James Jack: Thank you for joining us today. As part of our upcycling project we would like to record your vision and bookstore operations, but also your thrift dreams too. Taro and I are artists and researchers who love old things. For example, we have been cutting up encyclopedias and sewing sails into new artworks. With materials that have fallen out of use, we find value and create new meaning from things that might appear like garbage. Practice is important for us, to make things. We also love oral history. So we are reflecting critically on art being over capitalized through financial transactions and visibility of commercial art. So the title of our project is called “Upcycling: Informal Economies of Sharing.” Our background collaborating together has shaped the context for this project we are currently engaged with.

Taro Furukata: I met James on Shodoshima in 2013, and I invited him to participate in a project on Momoshima in 2014, an island where the population has decreased by 90%. We worked to bring the island back to life through an art project. While I was living there, he came to visit the island and found materials in old houses that an elderly woman remembered were once part of a boat. He used wood from the houses to make a new boat artwork by the harbor and I connected this with my curation titled “What can art do for a better society?” This might have been the beginning for me to think about this upcycling project. As James was just saying, we want to continue to make something from garbage, something people don't need or people don't think is valuable, and we hope to make art, organize activities and reconnect people with these things.

Jack: Now we are working on a co-creative research project that involves making artworks, interviewing creative people not just in the fine arts, but of all different crafts, books, dying, weaving, ceramics and other creative practices. Our aim is to preserve oral histories and share stories with others. The aim of our exhibits and publications are to share knowledge beyond the horizontality of recycling into upcycling going up. This vertical change and transformation of materials is a revival of barter economies; trading and revaluing things. Can you tell us more about your pathway to the bookstore and what are you up to now

Jia Yu Choy: Thryft [JJ1] started off when my co-founder, who has a computer science background, came to me and wanted to see how to use AI machine learning and whatever technology that was developing really quickly, for good. He saw the potential in the secondhand market because we found that it was very hard in Singapore for people to buy and sell secondhand items, even though there were platforms like Carousell, which is a C to C platform (consumer to consumer), kind of like a marketplace where users can just list out their items and other people can buy. But the problem we found was for let's say lower value items like books and clothes, which tend to be a bit cheaper.
Most people, they don't find it worth it to, I guess, list the clothing or the books one by one because that would take up a lot of time and effort. Most of the time, they would just throw them away or recycle them. So for us, we saw that we could use technology to help to speed up the whole process. Of course, you can’t completely replace human labor but you can help to speed up the whole thing. So that's where I got started. And then we were working on it through university for two years. And after we both graduated in 2022, we went full-time on it. When we were still in university, we just focused on books. After graduating, we started moving on to clothes and then recently vinyl records as well. And then now with the development of AI, we're seeing if it's possible to use AI to help us in our processes as well, like identifying items.
And then maybe what kind of information would interested buyers want to know about certain items? For clothing it would be measurements, or if it's cup or a household object, you would want to know different details about the objects. So AI helps us to identify all these areas, but that's still something that we're working on in the background. But otherwise, day to day we take in items from - so most of our items all come from the Singaporean users – basically, they can choose to either trade the items in or they can donate the items. If they trade it in, they get Thryft credits. It’s kind of like a point system where one credit, equals to $1 and then they'll can use the Thryft credits to buy other preloved items from us as well. And what we do is we also, after processing the items, we give them an email with a credit breakdown.
So let's say you give us 10 books and it will say, oh, this is how much value each book gathered. And this value is all determined via our algorithms, where we take into account different factors like firsthand pricing or popularity, reviews, ratings, et cetera. Our idea for trading in is that right now, because we have more products, you can trade in books and you can get clothes and vinyl records and vice versa. For donations, the credits would then go to the nonprofits that we work with after the item has been sold, and we'll donate the credits in cash. So that's how we get our items. And then we do have some contacts from bigger distributors. So I think one interesting one was last year there was another thrift shop called thryftshop

