Best posts made by Giles

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...

Paula got cold, so she nicked my jacket…..

Haraki's Iron Heart archive. Amazing, but still a work in progress.

@goosehd and @Tago-Mago have done a great job coming up with the idea for this and then working out the details. So, may thanks to them.

Theme Week March 2-6 - Show us What You've Got....

It’s time for a little fun showing off for the camera and to break the boredom of the winter blues. Starting on Monday 2nd March we will have a different theme for each day of the week. Creativity in your pictures is greatly appreciated. Some of the ideas we have are: adding family members, pets, and friends into those pictures for the day; athletic/action pictures; your day at work; or surprise us with your own ideas. We love seeing little glimpses into your daily lives and it makes it fun for all of us.

Here’s the theme for each day:

Monday - Your First Iron Heart item that started you into this denim adventure (bonus for rare and unique items)

Tuesday - Bad Taste/Fit (Combo’s that don’t work, but you think they do). Items too small, patterns that shouldn’t go together, or something you should never wear out of the house.

Wednesday - Pattern Day (Multiples of Wabash, Hickory, Duck, Denim, etc.) Examples such as Hickory Pants and Vest, All Black Denim, All Duck outfits, etc.

Thursday - Grail Day (Your favourite clothing item and it doesn’t have to be Iron Heart). We would love the hear the story behind it too, be a leather jacket to a favourite band t-shirt.

Friday - Fades and Flannel (Your most faded denim combined with your favourite flannel - the weight of which doesn’t matter).

Please join in and basically the more comments, the better.....

We are looking forward to what you guys come up with. No prizes, just laughter and love shared.

A question/comment was asked/raised on the Iron Heart Denim Underground Facebook page a couple of days ago. I did answer there, but I know some of you don't do Social Media, so I thought useful to it post here to.

Here is the original post:

I’m not sure what’s going on with IH these days, just not too impressed with the new releases.
Patiently waiting for the classics to come back. Jeans and Jean jackets!

My reply:

The fact that we have low/zero stock in a lot of our staples is because demand is way higher than our ability to produce. Making heavyweight stuff to the quality we demand is extremely difficult. We can't just turn up the make-more dial, we can't just go to another mill or workshop, if we could we would. We are desperately trying to increase production, because having low stock of core products is not a good look for us, and is frankly embarrassing. The reason that you are seeing stuff being released that is a little removed from our core items, our heritage if you like, is because to actually have anything in stock, we are having to experiment with new products and new fabrics, the production of which does not impact the production of our core items and does not stress the workshops that make them so much that they break. FW26, will see no new jeans released (I say jeans, because there will be a lot of non-jeans bottoms in new and interesting fabrics). This is because our jeans workshops are maxed out and in actuality verging on breaking point. Had we not so successfully created demand, this would not be a problem, and had we foreseen the consequences, we may have dialled back our efforts to create this demand. I say "may" because that is a really hard thing to do, and in all honesty, we did not realise the severity of the monster we had created, until it bit us in the arse.
One final thought, not everything me make is liked by everyone, how could it be? But we do sell out of virtually everything we make. Yeah, we have some flops, but we would far rather have the occasional flop, than not bother trying.

Grovelling around in the bilges version....

IHJ-149-IND
Helly Hansen
XtraTuf

@denim-dawg took a lot……

When I decided to make Iron Heart a proper business rather than a side hustle, I needed fiscal support. I saw the potential, but it was going to take, time, effort and patience. I did not know how long I would have to pour money into the dream, but I had a gut instinct that it would work. Luckily @Madame-Buttonfly was running her own business, which was doing well. We had a chat, long story short, she agreed to pay ALL the household expenses and living costs, until I could contribute. Over the next few years, I sold just about everything that was liquid, to fund the growth of this little business. One day, I realised that we were actually profitable, what a day. We moved into proper business premises (laughably small when looking back at them now), we felt like a real business.

One of the first customers to visit us at the new place was a watch dealer. We got talking and I asked his advice on what would be the perfect watch for me. He asked me a load of questions about what I wanted a watch for, what my lifestyle was like, how I treated watches, was I precious etc etc. His answer was a Blancpain 50 fathoms, preferably a no-radiation model because they were a little more interesting. That watch became my grail. The customer became a firm friend and he visited us often, I bought a few watches off him over the years, mainly Rolex because he sold them to me at laughably low prices.

One day, I got a call from him and he told me he had popped something in the post that I might like. If I did, I should give him what I thought it was worth to me.

Yeah, you guessed it, it was a Blancpain 50 fathoms no-rad. One of 500 made. We agreed a price, much of which was Iron Heart credit.

This is a watch that I did not know I wanted, and when I did, I did not know if it would ever happen.

This little bit of chronological frippery, reminds me of the early struggles, the toil to make this business work, the amazing customers who have become dear friends and that friendship is really all that counts. I could not have made this business is without you, and I consider you all friends.

his watch is the story of that.

One day @Alex will own it, so the story will continue...