Today, Haraki made this announcement to the Japanese staff.

The dates may change a bit, as is often the way.......

Subject: Iron Heart plans leadership transition to Alex Padmore by 2029

Hello everyone,

Today, I have an important announcement to share with you regarding our near future.

In about two months, I will turn 70 years old. Taking this as a milestone, I wanted to share my future plans and the future of Iron Heart with all of you.
Three years from now, in 2029, I will step down as President of Iron Heart Co., Ltd. and welcome Alex from the UK as the new President.
After that, I will support the new president in the role of Chairman. However, regarding the company’s overall direction and daily operations, decisions will be made under the new president's judgment.

Of course, I want to avoid any abrupt changes within the company during this transition. Over the next three years, as we watch Iron Heart’s growth together with Alex, we will pass on the philosophy and commitment to craftsmanship that I have cherished, while gradually determining how the company should operate moving forward.

As a foundation for transitioning to this new structure, I want everyone to firmly embrace an idea I have always emphasized: "Iron Heart will thrive on its directly-managed stores."

Of course, the importance of our current operations—such as managing the newly established logistics warehouse in Kojima and wholesaling to select dealers—remains unchanged. Among these key operations, however, I want to build a solid operational system for our retail stores over the next three years based on that core belief.

Each store will manage its own product ordering, sales, and profit tracking, ultimately seeing how their work directly connects to their own income. In short, the goal is to create a system where each store operates as an independent profit center.
Once this system is established and I hand over Iron Heart Co., Ltd. to Alex, I plan to focus even more than ever on "making things" (product creation), based at Works Inc. Looking 5 to 10 years into Iron Heart’s future, I will continue creating products in whatever way I can and devote my energy to the brand's ongoing development.

Of course, nothing is going to change drastically starting tomorrow. Over the next three years, working alongside all of you, I want to build the future of Iron Heart step by step.

Though brief, today I shared something regarding our future that is extremely important to Iron Heart. Let’s continue working together to make Iron Heart an even better brand.

Thank you for your continued support.

============
Shinichi Haraki
WORKS INC

I sent a note of thanks to Haraki for placing so much trust in "our" son.

His reply: "Yes, Alex is my son"

My heart brimmeth over....

The simple fact is that we had to do something. As Alex tried to articulate in his communications, we have to do something, or Iron Heart as a company will probably break and disappear, If that happens then nobody can sell Iron Heart. That may sound like an exaggeration, but I assure you it is not.

Alex and Haraki have been trying to fix our supply chain issues in various ways for years, none of the initiatives had relieved the resultant problems. The fact that we still have not delivered all of FW25 is one small indication of the issues we are having.

This has been an awful few weeks, as we work out what to do, how best to make the changes needed with minimum negative impact to our (pretentious word alert) ecosystem. I am proud of Alex because he has had the guts to do something that whilst personally devastating, had to be done. I am not sure that I would have had the balls to do it.

Which is one of the reasons Paula and I handed the reins to Alex when we did.

The last thing he needs at the moment is shit from people who think that they know more than him, he has enough on his plate as it is.

IHSW-70-BLK
IHSW-80L-BLK

Izzy Goolsby in the 1 of 1 Kids type III. Many props to @Alex for indulging her.....

IHT-2504-WHT
IH-739-IND
Mojito's

H has been dropping hints for ages that he really likes the deck that @Bailey made for the IHUK office. So he made him one of his own.

The creation of the 14oz denim was discussed elsewhere recently, I thought it would be interesting to articulate how it came about in a dedicated thread. It's actually hard to quantify how important this story is with regards to the Iron Heart that you see today

It's quite a convoluted story, but it was very easy.

A couple of things happened at very similar times.

Firstly Haraki had launched a large seasonal collection for Triple Works. It was full of amazing stuff including a 14oz indigo denim jean. We were in Tokyo showing the collections (Iron Heart and Triple works) to our retailers. and If we were doing that, then it was a long time ago, The Clutch show in Yokohama basically put paid to what was a twice yearly pilgrimage to Tokyo with retailers to see the next seasons collections. As per norm back then, Haraki would host a dinner for the retailers, I was chatting to one of our larger retailers and asked him what he thought of the TW collection. He said that it was amazing, but that he would not buy any of it because he did not need the hassle of having another Works Inc brand and not knowing how to articulate the difference between IH and TW (to be fair, Haraki never satisfactorily explained the difference, thus nor could I - I made up a few things, but they all seemed forced and slightly bullshitty). I took Haraki upstairs for a chat and a smoke and with no hope of success explained the problem (I had been rooting for TW to be merged with IH for ages, but always got a hard no from H). To my utter amazement, he basically said "No problem, we will drop TW and merge it with IH". I needed smelling salts, not just a smoke at that point....

So that was the beginning of the story, lighter weight stuff would be made under the IH name.

The second key thing to happen was "The Great IHSH-101 and 102tg disaster". The outpouring of love and support we got for doing that recall was humbling and with comments such as "even the worse of these was better than some brands best efforts", I started to understand that people were buying us as much, if not more, for our quality than for heaviness of our fabrics. The next time I saw H, I explained my epiphany, and said that perhaps our tagline should change from "We never do light", to "We never do crap". After he had finished laughing, I said, so can we start making the 14oz as a core IH denim (expecting the usual hard no)? He said yes. More smelling salts needed.

These were both pivotal moments in the genesis of the brand you see now. And in point of fact, in both cases Haraki did not need a lot of persuading. It's difficult to describe how hard it is to keep on knocking on a closed Japanese door, but because I am thick skinned and stupid, I did keep trying, but it was always with a great deal of trepidation.

As you allude to Reuben, he did change the weft from single strand to twist double to make the 14oz more Iron Hearty. And that is what we have today.

Dear Forum Members,

My name is Bernadette and I am Mike (aka “Filthy”) Ogurchak’s mom. I wanted to let you know how much it means to me that you thought so much about Mike. Thank you not only for your thoughts about him but also for the things you donated and/or purchased for the auction. Mike was almost obsessed with Iron Heart clothing and he only wore Iron Heart jeans and usually shirts every day. Every time someone would visit, he would go into his production about Iron Heart clothes and about the Forum. You brought so much joy to his life. I received the medical examiner’s report on Mike’s autopsy this week and as expected, he died from heart disease. The official cause was “coronary dilated myopathy” which means the muscles of his heart were so thick, it obscured the blood flow. Since many of my relatives had similar problems, it was definitely hereditary. Your donation to the American Heart Association will help in the research to find a cause and cure for this. Please know that I think about and pray for all of you daily and hope that you will carry on Mike’s great love of Iron Heart. Your comradery is so touching.

Affectionately,

Bernadette

Took them for a dip...

@Karol Komodo, 2 dives in and gone from 4kg weights (my old BCD weight) to 2kg with my wings. Let’s see if I can get rid of more…

The tag def looks suspicious.

But, you can do a search for "N1" in jackets on the forum and look at the details of every one we have made

Well, that is a relief. I can pop to the next town if I need an ATM......

A lot of what I say is…..Deliberately…..

I’d need to see the arse to confirm or deny…..

@Denman-John said in WHAT ARE YOU DOING TODAY - WAYDT (PICS):

she is doing all the work while @endo stands around smoking a spliff

and wearing a great hat.....

Bali does have some redeeming features….

Layover in Denpasar, by choice I would avoid Bali like the plague, but it is the best routing to get where we are going, Komodo. I’m assuming these are water towers….

As a general point. You should state whether you are referring to a US or UK Brannock device when saying what size you are on a Brannock.

Depending upon tag size (which is consideration for all jeans), 666 will fit over engineer and cowboy boots.