Established in 1995 COSPA is a pioneer and market leader for cosplay costumes and fashion apparel for the otaku fan base. The company has three main branches - Tablier Marketing, Tablier Communications and COSPA. Tablier Marketing is a promotions and planning company that manages its franchise otaku goods store Gee! Store, Cure maid cafe and wholesale business. Tablier Communications a media company that runs an internet radio station "Onsen" and an official fan club community site "BEWE". Finally, COSPA is the brand of the fashion apparel and company that manages several brands of cosplay costumes.

Having conquered the Japanese market, the company is set to expand overseas. Akibanana's Kiki interviews COSPA's founder Yoshiyuki Matsunaga to learn about COSPA's history, present and plans for the future.
 

Kiki: How did you start up COSPA?
Matsunaga: Before starting up COSPA, I was in the fashion business handling overseas marketing and I realised that anime characters were well-received, especially at clubs. But I didnt think about setting up Cospa back then. The thought did came across my mind that Japanese fashion using characters from anime and manga would be acceptable overseas but that was because I was involved in overseas marketing so all i thought about was the overseas market.

The trigger came about when I visited comiket 15 years ago. I started interacting with Doujin and saw their works and started wondering what kind of things these people would like. The fan's love and passion for anime and characters was overwhelming and I was touched. That was when I thought of making fashion apparels for the fans.

So comiket changed my mind. All the while I was thinking of the global market but comiket made me focus on the Japanese market instead. Then I thought, what can I do? It was not hard to find the answer; I decided to make character costumes.

K: How did you come up with the company name?
M: In the early 1990s, there was a kind of party called "Costume play party", which is something like a Halloween party but not on Halloween itself. In abbreviated Japanese such parties are called cospa in Katakana and they were all the rage in 1994.

K: Who invented these parties?
M: The former CEO of brocolli, Kitani and I invented the party. Initially he wanted the name "Cosplay Castle" but I insisted on "Costume Play Party" and since I was the producer of the event, the event name was decided on "Costume Play Party". Our company is also called COSPA but it is spelt in English and it stands for Costume Paradise.

K: So the both of you organised the parties together?
M: Yes, both of us started it together although Kitani-san has his own company and couldnt use his company name so I became the producer but the host is Brocolli's Kitani.

K: How was the response at the first party? Where was it held?
M: The first time we held the party, we managed to gather 650 people and at first we planned to use "Julianna Tokyo" a major disco at Minato-ku but it suddenly closed down so we had no choice but to quickly find another venue. We managed to secure a club called "Shibaura Gold" but since its schedule was already packed, we could only do it on its gay night. How it works is that the gay night events start from evening to late night so we held our costume parties from morning, about 10am to around 4pm in the afternoon.

K: Wow.. 650? That's a lot of people!
M: The second time 1000 people came!

K: How did you managed to gather so much people, what kind of promotions did you do?
M: Kitani-san helped to distribute flyers at his stores while my partner and the current president of COSPA, Hashimoto and I actually distributed flyers at Doujinshi events which were mostly held at Sunshine City.

K: Haha.. I'm trying to imagine the both of you doing that! So how long did the party lasted?
M: It lasted for about seven years, until 2002 I think. We stopped because cosplay events had become common place so there was no need for us to do it anymore. We wanted every weekend to be halloween!

K: What kind of music do they play at such parties?
M: Anime dance remix. Imagine anisongs remixed to sound like club music. We asked the DJ to play such songs. There are also otaku DJs around you know.

K: What about the costumes that the people wore? How were they like?
M: It was quite terrible to tell the truth but people just wanted to enjoy making it and wearing it. That was why we opened a costume shop at Shibuya's Dogenzaka near the stretch of road full of clubs. We wanted to make costumes for those who go to the costume play parties.

 

K: I still can't get over the fact that the party starts in the morning.. What about lunch?
M: Yeah we provided lunch.

K: And do people go to the clubs in costumes or they change at the club?
M: Oh, we made proper arrangements for that. We set up a place for people to change, small rooms with a full-length mirror in each.

K: So how did you gather your initial founding members?
M: The president, Hashimoto is my buddy and the rest I found them at our cosplay events. Two of our directors actually came to the first two cosplay event.

K: Wow.. that's cool, how did you spot them?
M: One of them was wearing a black T-shirt with the blue sailormoon character Amichan on it. That T-shirt was DIYed; he first did the outline of the character and then filled in the center with a very complicated and perhaps most painstaking sewing technique. I was in the fashion industry so I knew the difficulty of using that technique so I went up and spoke to him. He was surprised that I knew and glad that I appreciated it. Then I asked him what was he doing and he said he just graduated from school where he studied CG and I told him, come to our company tomorrow. The next day, he came and he joined us there and then. Yousuke Wada our current vice-president is also the third member of COSPA.
 

