Business lessons from Kintsugi: Traditional Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold and silver. Written by Hue Chen

For 700 years the practice of Kintsugi been teaching the Japanese and the world very important lessons. Many of these lessons translate directly into our modern business world. Here are a couple:

• Accepting of the impermanence of our world including our shopping centers, retailers, partners, and companies. Nothing lasts forever, but it doesn't mean that things need to disappear. They can change, they can be enhanced.
• Building strength and resilience from struggles so powerful that we can literally break apart. The new form that emerges still bear the scars of what shatters us, but that new form is beautiful, it is stronger and has a new life.

Kintsugi is the practice of repairing broken pottery or glass with a lacquer mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum.

I first came across the term Kintsugi a few years ago when a friend shared an interesting meme on social media describing the practice. I saw the picture of the broken pottery that was reassembled with the pieces held together by gold, it really resonated with me.

To me, it made all the sense in the world.

• You have this wonderfully cherished bowl, perhaps it is a family heirloom or maybe something from your childhood.
• Nothing lasts forever and life happens, so it breaks.
• Instead of throwing it out, you put the pieces back together again.
• Instead of hiding the fact that it was broken you use gold, one of the most noticeable and valuable materials on the planet, to glue it back together.
• Once it is done you have the bowl again, 90% of it still has all of the same pieces of that cherished bowl however it is now more valuable, it is stronger, and it is completely UNIQUE.
• That re-emerged bowl, with all of its golden cracks filled is one of a kind. There is no other bowl with the same cracks on the planet. That makes it special and even more cherished.

I started seeing other forms of Kintsugi from Western Companies like Patagonia with their "Worn Wear Tour" campaign. This was a campaign where Patagonia took a travel van and went around the country repairing Patagonia clothing that had been ripped or otherwise broken. The repair would typically be made with a different color material to make that repair stand out. The results were beautiful. Little known fact, but I also repair some of my clothing, shoes, luggage, etc if I feel like it has more life in it.

We have become a society of disposability, we just throw things away. What do we value? Trends? Perhaps Kintsugi teaches us that we should accumulate quality and repair it if it's broken.

“The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.” – Hemingway

People

Life and leadership are full of struggles. We all get broken in one way or another in this life. It’s an unavoidable part of our lived experience.

• You may have gone bankrupt.
• You may have lost your house, your car, your job.
• You may have lost loved ones, friends, family, parents, children.
• You may have made a mistake that lost a paramount deal.
• You may have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, in front of the whole world, and missed.

There are so many instances where pieces of us get broken. The only question is:

Do you let the shattered pieces lay on the ground? Or do you pick up those pieces, put them back together again, become stronger and wiser and wear those failures on your sleeve like a badge of honor? Honor that you fell down but rose again.

Companies - Shopping Centers - Retail

I started in the retail real estate industry in the year 2000 before Amazon became the everything store. Back then Toys R Us, Circuit City, Bed Bath and Beyond were expanding! It was a different era in retail. Shopping centers had fewer restaurants and services, in fact there were often restrictions placed on shopping centers limiting their restaurants and services. Retail had to be soft-goods merchants. There was very little "mixed-use" especially if it meant bringing residential and retail together.

Then Amazon and e-commerce came and shattered retail as how we knew it.

Retail became an asset type that many investors shied away from, but that allowed for the prices of these assets to be obtained as very reasonable valued, low enough so that developers were able to put the pieces back together in a better way. One that was more sustainable and more diverse. Restaurants, entertainment, services and the like were starting to come into retail projects. Mixed-use started picking up and you saw more projects that had both retail and residential. Fast forward from the year 2000 to 2024, I would say that the retail projects today as a whole are much more sustainable, stronger and relevant.

This is an amazing Forbes Article on the subject:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2022/04/08/the-art-of-kintsugi-and-lessons-in-leadership/

For more articles please follow me Hue Chen (Retail CRE)

Hue Chen, President

Saglo Companies

Owner, operators of strip centers in the Southeast.