But what really saved his enterprise was e-commerce. He ended up closing four Fully Booked outlets, although he says these stores were already not doing well prior to the Covid lockdowns. Honestly, we didn't know if there was really a market.”ĭaez with wife Chris and their Japanese business partners from Kinokuniya.Īs it did for most businesses, the pandemic posed a real challenge for Daez’s bookstores. “But we we were not using yet the name of Kinokuniya because at that time, we were still kind of experimenting it was our first time selling Japanese books.
The Filipino businessman says Fully Booked has actually been carrying Japanese titles since 2019. The deal sounded quite simple in the beginning, really: Kinokuniya basically supplies Japanese books to Daez’s chain. But, you know, normally relationships with the Japanese might take time to nurture but once you have it, it's good for life.” And as is normal with Japan, it takes quite a bit of time to actually formalize things with them because they're always very cautious. He and the Kinokuya team then met in Tokyo in 2018. And they said that they wanted to invite Kinokuniya and wanted to get a local partner,” recalls Daez. “When they reached out to me, they told me they were setting up a mall here in Fort Bonifacio. The link responsible for the Fully Booked-Kinokuniya merger is Mitsukoshi whose people began talking to Daez roughly five years ago. “I guess this is also my way of sharing the love and passion for graphic novels to the Philippine public.” Daez at the Fully Booked Kinokuniya store in Mitsukoshi BGC.
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