Jack: Really

Choy: Yeah. Their name was kind of similar to ours, but essentially it was run by a family and they decided that they couldn't run it anymore. So we offered to take over their store for them, kind of integrated it under ours. And since they were doing mostly clothes, it was a good opportunity for us to jump straight into doing clothes. Actually, they were seliing clothes bales from Japan, and they were saying the clothing was actually collected from a paper and plastic recycler, I think. So the recycler didn't take fabric waste - they collected all the recyclables from the households, but they only do paper and plastic. So for that particular thrift shop, the recycler actually separated out the fabrics and it stored it for them and then transported it to Singapore. So for a while we had a lot of those bale clothing as well. But right now I think we probably have gone through all of the bales already, and we're focused on the stock from Singapore, because we’re trying to still keep it within Singapore, and still collect locally, because shipment from overseas is quite expensive, yeah

Jack: Wait, so this is great. Wow. So many threads to follow up on. Maybe start with the books. Is that okay? Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned starting with books while you were in Yale-NUS College. Can you just tell us a little bit more about why and how and both the creative aspect and vision, but also the practical aspect of, because it's an informal thing. Many people trade books or give books to friends when you love a book. I did it yesterday, I give it to a friend, just I love the book and I know she's really interested in sound art. So yesterday I gave it to her and immediately she's reading it while we're having dinner. That feeling, I don't know, but any of your personal or reflections about why you wanted to trade books with people? And then also about how you started to set it up as a bit more of a, maybe people that don't know each other trading books too. How did you grow that idea in the beginning

Choy: So I think in the beginning, the decision to start with books was a technical one. I think in terms of books, they all have the ISBN number at the back which in terms of just data and tech, meant there's very well documented data online. So it was easy to start with. You just got to scan the ISBN code and then you get all the information. And because we were listing the books online on our platform, all the information was really helpful for us. So that was for books. But it was interesting because actually at the very beginning when we were starting out, we were just testing out a pilot idea of sorts. We put a collection box at NUS, I think, and we were talking to people that walked past. And interestingly, actually, a lot of people were like,

Huh, why would I trade in my books?

Or they just - because I don't think there was a very big secondhand market for books in Singapore at that time at least, or if there was, quite informal. So people were like, oh, they all said they had a lot of books at home, but they weren't really sure or keen on our idea. But it was interesting that even though I think a lot of people when they have books and they want to declutter, I do think most people still feel a sense of like, oh, I shouldn't throw them away. These, I either donate them to Salvation Army, but also Salvation Army has kind of become a dumping ground for all sorts of stuff, and they don't really go anywhere that efficiently. So for a lot of people they were like, oh, I don't want to throw them away. I want to put them to good use. And that's how actually more and more people found out about us. And they give us good books too, it's quite surprising for me to see how we get books that are almost in brand new condition.
I mean, we get a range of conditions of books, but I was just quite surprised that there are people like, oh, even though this book is brand new, they were so willing to part with it. And I guess join, let it contribute to our inventory of books! And now everybody can come and shop from it using either their credits or using cash. So yeah, it's been quite nice to see that, and also users that come back repeatedly. So as their children grow up, their kids' no longer read some books, they pass them to us and then as their kids grow up, they go up the reading levels. So it's quite nice to witness, yeah

Jack: So the beginning when it was a student exchange, I mean roughly how many books, how many people were in the beginning network when it first started? Very rough

Choy: I remember our first small office space, we probably held around like 400 plus books. Yeah, I'm not sure about the number of people that did donate or trade in with us, but we do have a database, so I am sure I can pull it out from someone

Jack: No, it's okay. Just wondering how it felt

Choy: It was a smaller selection of around 400 books. Some were people's home libraries that they were clearing. Smaller amounts at first. Now we have people coming in with – we had someone come in with 25 boxes of books today. He said it was his late father's library and his father was a collector of books and all the boxes were really well categorized. He would write the genre on the boxes, and he just said he wanted his father’s collection to go somewhere meaningful, get read by other people again

Furukata: Were there any particular type of books that came in at the beginning, or were they mostly odd books

Choy: I think at the beginning it was mostly fiction, but over the years, because we only take in English language titles. In beginning it was mostly I think fiction? But right now our collection has grown to encompass quite a lot of different genres. So quite a vast selection of nonfiction and children as well. And then sometimes we get offices that are moving out also. So yeah, art books, architecture books from the different companies, when they move out, so we get those as well. Yeah.

