NY Retail Minute: Muji's Simple & Serene In-store Experience

Two steps into Muji, and you’re somehow a world away from everything. 

The honking horns and bustling shopping traffic in Soho dissipates. The delightful but seedy sway of Hollywood Boulevard loosens its grip on you a bit.

You relax. For a second, you even might forget where you are.

Is Muji a retail store or a spa?!

A light eucalyptus-citrusy scent fills the air, thanks to aroma diffusers going at full blast. Am I on vacation? Is this a spa? No…it’s definitely a store, and although it’s packed full with a large assortment of products for all areas of the home, it still feels calm and serene. It’s a kind of place that inexplicably beckons you to whisper, like at a library, so you don’t dare interrupt the zen-like experience for others.

Muji has its clean, serene, and quiet aesthetic down and its core shopper in mind. Its tight focus on brightening every area of that customer’s life, led by a mission to produce quality goods, affords it the traits that are really popular with Gen Z. It’s a small store chain that big retailers could learn a lot from.

If you haven’t been to one of Muji’s 15 store locations—mostly in New York and California—let’s take a look around, shall we?

A simple, well-executed retail experience

As various signs around the store tell us, Muji is a Japanese retailer whose name roughly translates as “no-brand quality goods.” It’s been around since 1980.

Muji is a unique concept because it takes two words we hear thrown around a lot these days in the world of retail marketing—“lifestyle” and “experience”—and delivers on them in simple, well-executed ways.

Muji promises “a wide variety of good quality products,” and it delivers on that promise in ways that might surprise you. We’re talking stuff for school or your home office:

Kitchen…

Bedroom…

Closet…

Bathroom…

Even the utility and laundry room!

Muji even has its own line of skin care and bath products, and…things we’re not sure what they are—but look like they’d help to keep us really organized.

The product information is light but tells you just what you need to know.

Muji is like a Bed Bath & Beyond—but smaller—with all proprietary products. It’s like a Container Store…that sells clothing. Or, it’s like an H&M, where you can also pick up brooms, microfiber mops, and the cutest little notebooks and binders. Muji has a point of view for products for all areas in your life, and it wants to deliver them to you. Quietly.

Whether you find yourself close to a store or want to browse online, check it out and experience some of its unique “no-brand name” serenity for yourself.