The World-Class Clubs Were Already Calling
Another Technology’s U.S. headquarters.
Vincent was drumming his fingers anxiously in his office.
Outside, it was a bright afternoon, but all his nerves were fixed on the fax machine tucked in the corner of his desk.
They said a contract would be coming from Europe soon... but if that’s all you tell me, how am I supposed to know anything useful?
A little earlier, that had been the message from the “secretary.”
“Several contracts will be sent by fax from Europe. Please sign them in the order they arrive and send them back.”
Vincent had been thrown for a loop by that. Europe, not America?
Of course, he knew Another Technology’s apps were being downloaded all over the world, but signing written contracts with European companies was a different matter entirely.
“Guess I just have to wait.”
Vincent loosened his tie a little.
A normal CEO would have told an employee, “Bring it to me when the fax arrives,” and gone about his day in total ease, or simply focused on something else.
But Vincent couldn’t do that. This was an order delivered personally by the secretary, the proxy of the company’s true owner, the Master.
If he handed it off to an employee without even knowing what it was, and something went wrong, that would be a disaster.
Better to receive it and handle it myself. Less chance of trouble.
So he continued to glare at the fax machine with no idea how much time had passed when—
Jiiing—clack!
Breaking the silence, the machine came to life.
Vincent reflexively shoved his wheeled chair back and rolled toward the fax machine.
“There it is.”
The paper slowly spat itself out. Vincent grabbed the still-warm sheet.
And the instant he checked the logo and sender at the top, he wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him.
Real Madrid
“...?”
Vincent closed his eyes, then opened them wide again.
The words were still the same.
The crowned emblem wasn’t something he had misread.
“...Real Madrid sent a contract?”
Even as an American, Vincent knew the name.
If baseball has the New York Yankees... then football has Real Madrid.
One of the most valuable clubs in the world.
A contract had just flown in from a place that enormous.
What in the world is this contract for...?
Fortunately, the first copy was in Spanish, but the same text was attached in English afterward.
So Vincent skimmed the English copy quickly.
A contract for official certification and revenue sharing for the Moment app...
Thud.
Vincent set the document down in a daze.
“...No matter how I look at it, our company really doesn’t feel like a startup.”
After joining this company, Vincent had studied the IT industry and global business like a madman.
He was a lawyer by training anyway, so learning something new wasn’t all that difficult.
But the “startup” he had studied and the company he was working for now were wildly different.
By the common definition he’d learned, a startup was something that ran from investor to investor, bled red ink, and survived on one piece of technology.
But Another Technology was different.
Far from chasing investors, it had even turned down Steve Jobs’s acquisition offer.
And the parent company, Zero Investment, had brought in more operating capital than the business could possibly use.
That company is Master’s too, I’d bet.
“And on top of that, gifts like this keep showing up.”
Vincent’s gaze drifted to the sunniest spot by the office window, where a beautiful potted plant sat in pride of place.
It had arrived by courier only a few days earlier... and the sender was none other than Steve Jobs.
Not from Apple. Not from Apple’s secretary’s office. It was truly a pot sent by Steve Jobs himself.
Even the card attached to it had a clumsy handwritten note from Jobs.
Thank you. From Steve.
That was it—just those few words.
It didn’t say who he was thanking, or for what.
It has to be a gift for Master.
A gift from Steve Jobs to that mysterious employer.
Afraid the plant might wilt, Vincent had been tending it every morning—watering it, wiping the leaves, pampering it as if it were a sacred object.
It was one of the most important parts of the day for a company representative.
Get a gift from Apple’s CEO, sign a contract with Real Madrid...
“I really have no idea what’s going on.”
Vincent shook his head and picked up his pen.
The scale of Master’s world was beyond anything he could measure.
Well... the secretary said to sign and send it back right away, so I should just do as I’m told.
The moment Vincent brought the pen down toward Real Madrid’s signature line—
Jiiing—clack!
The fax machine rang out again. A second page slid free.
Barcelona
“...?”
Vincent went just as blank as he had when the fax from Real Madrid arrived.
Barcelona.
If Real Madrid was the New York Yankees of football, then Barcelona was the rival Boston Red Sox.
The fiercest rivalry on the planet, and another giant, storied club.
...The two clubs that divide Spain are both sending contracts at the same time?
Before his shock even had time to settle—
Jiiing—clack!
The fax machine spat out a third contract.
Manchester United
“...Manchester United?”
This time it wasn’t Spain. It was a Premier League club from England.
As Vincent watched the stack of contracts grow, a strange feeling washed over him.
This is just like...
It felt as if he had become a major free-agent sports star. As if prestigious clubs around the world were all clamoring, Please, sign with us.
Of course, the contracting party wasn’t him but the company itself, yet the sensation of standing in as its representative wasn’t a bad one.