Jack: Wow, this is amazing. It's a practical thing, but it's also super, I mean, yeah, it's turning upcycling into an economic thing. So now let's say someone comes in with a box of books if they wanted, they can get credits, but if they don't want credits, they can just donate, maybe get a tax write off or something. Or some people it's just pure, like you mentioned the late father wanting just the books to be loved by other people.

Choy: There are many different people who come in. Maybe some people bring in 10 childrens’ books and want credits, is one person, for example? But then there are other people come in and don't want credits. Like you said, a very wide range of people. We have people who just want to donate because it could be either they don't need the credits for themselves, they're decluttering and they don't want to buy more stuff. Maybe for them they're just like, they just want to do some good with their items. So there’s those. Definitely, there are people who trade in because I mean they want to get other books, could be for their children, could be for their friends and family as well. So a wide range of people. Quite a lot of people start off, I think wanting to declutter, and then they just want a place to where they know that their items will, I guess, go to some good use. So for them, it's kind of like a win-win, you declutter and then you get some credits out of it, or you do some good with it. Yeah.

Jack: Super cool.

Furukata: Yeah. I feel also very sorry if I have to throw my book out, even a really old book, which I have already read, but…

Jack: We're talking about mottai nai. Have you heard of that word in Japanese? Not wanting to waste?

Choy: Oh no, I have not heard of that word.

Jack: Saving the last bite of food or book or using clothes until they're really, really worn out. Shoes beyond worn out mottainai. But it also can be culture of mottainai bunka. Of not wasting things. It fits a lot with what you're doing. And so the books was the beginning or beginning seeds, and then so how do you decide

Furukata: Really mottainai!

Jack: So people bring in, let's say they bring in a ton of books and they're trying to offload or trying to lighten up the home. Do you have to pick and choose books or can you accept everything or what do you do? So we also work with a friend of ours, tears down houses here. So the Japanese countryside is full of big empty houses that many people don't want. So the kids sometimes have to get rid of stuff or, anyway, there's a lot of stuff. And then you get, we go to the house and it's super overwhelming. There's just so much stuff and so many memories. It's really exhausting actually just to sift through stuff. But you have to pick and choose what you can carry or what you can fit in your house or store. I mean, you're doing a lot of work to photograph these and data to turn them into data that's available to other users. How do you choose what to keep in the shelf and what to, do you also have to recycle books or what's the process like when something comes in after that?

Choy: The first part is always quite manual. On our website, we say what we do take in and state certain condition guidelines of sorts, but it's more so that when the books come to us, it's still in a readable or sellable condition. But when the books come in, we have to do a condition check to see and kind of sift out the books that really are too poor to sell. And then we group them into different condition grades. So Like new, very good and well read. And then in terms of genres and stuff, we don't really pick and choose as to which we accept as long as they meet the condition grades. An additional step for us, even if the books don't meet the condition grades, is to still separate them into two more categories because I thought it was like a waste if everything just goes straight to recycling. For those that are really, really falling apart, the pages are really, really, really brown and foxed with all the spots, those we would recycle, but we do keep aside books that we can't sell, but we also don't think they are so bad to recycle. And then we keep them. And then once in a while we'll hold events where it's just free to take. So we have an event that people can just come down and fill a tote bag or something, and just so that these books will still go somewhere in homes.
I really relate to what you said just now about not wanting to waste. I mean, unless the book is really, falling apart, not sellable, not readable, then okay, yes, it can be recycled, but as much as possible to still recirculate them. Yeah.

Furukata: Yeah, that's good. The paper, the book has more value than papers. Just papers. It's more contents and the sorts.

Jack: So the origins, I think with the books, is this good? I think we have a good sense of how it started. Did you start to sell online or was it all kind of when it was the university or the early stages, was it all kind of physical space or was it immediately online from the beginning?

