This is not to say that defence fully eclipsed commercial aviation at the Paris show. With Boeing focused on managing the fallout from the crash of a 787-8 Dreamliner in Ahmedabad, long-time rival Airbus came out swinging, with new deals worth $10bn (€8.6bn) to sell 132 planes to Saudi Arabia, as well as Polish and Japanese operators. The Saudi deals, including 25 A350-1000s for Riyadh Air (an airline that has yet to fly), are emblematic of a bullish commercial-flight industry that still expects to enjoy at least 4 per cent growth each year for the foreseeable future – especially in ambitious markets looking for an edge on their regional rivals.
 
“I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar to what has happened in the fashion industry took place in the commercial-aviation space,” one industry insider told me at the Aéroports de Paris chalet. “The market could become dominated by low-cost airlines on one side and premium players on the other, with not much wriggle room in the middle.”

Bouvier is Monocle’s Paris bureau chief. For some longer-haul reading, fly over to our take on how Romania’s aviation gamble could reshape the nation’s global standing and the hop-on, hop-off jet service disrupting short-haul flights, via the way Andalusia is providing a clear runway to major players in the aerospace industry.

This story originally appeared in The Monocle Minute

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From the outset, Ochiai intended Convenience Wear to be a simple proposition, in keeping with the universality of the convenience store. The decision to start with socks, the most basic staple, was easy. “In Japan, konbini represent this feeling of cleanliness, stability and safety,” Ochiai tells Monocle. “So, I wanted to express this very clean image and the sock seemed to be the ideal vehicle. Plus, everyone knows the brand’s iconic colours.” The socks emerged as the hero product: cheap but well made with a thick pile, they’re also antibacterial and deodorising.

Ochiai, who has had his own fashion brand, Facetasm, since 2007, also had a clear vision of how he wanted Convenience Wear to appear on the shelves. “In the context of the convenience store, we knew that the design would have to be seen and understood immediately by people of all ages, occupations and nationalities,” he says. Ochiai worked with graphic designer Takahiro Yasuda and his collective, Cekai, to come up with a bold style that stands out among the hundreds of other products. “I requested that the information should be easy to understand and readable in katakana, kanji and English.” 

The tough, clear-plastic packaging is designed to be reused. “Reusability can be difficult with mass production,” he says. “But I thought of a style that could be opened and resealed.” The packaging also protects the products from wear and tear. “Between the 24-hour-a-day lighting and the dust, a konbini is a very difficult environment for selling clothes.” 

Initially the range was limited to the socks and a few essentials – men’s undershirts, women’s tank tops, eco-bags and small hand towels – but the simplicity of the line’s design and purpose has made it easy to expand. You might find sweatshirts, stationery, handkerchiefs, packable nylon jackets and long-sleeved cotton T-shirts.

Ochiai’s own status in the fashion world has made it easier to find collaborations too. The oversized T-shirts made with Akio Hasegawa, a longtime Monocle stylist, and his brand, Cahlumn, sold out in no time. At the Fuji Rock Festival, staff wore Convenience Wear T-shirts and there were special-edition socks and hand towels. 

Convenience Wear’s hand towels are made in Imabari, the towel-making centre of Japan. “We’re not particularly focused on ‘made in Japan’,” Ochiai says. “But for the way we wanted to make the pieces and the ability to introduce new colours, Imabari just made sense – they could make high-quality pieces quickly.” Ochiai, who studied at Bunka Fashion College, is bringing his fashion sensibility to the less-than-fashionable shelves of the convenience store. One striking thing about the brand is its unusual colour palette. The basic blacks, whites and greys are all there but they are punctuated with sophisticated pops of colour that call for the confidence of a seasoned designer. 

“We use the brand to communicate,” says Ochiai. “When it’s winter, we might use warmer colours to indicate that spring is on its way. With Fuji Rock Festival, we used optimistic neon colours to reflect that it’s a friendly, family event.” 

