The Japanese retailer Muji is expected to open in November at the showpiece Harvard Square building that last hosted the women’s clothing store Anthropologie, said Harvard Square Business Association executive director Denise Jillson. An executive for the chain, senior manager for public relations and marketing Cindy Chen, confirmed Tuesday that it was “happy” to identify Cambridge as the home for a store opening in the fall.
Muji, founded in 1980, sells housewares and food products as well as clothing and furniture, all of which can make for handsome window displays for the award-winning, five-story 1968 glass-front building at 48 Brattle St. that acts as a colossal “display case,” as architectural critic Robert D. Campbell Jr. told the Harvard Crimson in 2008.
The product mix at Muji makes it a little less like Anthropologie, which was at the location from 2010 to Jan. 16, and a little more like the store that preceded it: Crate & Barrel, which stood as a pillar of neighborhood retail for three decades, from 1979 until its closing in 2009.
Crate & Barrel is a “global lifestyle brand” – and so is Muji, which creates Wirecutter-favorite $9 pajama trunks and a $2 grout brush that led Caroline Mullen, a writer for The New York Times review site, to rhapsodize: “Give me an hour and I could fill it with all the ways I love Muji, a store that sells Japanese-designed basics.”
The chain has a store on Boston’s Newbury Street that opened Jan. 27, 2017. It has embroidery service, an Aroma Bar (for fragrances and diffusers), Found Muji (a store within a store for an array of simple, everyday goods) and Muji Labo (a capsule fashion collection), according to the company. The Harvard Square store’s mix hasn’t been announced.
Muji’s long-form kanji characters are pronounced “Mujirushi Ryohin” and mean: “No-brand quality goods.”
“For Muji, the value of a product lies in itself and in the service it provides – not in the name written on it,” according to the company history, which describes the company as an answer to two trends of the decade it was founded: an influx of foreign-made luxury brands and answering wave of poor-quality, low-priced goods. The company has expanded to 7,000 products from a base of 40 on the principles of good materials and simple packaging.
“We have been credited with being ‘resource-saving,’ ‘low-priced,’ ‘simple,’ ‘anonymous’ and ‘nature-oriented.’ Without placing a disproportionate emphasis on any one of these varied assessments, Muji aims to live up to all,” the company explains.
The coming of Muji continues Harvard Square’s feel of an international destination. The Japanese superstore follows the arrival of Memory Shop, a photo booth experience that opened June 14 at 36 John F. Kennedy St. inspired by a trip to Vietnam; the opening Thursday of Miniso, a tchotchke shop – home goods, beauty products, toys and such – at 31 Brattle St.; and the square’s many ramen and boba tea shops. (Another tea shop with shaved ice desserts is taking over the old Ben & Jerry’s spot in the Garage Mall, sharing an address with Memory Shop, Jillson said.) H Mart grocery stores in Cambridge’s Central Square and Somerville’s Davis Square add an Asian influence to the area for the pantry, in stationery and home goods.
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SO so so excited for Muji!!! Just beyond happy that they didn’t fill that beautiful building with a bank or a Staples….