Choy: It was immediately online from the beginning. And then actually after Covid, then we started exploring more physical events. We actually ran book fairs, like physical events and popups in Singapore. And last year we experimented with a few pop-up stores. And then this year we have kind of a flagship or a place where it has a long-term lease, but we are kind of using that as a collection point also. So people come into shop, but then also come in to drop off their items and our staff will do processing at the back. But we've always had our online store, but also realised thatsome people still prefer to browse books in person, you have to see them and then maybe you want to read a little bit on the spot, sample a bit before you buy. So there are some people who still enjoy doing that. So that's what our space is for. Yeah.

Jack: And in 2022, you started the book exchange, then when did you start the space, after Covid?

Choy: Yes. The book fairs were around 2021. I think we had a few in 2022 also. And then last year we started our pop-up stores, but they've all since closed, because there were short term things. And then this year, just one month ago, we opened our flagship location, so something longer term.

Jack: Wow, congratulations. Cool.
Furukata: Yeah. And this picture is storage and also office and then shop. It's like three, all the things in there.

Choy: We do have a separate warehousing space for our online, but the flagship store is meant to showcase more of, I guess, a curated selection of what we have.

Furukata: Oh wow.

Choy: We have books, clothes and vinyl records there, and we've made it a nice space for people to come and chill and browse in. And then at the back of the store, we have our operation rooms where we process the items that people drop off before sending them to the warehouse for to be listed online.

Furukata: Wow, that sounds really great. I want to visit.

Jack: Making it happen, putting it into reality, right?

Choy: Yeah.

Jack: And so, the expansion beyond books, how did that begin, you mentioned clothes, but what was the first thing you did? The first object that you worked with that wasn't a book, and why and how did it happen?

Choy: The first one would be clothing. The first type of object that we did besides books would be clothing. Actually, we did want to do clothes sooner. At the beginning we always wanted to be able to do different products, but I think it took us a while to get our footing, just to build a stable system and make sure we're able to survive and everything. But then I think it was interesting because at that point when we started to do clothes, we actually weren't doing very well as a company, and I guess my co-founder and I were just like, okay, if we die, if this whole thing doesn’t work out, what would we regret not exploring? So then we were saying, I think we would regret not expanding into doing clothes. For me, it was also because before doing Thryft, I was part of YNC’s Conscious Living Collective student group, where we organized the clothing pop-ups in school actually.
So we did collect clothes from all the students and then gave people points also. And then we had a three day kind of thing in school where people would come and shop. So I personally kind of started my thrifting journey through clothes as well. And it was actually from doing the thrift popups in school that I realized that it was something that was worth doing. But because we're all students, we didn't have storage, we didn't have capacity. So after the event was over, all the leftover clothing just all went straight to recycling, which I thought was such a pity, but it was also because everything was so manual and so difficult, it was hard to do just as a student basis. So I always wanted to see how we could, I guess, do clothes, like a secondhand clothes economy of sorts more sustainably. So that's why my co-founder and I decided, okay, let's try clothes next, and then we'll figure out the logistics and how it works.

Jack: Nice. Have you ever heard of dumpster diving?

Choy: Yes, I have.

Jack: We used to do it a lot, not only when I was a student, but actually more after graduating in the first five to 10 years of being an artist, not only is it economically cheaper than shopping, it's also a lot of fun to do. So we would exchange information about Trader Joe's or different grocery stores or different donut shops would've different times on certain days of the week
When they would put things in places that weren't in the dumpster, they would put it next to the dumpster so people could actually take it easier, for example. Or there would be ways to get over fences that were locked that were known by the shopkeepers too, or just different ways that they would actually help us. There was a donut shop that was really famous for making all kinds of crazy, weird donuts all night long. Then they would have this kind of splurge around sunrise, where they would get rid of extra donuts. Wow they were delicious! The smaller stores, such as this one, individually owned local businesses are a lot more open to divers and actually give the stuff to people hand to hand rather than putting it in a dumpster and making people fish through rotten tomatoes and everything else that your feet stepped in.
The spirit of dumpster diving might still live on in online audiences with a more extended life of the items before spoiling. I notice a lot of your books, are sold out now, have you noticed the pace of how things come and go? For example, with a dumpster, you put it in there and then the truck comes tomorrow morning or it comes twice a week. The pace is quite fixed, but what is the pace of your different items, books, clothes, records—do you notice different paces of in and out cycles?