Ochiai’s own brand, Facetasm, is nothing like Convenience Wear – it’s far more directional and beloved of fashion followers. But he knew what this project called for. “Boys in Japan have always looked at magazines and shops for ideas and trends; I think that the convenience store could be a similar tool,” he says. “We’re trying to build a new konbini culture.” Convenience Wear also reflects Japan’s particular style mix – an inimitable blend of high and low. 

FamilyMart made another unexpected move earlier this year when it announced that streetwear supremo Nigo – of A Bathing Ape and now Human Made fame – was now on board as the wider company’s creative director. Nigo isn’t involved in the Convenience Wear project but his arrival points to an awareness that the konbini occupies a unique space in Japanese society; the ideal place to catch the attention of the broadest audience possible. Ochiai says that it’s the democratic nature of the convenience store that makes his concept work. “FamilyMart talks about ‘loving yourself’, buying something for yourself in your own time and at your leisure.”

Given the number and ubiquity of FamilyMarts around Japan – something with which no fast-fashion company could compete – the potential for Convenience Wear is huge. “We are already effectively the world’s largest clothing shop,” says Ochiai. The brand strayed into fashion territory with a one-off runway show in 2023, which prompted the creation of a prototype denim jacket. Ochiai, who oversees the creative direction of every product, would love to design trainers but he’s always careful to keep Convenience Wear on the functional side. An accessible price point is key but at a level where the quality still remains high. 

The next challenge could be to create a Convenience Wear flagship. But how to improve on the existing FamilyMart shops? They’re accessible to all, 24 hours a day. Ochiai keeps an open mind. “Nobody has tried to do what we’re doing in a convenience store,” he says. “It’s a new experience. I’m constantly experimenting with fresh ideas.” 

family.co.jp

This article originally appeared in the Opportunity Edition newspaper 2025, created in collaboration with UBS for its Asian Investment Conference in Hong Kong.

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The maiden voyage for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner took place in 2009 at Paine Field, its flagship manufacturing facility in Everett, Washington. The Dreamliner doesn’t cut as dramatic a profile as the double-decker Airbus A380 and holds fewer passengers than the Boeing 777. But as the name suggests, it provides a smoother ride than its peers for long-haul flights with more comfortable cabin pressure, higher humidity, better air filtration, dimmable windows and anti-turbulence technology.

Like many global carriers, Air India has been stocking up on Dreamliners to replace an ageing fleet of 747s. While the Queen of the Skies is a beloved aircraft, the more fuel efficient Dreamliner is an ideal workhorse for flights between secondary airports, such as Thursday’s route from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick. Just last month, Ortberg joined president Donald Trump and Qatari emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani for the signing of a $96bn (€83bn) purchase agreement that includes 130 Dreamliners – the largest order for a single model of jet in Boeing’s history.

The blockbuster deal in Doha papered over lingering concerns about the Dreamliner, concerns that the Air India accident has now propelled to the forefront. The same year as the 787’s inaugural flight, Boeing broke ground on a final assembly line in Charleston, South Carolina, that could handle wide-body aircraft – only the third such facility in the world after Everett, Washington, and Toulouse, France. The move was widely interpreted as a jab at Boeing’s unionised workforce in Washington state, as South Carolina state law prohibits compulsory union membership. The powerful machinists and engineering unions crowed that the lower-cost non-union labour in South Carolina would build inferior airplanes.

Indeed, five years ago, Boeing discovered small gaps in the joins that could weaken the fuselage and production halted for two years to correct the issue. In 2024, whistleblowers testified before a Senate committee that Boeing had taken shortcuts and was “putting out defective airplanes,” an allegation the company denied by pointing to the thorough revamping of how it makes the Dreamliner’s carbon-composite airframe. The Federal Aviation Administration, which in the past has been accused of being asleep at the switch and effectively letting Boeing certify its own aircraft, oversaw the process. Media were also invited into the Charleston plant to see the improvements first-hand.