“...Just what is Master doing in Korea that he’s receiving all these contracts at once?”
He couldn’t even begin to guess.
But there was no time to wonder. The fax machine was still spitting out the next contract.
Vincent rolled up his shirt sleeves.
“First, let’s process the contracts.”
He organized them in the order they arrived, starting with the Real Madrid documents that had come first.
After signing, he fed the contract back into the machine and sent it out in the order it had been received.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Madrid, Spain. Real Madrid’s marketing team office.
Team leader Garcia couldn’t tear himself away from the fax machine.
He paced back and forth in a narrow space like a dog that needed to poop, too restless to stand still.
“Why isn’t it coming yet? It’s been ages!”
Just like when he’d sent the email about official certification, he was in a panic now that the contract had gone out by fax.
A moment ago—literally just a moment ago—he had faxed the signed contract to the U.S. headquarters of Another Technology.
Physically, that was far too short a time for a reply to have returned, but in Garcia’s mind it felt as if at least an hour had already passed.
“There’s no way the fax got cut off or something, right?”
He bit his lip and turned his attention to the giant TV in the center of the office.
The screen displayed the live-updating follower counts for Real Madrid and Barcelona on Moment.
[Real Madrid: 91,204]
[Barcelona: 90,988]
“Hm...”
Up to 50,000, the increase had been sluggish, as if both clubs were reading each other’s moves. Then, all at once, the numbers had caught fire and started climbing at a mad pace.
Now both had crossed 90,000 and were closing in on 100,000.
The back-and-forth battle of numbers felt almost like watching a football match score ticker.
Of course, football didn’t usually have scores in the ninety-thousands.
Then—
Jiiing—!
The fax machine beside Garcia gave a loud buzz.
At the sound, Garcia rushed over reflexively. This could be a fax related to some other matter, so he stared at the paper as if his eyes might pop out.
Another Technology
“It’s here!”
It was the reply confirming the contract from Another Technology, the developer of Moment.
Garcia clenched his fist, ready to shout with triumph—when an employee staring at the monitor screamed instead.
“It, it’s up! Team leader!”
“What is?”
“Look at the screen!”
Garcia whipped his head around and checked the TV screen.
[Real Madrid (Bronze Official Certification)]
Next to Real Madrid’s account name, a badge had appeared.
A slightly rough but weighty-looking bronze certification mark.
By contrast, Barcelona’s account, displayed alongside it, had nothing at all.
“Good. We got there first!”
—Waaaaah!
The employees in the office all cheered at once.
Team leader Garcia burst out laughing too and gave his orders.
“Capture it fast! Design team, post the prepared message right away! Put in a line mocking them for being slower than us—say, ‘When are you getting your official certification?’ and all that...!”
As he was saying that, Garcia’s mouth slowly closed. He stared hard at the bronze badge on the screen.
...Wait a second.
Something felt off.
They had clearly won, but the feeling was somehow grimy.
Bronze...
When you thought about it, that was the color of a bronze medal.
In sports, bronze means third place.
Sure, the color was based on follower count, but did the mighty Real Madrid really want to boast that it had “received bronze” before Barcelona?
...That looks way too lame.
It was like bragging about coming in third.
Maybe a third-tier club like Barcelona or Atlético Madrid could feel proud of bronze, but Real Madrid boasting about getting a bronze badge first didn’t sit right.
Real Madrid was a club that always pursued the best.
That meant bringing in only the best players, from the best club in the world.
For a club like that to openly mock a rival that hadn’t even gotten a badge yet, just because it had received a bronze badge first, was beneath its dignity.
Still, I can’t just let this perfect chance go to waste.
Garcia’s mind spun quickly.
“Hold on, stop. Change the line.”
“Huh? Change it to what?”
“Don’t mention Barcelona at all. It’s tacky.”
Garcia grinned.
“Instead, write this: ‘The first football club in the world to receive official certification.’”
“Ah... so instead of saying we beat someone, we just emphasize that we’re the first in the world.”
“Exactly. That way it naturally proves we’re number one, and the ones who haven’t gotten it yet are below us.”
That was much classier, and much more like Real Madrid.
After all, everyone knew what lay hidden behind the word “first”: You’re still not there yet, are you?
“Understood! I’ll revise it and upload it right away!”
The employees began clacking furiously at their keyboards.
Garcia folded his arms with a satisfied look.
If anyone said it’s no big deal, maybe they’d be right... but this is incredibly satisfying.
Then another employee raised a hand.
“Uh... Team leader, Moment just sent an additional email.”
“What does it say?”
“They say the trophy for reaching 50,000 followers is ready, and since they’re likely to hit 100,000 soon at this pace, they’ve already started producing a silver trophy in advance. They’re asking where they should send the physical trophies.”