Choy: Yeah, I think for the books, because that's what we did for the longest time, that is I guess what we're known for. So more people come to us with books. And maybe also because we're one of the few places in Singapore that does secondhand books or is more established for secondhand books. But I think we get, I don't know, we can accumulate up to, I would like to say definitely more than a thousand books a week coming in and then going out. And for clothes wise, maybe I would say right now it's around one third of that? Around one. I mean, because it comes in bags, so I'm trying to imagine, we have a drop off room. So maybe one third of it will be full of clothing, and then the other two thirds full of books. And then we clear the room out every week and then they all get sent to the warehouse. So it's quite a lot there. But I think for clothes, because there are other stores that are doing this as well, or different concepts like Shopaholic, Refash, Cloop, I think in Singapore. So there are other avenues for people to give their clothing to. Yeah.

Jack: Wow.

Choy: Yeah.

Furukata: That's a lot. Yeah, it's a big bookshop.

Jack: Our exhibit that just closed on Tuesday this week, we made all of the display cases out of recycled wood.

[JJ2]

And it's a lot of fun conceptually, but they're also 10 times heavier than new wood. So when we're carrying them, I think I break my back. It's so much heavier than the wood that they sell now is so cheap and it's kind of made with glue, right? It's not actual wood, it's kind of like veneers of wood all glued together. So it's like paperweight, but old wood, it's like a tank. It feels like they're made out of stone. It's so dense. The display boxes. Yeah, they're so heavy. Yeah, I don't have a lot of pictures, sorry. But we can share some of our exhibits and things that we're doing with recycled materials, but we're working with books, wood, sails, cloth, a lot of different materials. Also combining materials to rethink about something rusty or something kind of rotten. When it's combined with another material, it can actually take on more aesthetic or more uses and functions like pillars from old houses individually are not that easy to use as wood, but when they're put together, they can become tables or chairs or conglomerated. They take on a different identity. Have you found any, I don't know, synthesis or interaction between different used things that take on different meanings? At thryft?

Choy: I think we experimented using books as, there was just a once off project that we did where we kind of turned books into a stool of sorts, and I think we had an artist that was working with us and our recycled clothing, the clothing that we couldn't sell, but they were still good for use. So she used it for, I think a dance film or something. So that was cool. And she wanted to talk about, I guess fast fashion and consumerism and just raising awareness of fashion and how we interact with it. But I would say unfortunately, I haven't had that much time to, delve into how the books could be used for different purposes. Yeah, sometimes we, I mean, guess a cool thing would be at one of our pop-up stores, we used the pages of the book and then people could make blackout poetry with them, and then we all stuck them on to a wall. So it was a wall full of blackout poetry made from the pages of old books. So that was fun for people to do.

Furukata: Nice.

Jack: Interactive.

Furukata: But I think you give already the opportunity to use book in a different way to other people. I guess. I heard it's very popular. It sounds like many people don't want to throw back out, but they want to use the book in a good way. But I wonder, you said there are not so many bookshop, I mean, secondhand bookshop and why?

Choy: I think there used to be quite a lot of secondhand book stores in Singapore, in the Bras Basah area, but the owners are all really, really old now. And I think some of them, their families just didn't continue on the business, so they eventually had to close down. But I think because for us, when we came as a purely online bookstore, I think were the first one in Singapore to offer secondhand books online because actually listing all the books up one by one online with all the information is - it does take time - is quite laborious. So, which is why the technology that my co-founder built was actually the only reason why we could do it, because we had this technology, we could list it online without that much input from our end, besides just the ISBN number and the condition checks of the books. So that was why we were able to do that. And then that opened up, I guess, access to secondhand books for people because either they would have to go down to the very few physical stores that were left in the Bras Basah area.
Online, there was basically not much online. And I think what was difficult back then was also if you were searching for a particular title or searching for let's say books for different topics, it was really hard to find a secondhand book. I mean, it was very hard to find or buy a secondhand book and match to what you were looking for. So I think for us, because we were online and secondhand, that made things a lot easier. I mean, besides going to the library, which there is a great library system in Singapore, besides going to the library if you wanted to buy a book.