 

 

K: Haha.. that's interesting. How about Yamaken?
M: Yamaken is our internet radio host and producer and he created Onsen the internet radio division. He cosplayed at our event and wanted to work in our company so he part-timed with us at first. He was good at illustration and we needed a designer for our anime character T-shirt so we asked him to design the T-shirts. Because of that, he mastered illustrator and photoshop in one week in order to complete the mission!

K: One week??
M: Yes, he is amazing and until now we often joke about that to new staff. It is actually possible to master illustrator and photoshop in one week since Yamaken has achieved it before. Even today he is in charge of our 2D moe-kei designs. He is also the MC at our events and he is so good at MCing that he could probably survive on hosting alone. He became a pro somewhat unknowingly. Wow.. those were the days. Do you know that I have never told anyone about our history? Not even to the Japanese media so you are probably the first to know our history!

K: Really? We are honoured to know that; Akibanana is like an online museum that archives otaku's history so this is really important information for us! ^^ So initially, you only sold T-shirts and costumes?
M: Yes only those two and only at Shibuya. To be exact, we did costumes for half a year and then started doing T-shirts. Our first shirt was for Evangelion and we sold them immediately after it was aired on TV and suddenly our company shot to fame as our Eva T-shirts were a big hit. Soon after we made T-shirts for Gunbuster, Ram chan, Cashernn, Gundam etc. We were also good friends with game companies like Sega and we made costumes for their game show companions and clothes using game-related characters. Since we helped them make their official costumes we could also sell them at our store. Later on we made costumes for talents and musicians for stage, TV and movies.

K: What were the other milestones in COSPA's history.
M: We collaborated with the brand Beauty and Beast in 1999 and Koshino Michiko of Yen Jeans. Our clothes graced the catwalk stage in the 2000 Tokyo collection fashion show and soon after it appeared on fashion spreads in big fashion magazines all over the world.

K: When was Gee! Store created?
M: In 2000, the first store was born in Fukuoka and then followed by Osaka, Tokyo and Nagoya.

K: Cure maid cafe is the first maid cafe in Japan and the world, how did that come about?
M: At first the building that Gee!Store and Cure maid cafe currently occupies was owned by Brocolli and it housed their store called Gamers. Back then, they ran a semi-informal cosplay event cafe called "Pia Carrot". Later, they borrowed Cospa's name since it was a cosplay cafe and called it "Cafe De Cospa", making it sound  a bit French. But it ran like a school club and was only for a limited time. Later, they left and asked us to take over so Gee! Store took over the building. Then we did marketing research on what was in and waitress and maid PC games were popular so we combined the two to get the maid waitress. The waitress boom came from Anna Miller cafe.. I'm not sure about the maid.

K: What are your future plans for COSPA?
M: From this year we are expanding overseas. We are going to conventions and recruit as many retailers as possible worldwide. If you are reading this interview and want to become our partner please let Kiki know.

K: I'm sure you had enquiries from overseas in the past haven't you?
M: we had enquiries in the past but we weren't ready yet.. we had to cope with domestic market first but now we are ready.

K: How do you intend to sell your products overseas?
M: Our products are for people who love characters. So we want to sell only to people who love characters. From now we want to reach out more to these people, hopefully with the help of Akibanana, and we will continue to produce in smaller quantities in regular cycles as we always have. We only want to create for those who say they want our products that is why we do pre-orders and we don't mass produce. And that is not cheap so the more demand increases, the more we can produce in greater volumes and when that happens, we can bring down the cost and offer a better price for our products.

K: What are your current best-selling products?
M: The T-shirts have always been our best sellers but in recent years, cushions and bolsters (dakimakura), cosplay support goods, wigs, big towels, tote bags, figures and our onsen radio CD have been selling very well.

 

K: What new areas are you hoping to expand into?
M: We hope to create a women line and make more goods with famous characters overseas. We actually have rights to characters like Disney's Bambi and Germany's Maus in Japan.

K: What is your vision for COSPA in the next ten years?
M: We have always been a pioneer in this industry, leading innovation and expansion. We were the first to start and became number one in all the areas we have attempted; in cosplay parties, Onsen our 100% sponsored internet radio, Maid cafe, Costume and character apparel, fashion show for characteer apparel and so on. We were the first in Japan and the world in many areas so in future, whatever we may be doing we will continue to strive to be number one and give it our all to ensure we reach there!
 

See also: Cospatio Shibuya Hosts Making of the Akibanana Girls  and Maid Cafe Review: Cure Maid Cafe

Related Links: Tablier Marketing, COSPA, Bewe, Onsen