The Dreamliner that crashed on Thursday, however, was built in Everett by union machinists and delivered in 2014 (before Charleston fully took over wide-body production). Any potential problems with the flagship wide-body jets cannot be reduced to a simple question of union or non-union labour. There are perhaps deeper structural issues facing the inordinately complex engineering of a modern aircraft such as the Dreamliner; it’s also possible that a fluke, such as a flock of birds, caused the crash, as with Jeju Air Flight 2216 in December. Boeing will, of course, dispatch a crack team to assist US and Indian authorities with the crash investigation. In the immediate aftermath, Ortberg has the toughest assignment for any aviation CEO – damage control in the wake of a fatal disaster that has shaken the confidence of the public. Whether he can pass this test with flying colours will prove the true mark of the man who has taken on one of the most daunting leadership roles in global business.

Scruggs is Monocle’s Seattle correspondent.

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Nevertheless, the mood was calm and serene when Apple opened its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in California on Monday. WWDC is an annual shindig designed to show app developers the company’s software plans for the coming year. Though there were mentions of Apple Intelligence, the iPhone maker switched its focus to what it called its “broadest design overhaul ever”. 

The new software will launch in autumn for the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch, with a new discreetly opulent look called “liquid glass” that’s inspired by the translucent interface of the company’s headset, the Apple Vision Pro. The camera will be redesigned in a bid to simplify how it works, while travellers will be able to hold their passport on their iPhone for domestic travel. A great deal of thought has also been given to the Phone app. You know, the one after which the device is named, and which does that charming, old-fashioned thing: make and receive calls.

For instance, if waiting on hold seems tiresome, the phone can automatically recognise hold music and offer to keep your place in line, mercifully muting the audio until you’re linked to a human agent. When that happens, the phone rings to rejoin you to the call, while telling the other party that you’re on your way. Apple also announced “call screening”, which pre-emptively asks a caller from an unfamiliar number to state their name and reason for calling. The answers are displayed as text on screen and you can decide to answer or ditch the call. 

Similarly impressive was a live translation feature, which visually and audibly relays what is said between parties using different languages in real time. In a demo, it was clear that the pause between speaking and translation was fast, though I suspect it works best in a quiet environment. Something similar can be done with text messages: received messages appear translated on screen as they arrive and outgoing messages can be translated to suit the recipient’s needs.

These capabilities are powered by artificial intelligence (AI). AI is important, Apple suggests, but instead of being a feature in its own right, what’s more important is how the new, clever stuff will be infused across the brand’s phones, tablets, watches and laptops, from now on. Before Monday, Apple looked like a company anxiously dealing with an onslaught of problems. Now it appears confident – even optimistic.

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How can military installations be defended in a world where they can be hit anywhere, from anywhere, and by weapons that will not alert any radar? Is there really any point in spending billions of dollars on hi-tech aircraft when it might be demolished by cheap, disposable toys armed with munitions that can be partly manufactured with 3D printers? How confident is the commanding officer of any airfield about the benign nature of every single shipping container that might happen to be, at any given moment, within a few hundred kilometres of their control tower?

We recently heard from a Monocle reader with inadvertent insight into a specific aspect of this sort of warfare – what might be thought of as a dramatic decentralisation of military procurement. The reader had put a 2021 DJI Mavic 3 drone up for sale on Ricardo, which is essentially Swiss Ebay. He’d been contacted by a Ukrainian who explained that he was sourcing drones for Ukraine’s military and that older models were easier to override for combat purposes. The buyer offered to send a photo of the drone in action once it was repurposed (our contact duly received a photo of a Ukrainian soldier holding a drone which was, if not exactly the same one, a similar model).

I contacted the purchaser, who explained that there are small, informal networks of Ukrainians that are crowd-sourcing military materiel all over Europe; the cells are based on pre-war social and professional relationships linking the buyers with serving soldiers. The Swiss connection benefits from the country’s characteristically punctilious restrictions on drone use. “Swiss kids buy drones for fun,” the buyer says, “then realise that they cannot fly everywhere and sell them for half-price.” 