Furukata: Wow, interesting.

Jack: Wow. You have so many kids' books, it's incredible. Wow. And they're really well organized. My, that categories are incredible. Wait a minute, you said the ISBN, does it also give you images of the book? Because a lot of these, you have some homemade images and then other images come from online searches or something?

Choy: Yeah, so the ISBN gives us a lot of information. They gives us, yes, the photos, then you get publisher data, the description, author, ratings review, et cetera. And then all of these can be easily accessed online. So what our technology helps us to do is just to aggregate all this data into our database and then list the books online. Yeah.

Jack: Wow. This is incredible.

Choy: And then you see the discounts there. What we try to do is dynamic pricing. So if the books are here for a while, they will slowly go on discount. I mean, because for secondhand books, as we keep them, they also get older and older. So the condition also does deteriorate over time.

Jack: Is it automatic, after a number of days or months?

Choy: Yeah.

Jack: Wow. And some go up, I noticed some books. One book costs $1,200. Some of them go up if they're really valuable?

Choy: Those are vintage books and collectible items.

Jack: So libraries or collectors buy from you if they're trying to purchase a rare book that's out of print?

Choy: Yeah.

Jack: Wow. Wow. Super cool. What is your clientele, Singapore, and how much, is there any international buyers that use here your system too?

Choy: Most of our clients are still from Singapore, but because we have international shipping, so we do ship through Malaysia, Southeast Asia. And then recently we've also had US and UK customers as well. So for some books that usually don't sell in Singapore, they're actually quite popular in the US because I think they can't find it there. So then different countries are interested in different kinds of books.

Jack: Wow, this is incredible. We have some of these books, but there's a lot here that I would like actually to get. We do a lot of trading with other parents like trading books and because kids grow and things change, so we trade a lot giving away, even when we left Singapore, actually before we left, some Japanese friends left and they gave us tons of books. Or also friends here, tons of English books or, it's kind of like an exchange. And I'm wondering a little bit more about the economics. So we're kind of like our subtitle for our project is Informal Economies of Sharing,
Which I think is the basis, well, we think it's the basis for actually a lot of things, not just like our financial system, but so many things that kind of just give and take or give and give. Economy, giving is something that has been around as long as we've been a species or whatever. But what you've turned this into, I mean it's a model of contributing both. I mean you get money out of the books, but you're also giving people credits, which is a form of barter economy. So if they bring in something, you assign it a value, I'm not sure how you do that, but interested how you assign it value and then they trade that back in for something else. What are those exchanges like? What are the different types of informal economic things going on in Thryft?

Choy: As to how we give value for the items, I think it's quite mathematical, or I guess based on the algorithm, I mean, because we have so many items coming through, so it's hard to price all of them individually one by one. So we have to rely on things like for our books would be firsthand prices, like the edition, maybe how popular it is, how well reviewed it is. And then if it's popular, then it will get a higher value. Or if let's say the condition is better condition, then it'll get a higher value as well. And then same for clothing, we do by condition, by the brand, by the type of item as well.
We had to do a little bit of reading ourselves to find out, say would people pay X amount for, I guess would they pay the same amount for jeans versus a T-shirt, for example. We had to give each thing kind of an arbitrary ranking of sorts and different brands as well. So quite a lot of it is quite mathematical, so to speak, but for the items that are the vintage and rare ones, those require a little bit more research. So we do actually do those book by book to see how rare it is, if it's still being published or not and things like that. Those take a little bit more time.
And then quickly, for vinyl records, which we just started doing it, we had to learn about it. Also, it was looking at the different condition grades. And then, I mean, vinyl records, sometimes they have special inserts, special things inside, so whether it came with those or not. And then the edition, if there's anything special about the vinyl. But for vinyl, because it's also kind of like books in that there is quite a well-documented database online.