Trophy. The instant Garcia heard the word, the corners of his mouth nearly split to his ears.
That was something he had truly been looking forward to as well.
Without the slightest hesitation, Garcia answered,
“Where else?”
He slapped his desk with his palm.
Bang!
“Tell them to send it to our marketing office. Right here—straight to my desk!”
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
While Europe’s giant football clubs were battling each other’s pride like this...
in the same region, but in an entirely different industry, people had also begun watching Moment closely.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
Paris, France.
Louis Vuitton’s main conference room.
People might imagine that the fashion industry, with all its glamour, would have bright, open meeting rooms and offices full of air and light—but in reality, it was nothing of the sort.
It was as hierarchical and merciless as any other industry, and perhaps even harsher.
Fashion, especially luxury fashion, did not forgive even a single mistake, or the slightest difference in color, fabric, or thread.
“I reviewed the main theme ideas you submitted for next spring and summer’s collection...”
Louis Vuitton’s Creative Director, CD Ramilla, swept a sharp gaze across the employees.
As befitted one of the world’s top luxury brands, the air in the meeting room was tense and razor-sharp.
“They were all trash.”
Thud.
She dropped the stack of proposals on the table as if tossing them aside.
At that one sentence, silence fell over the room, and cold sweat beaded on the foreheads of the senior designers bracing themselves for another round of scolding.
“Spring, so flowers? Summer, so blue stripes? Resort season, so rattan materials? Do you think we run a souvenir shop on the beach or something?”
“......I’m sorry.”
“Louis Vuitton doesn’t follow trends. We make them. You call this a vacation look? It’s just tourist fashion after glancing at a few Mediterranean photos. Pathetic beyond words.”
“......”
“You got lazy because the show in February went over well? This is just a copy of what everybody else is doing.”
Ramilla clicked her tongue coldly.
The value of luxury came from scarcity and originality.
The difference in how you interpreted those concepts determined the difference between luxury, ordinary brands, and garbage.
And to Ramilla, the plan the designers had brought in this time was only a little better than garbage.
“We said the concept we’re taking into fall and winter this year, and into next spring and summer, is ‘something everyone knows, everyone wants, but no one can have.’”
“......”
“That’s clear enough direction, isn’t it? Is it really so hard to bring back a few ideas based on that? I don’t understand.”
Something everyone knows, everyone wants, but no one can have.
It was an incredibly difficult brief, and yet Ramilla, as the CD, was giving it out as if it were nothing.
“Revise everything from the ground up. I don’t want to waste another second getting annoyed at this proposal, so bring me a completely new set by tomorrow morning. If you can’t, start preparing to change jobs. Though, with skills like these, you probably won’t have anywhere to go.”
“Ah... understood!”
“Haa... honestly, when I was a designer, the CD never gave me directions this vague...”
Ramilla sighed, pressing her throbbing temples with genuine frustration.
The atmosphere in the conference room was too cold, too unforgiving.
“Design aside~”
Ramilla turned to another department.
“What about marketing? How are you planning this season’s campaign strategy? You’re not thinking of just buying full-page ads in magazines like Vogue or Elle again, are you?”
“......!”
“If that’s the plan, maybe I should just handle marketing too? If we’re just repeating what we’ve always done? That’s just a few phone calls anyway. I’d probably do it faster and with less hassle myself.”
Even though they knew their turn had come, no one dared speak up.
They each had something prepared, but after seeing the senior designers get chewed out, none of them had the courage to step forward first.
Then a young marketing manager named Dennis spoke cautiously.
“Um... Director. May I speak first?”
“Go ahead.”
“Yes. I think the marketing concept is important, of course, but I also think we need to pay attention to a new trend that’s been making waves across Europe recently.”
“A trend?”
Intrigued, Ramilla asked,
“Interesting. Keep going.”
“Yes. Well... there’s an app called Moment that’s become a huge topic among football fans lately.”
“Moment?”
Ramilla tilted her head. She’d never heard the name before.
“Moment... ‘moment.’ I don’t know what kind of app it is, but I like the name. What is it?”
“Yes. Put simply, it’s a social networking service similar to Facebook.”
“...SNS? Like Facebook or Twitter? And you want me to put photos of my models and my work there? On something so tacky? Are you out of your mind?”
The moment Ramilla heard the word SNS, she frowned and snapped back immediately. Dennis hurried to explain.
“I-it’s similar to Facebook, but definitely different! Photos fans take at stadiums, or pictures of players, are coming out beautifully and making the app famous. And... right now, huge clubs like Real Madrid and Barcelona are competing to get official certification.”
“Real Madrid and Barcelona?”
“Yes.”
Though Ramilla was French, she knew those two clubs.
The luxury brands of football.
Uniforms, players, passion, chants, stadiums—
they were clubs that pursued perfection in everything. The field was different from fashion, yes, but Ramilla understood the appeal of pursuing the best.
