space as if it's theirs. You know, we have a working space. We have a lot of dates. We have good coffee. We have internet. We have good people. And we would like that everybody, you know, Abu Dhabi feels comfortable to use this space as a place to hang out, as a place to study, as a place to work from. You know, there's students, there's a Marathi student studying in Tokyo. We would like to invite them to come and sit with us and spend time with us and can be just a casual conversation or can go all the way to, you know, collaborating, doing your exhibition, doing a talk, doing a panel, doing some research together, doing something together in Abu Dhabi after being here. So we hope that everybody feels this as a place that is kind of the informal design embassy of Abu Dhabi and that people can come and enjoy it. Yeah. Cool. So if you are listening to this and you're from Abu Dhabi and you're coming to Tokyo, we, well, you'll see the Google link, but we're right and downtown. One of the downtowns of Abu Dhabi, the doors open. Tokyo. Sorry, yeah. Well, we are also in Abu Dhabi. We have a much bigger stage in Abu Dhabi, but yeah, good, good correction or in Tokyo. Feel free to drop in. It is literally open door. You can message us on Instagram and be like, hey, can I come in and we'll say yes and tell you we might open because like weekends were not, for instance, but we could be. We could just open on a weekend if you want to come have a coffee. And that's the, that's the, that's the first step. So I have the website that you can go, which is Ripple Design Outpost.ai. Yep. And or go through the Ripple Collective website, slash, but you can also get more information there. And if you go to Google Maps and you write Ripple Design Outpost, it will show it. It will call that well. Yeah. Yes. And very quickly, because I can play it for God. Jonah, explain the exhibition downstairs. Yeah. So it was a very quick setup that we did and we wanted to use the theme that we're having in Abu Dhabi for this season of the good things take time. So what we did was we set up an exhibition of design pieces. brands that we love and admire and designers that we love and admire. That's a very, in a very tangible way, explain why good things take time. So we have from, you know, an original 1930s Artek Avaralto stool to, you know, Jean-Pauve, to an Emirati stool, that we brought from Abu Dhabi designed by Osholah that is inspired by the camel saddle. And we have also some Japanese pieces that are from our friend K.G. Ashizawa that we have downstairs, but it's more of an excuse to have a conversation than anything else. But yeah, we have it in our basement exhibition space. So that's here as well. So that's all the encouragement you need to visit us in Tokyo. And you can also visit us in Abu Dhabi too if you're growing the other way from Japan to Abu Dhabi. Actually, that's also another thing has happened a lot is we were talking earlier about not many people in Tokyo had any context for Abu Dhabi. Like no one seems to have been, even Dubai, it's not like maybe transit in the airport. So that's another really cool conversation that's been happening is invitations for people from here to visit Abu Dhabi and let us show you around. Let us show you where at the place we call home. So that's where an hour I'm going to stop. Well an hour and one in a perfect timing. Thank you for joining us. Usually now, if we were doing this in your office, everyone would like clap, but it's just you and me sitting in the outpost by ourselves. So yeah, that's it. Cool. Thank you. See you.