Jack: When you put the ISBN in it'll actually give you, it'll generate a lot of the data and the price and all of that automatically.

Choy: What we try to do is also to feed, as people buy our books from our store, we use that to feed into how we predict the price as well. So that mean, for example, if we listed this book and it sold very quickly, that will be recorded into our system and then that will be taken into account for future books of the same title that come in the future. So I guess how much people buy it also influences, the price of it in the future as well.

Jack: I see.

Choy: Yeah.

Furukata: But it's very interesting that using more information like IT or digitalized or the process or using algorithm and then make it possible. Super interesting.

Jack: So what's your vision for the next steps or I'm sure you face a lot of challenges and things go really well and then sometimes they don't. What's your vision or hope dreams for the future?

Choy: I hope that, I guess more people would consider buying secondhand when they think of, oh, I want to get a book or I want to get a new piece of clothing, to think secondhand more easily. I think in Singapore, people still don't really think of secondhand as a, it's not their first choice or their first option. Still quite a lot of people shopping firsthand. So just hoping for it to be more of a culture in Singapore. And maybe as we expand into different product types also then it will become more relevant to different people. And I guess hoping that we'll be able reach more different countries as well as we grew.

Jack: No, it's great too. I mean, being local is a wonderful thing, but maybe it could be local in different countries too. Almost like Thryft in different, yeah.

Choy: Yeah. Actually for..

Jack: Sorry, have you guys read this book? This is an incredible book. I just got this book for my son, but it's a little bit advanced for him. He's still a little young. It's actually a really good one for adults too. It's incredible. It's as not like there's many kids' books that are just as good for adults as they are for kids. This is one, it's really good. Yeah, it twists the old story into a whole new updated, yeah,

Furukata: Interesting.

Jack: Rebecca Solnit’s Liberated version of Cinderella. Anyway, sorry, you were saying something. You have a lot of good treasure here.

Choy: Yeah, people are very generous.

Jack: In our upcycling project we hope to have mutual benefit too, sharing information and resources. We're hoping it will have positive effects so that you don't have to, so this doesn't, Thryft doesn't have to go. We are all worried about failure and things, not we're succeeding, but we hope that in any way we can help support each other or give credit and attention where it needs to go. You're right, people do pay a lot of attention to new things, but there's a lot of other traditions that really value reuse. And then there's also Second Street here in Japan.

Choy: Yeah, I've heard of them.

Jack: We get bikes, games, clothes, toys, shoes and all sorts of things there. The mainstream is still focused on new and fast fashion or whatever. But there's definitely, a stream of people that love used things. I don't think it's dying at all really. If anything, it's steady. Second Street. And then one other organization, Taro too anything you want to share, network, encouragement.

Furukata: There’s also Book Off.

Choy: Yeah, they’re great.

Furukata: Yeah. Yeah. I love to go there. And then always I buy the books, but a little bit too much always. I just find something interesting there. But it's very fun. The book, I think, especially secondhand book is kind of really good to buy and to share. And also sometimes there are very old, I said to James like a Wikipedia kind of books. And that was very popular in seventies or eighties in Japan, but now nobody interested in. And then if you go to the old house, my grandpa or grandma generation, they have always those kind of books. And when they die that those books goes to book off if it's lucky because otherwise they would just throw it out because people doesn't think it's interesting. But that book is very beautiful. It's because before printed, before computer PC, all the photographs are really took the film and camera man or camera woman, took this picture one by one, super nice editing, and then I'm very sad if those kind of just thrown out. And if I find those kind of books in those Book Off, and very cheap, super cheap. I often buy things there.

Choy: I think what I like about, I guess our store, or secondhand is that you find things that you normally don't find in a firsthand bookstore, for example. I mean because firsthand bookstores, they always have what's new, what's trending. But then if you're interested in things that are not trending, I guess, or if you're interested in the older stuff, then I think secondhand does offer you more options and more space to explore. I think explore different things.

Furukata: Can be more creative.

Jack: True. Thank you so much for this interview.

Choy: No problem.

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