At that thought, Ramilla’s voice softened a little, though her eyes remained suspicious as she asked Dennis,
“Fans uploading photos to SNS is nothing new. But you’re saying the photos come out ‘beautifully’?”
“Yes. The image quality is on a completely different level from Facebook. I saw it myself, and it was astonishing. This is just my cautious opinion, but... I think we need to seriously consider marketing through SNS like this going forward.”
“No matter how good the quality is, how good can it really be?”
In truth, digital marketing through SNS was a topic Ramilla herself had already been thinking about.
It was the easiest, fastest way to show new products to people all over the world.
So Louis Vuitton had also, like everyone else, set up official accounts on Facebook and Twitter.
But that was as far as it went.
Facebook and Twitter have no beauty.
Luxury sells fantasy.
But when you uploaded photos to Facebook, the quality often became muddy, and she couldn’t accept that.
What’s more, Facebook and Twitter themselves were visually crude.
A white background plastered with blue buttons and ad banners.
The moment Louis Vuitton’s editorial photos were dropped into that tacky screen, the brand would start looking like something anyone could buy anywhere, not a luxury house.
And that was something Ramilla, who valued brand prestige as if it were life itself, could never allow.
So until now, SNS had merely been used as a bulletin board for fashion-show schedules and announcements, then left to gather dust.
“Are you confident? Is this Moment really different from Facebook?”
“......”
“If it’s some flimsy little thing, I think I’m going to be very angry.”
When the CD asked, “Are you confident?” who wouldn’t get nervous?
But Dennis gathered his courage, refused to back down, and pulled his Apple phone from his pocket.
“Still... I’d be grateful if you gave it a chance. This is different.”
From far across the room, away from Ramilla’s seat of honor, Dennis approached.
Then he opened the app and held it out in front of the director.
“How impressive can it really be?”
Ramilla glanced at the screen, unimpressed.
But the instant she saw it—
her eyes widened.
...Oh?
It felt nothing like the SNSs she knew.
A simple, stripped-down UI with no clutter.
And above all, a luxurious black background that made the photos stand out.
This black is a kind of black I’ve never seen before... not bad.
The Moment screen Dennis handed her showed a photo of Raúl roaring on Real Madrid’s official account.
It was a striking black-and-white image, polished to the point it could almost be called editorial photography.
“Hm...”
Ramilla silently scrolled through more.
There were no clumsy banners, no useless text cluttering the eye.
Only the emotion of the images and the black background filled the screen completely.
If it were a place like this...
Louis Vuitton’s photos might not lose any dignity at all.
In fact, they might stand out even more.
Ramilla handed the Apple phone back to Dennis and asked,
“How famous is this SNS right now? How many downloads does it have?”
“Let me check... it’s past 15.4 million now.”
“15.4 million...”
The director tapped her fingers on the table.
That was by no means a small number.
Of course, we can’t show our photos to all of them... but at least the potential is there.
Besides, if prestigious clubs like Real Madrid were already making official accounts, then the service had clearly passed verification.
And what she liked most was that it didn’t have the cheap, tacky feel of Facebook or Twitter.
“What was your name again?”
“D-Dennis!”
“You must like football.”
“I... I do! I watch French football, but also Spanish and English football...”
Even as he said it, Dennis was terrified.
What if I said something stupid and get fired?
“Then write me a report.”
“Pardon?”
“A report. On whether our brand could use this SNS called Moment, and if so, how—specifically.”
That wasn’t what he had expected.
“M-me? Directly to you, Director?”
“Yes. Why, don’t you want to?”
“N-not at all! I’ll do it! I’ll write it!”
An entry-level employee getting the chance to report directly to the CD?
That was an enormous promotion opportunity.
I have to... I have to make this happen.
It wasn’t just a matter of writing a report. Now that the CD had taken an interest, he had to somehow get Louis Vuitton’s official account onto Moment and turn that into a proper campaign.
That was how he’d produce real results.
And if I make that happen...!
As Dennis steeled himself, Ramilla thought back to the Moment she had just seen.
If we’re doing this, fashion should be the first industry to move in. And... if the SNS is this elegant, it might actually fit our concept perfectly.
The core concept for Louis Vuitton’s remaining season this year and its summer season next year was “something everyone knows, everyone wants, but no one can have.”
In that sense, SNS might turn out to be an unexpected channel.
SNS was something anyone could view easily and for free, so it could make people “know it and want it.”
And the limitation on product quantity and price could make it “something no one can have.”
If even the place where the product was presented could be aligned with the concept, not just the fashion itself, nothing could be more perfect.
Not bad at all. This SNS called Moment.
The two things Europeans loved most:
art and football.
The flow of Moment, born from football, was spreading into an entirely different industry.
---