Eager though the sellers may be, they are duly informed of the use to which their drones will be put. A small number maintain traditional Swiss neutrality and decline but, according to the buyer, “In 99 per cent of cases, the Swiss are very happy to help, and offer discounts and pack bars of chocolate into drone bags. The fact that most Swiss men have served in the military and know how army life works helps a lot.”

The necessary funds are privately raised. The buyer reckons that they alone have sent nearly 100 Mavic 3 drones to the Ukrainian army since the war began in 2022. “The drones have a very short life span,” he says, “but it’s still better to send a drone to check whether there are any Russians around the corner than to send a soldier.”

But the question – well, a question – now plaguing strategists is where these leaps forward in drone technology might be leading. The weekend before last, I attended the Black Sea Security Forum in Odesa – one of many Ukrainian cities that has been used, over these past three years, as an unwilling and undeserving testing range for drones built by Russia and Iran. 

Among the people I met was a British military analyst and former soldier who told me that the evolution of drones was now proceeding so rapidly that generations of development were measured not in years or months but weeks: the Turkish-built Bayraktar TB2s, which had inspired folk ballads in the early stages of Ukraine’s resistance in 2022, now seemed like positive antiques. This is not to say that we will not hear more of Bayraktar – just a few weeks ago, the AI-powered Bayraktar TB3 became the first drone capable of completely autonomous liftoff and landing on a short-runway vessel; it can stay in the air for 32 hours and launch supersonic ballistic missiles.

The analyst reckoned that in future conflicts, large-scale deployments of infantry would be all but impossible, massed-armour formations would be hopelessly vulnerable, and that mileage in crewed fighter jets would swiftly decrease. He also noted that in the Black Sea lapping at the shore down the street, Russia’s fleet had recently been defeated by a country without a navy. 

He wondered vaguely whether we were on the verge of outsourcing warfare entirely to machines and androids belting the nuts and bolts out of each other, with every offensive innovation thwarted almost instantly by defensive countermeasure. It’s hard to know whether it sounds dystopian or utopian: what do wars become if people can’t fight them?

Andrew Mueller is a contributing editor at Monocle and host of our weekly world affairs podcast, The Foreign Desk.

For Monocle’s June issue, we profile 10 European defence disruptors. Click here to read more.

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I learned early on that in poker you need to bluff. A lot. Bluffing is a crucial strategy, as much in cards as in negotiations. Studying game theory was the key to learning how to do it well. It’s how I figured out the best way to play certain combinations of cards to get results.

Once I had grasped the theory, I realised that it wasn’t really “bluffing” as I’d thought of it at all. I was only ever making the correct plays in response to the evolving situation on the table. That discovery was very liberating for me. There’s nothing wrong with getting caught out with a bluff either. It’s all part of the game.

My doctorate was about the art of decision-making in moments of uncertainty and I worked with collaborators on Wall Street to better understand the pressures of making complex decisions in high-risk conditions in financial markets. I came to understand that high-stakes poker offers a good metaphor for life: it teaches you how to take calculated risks in everyday settings, how to think through probabilities and work out the value of those risks correctly. Above all, poker also trains you in how to deal with emotions, which is crucial if you want to be a winning player. It’s the perfect learning environment because, unlike in everyday life, you get immediate feedback on your decisions.

The lessons of poker can apply far beyond the gaming tables, whether it’s about something innocuous such as choosing which restaurant to go to for dinner or about a big, consequential life decision regarding your health. At the core, it’s all about what kinds of risks are worth taking and which aren’t. I would never fly in a helicopter, for instance, or ride a motorcycle: I have poker to thank for that because examining probabilities has now become second nature to me.

The poker skill set is helpful in trying to manage financial risk because you become better at making and executing decisions in the moment. You have to hone your ability to recognise when you’re “on tilt”, as we poker players say, which is another way of describing when you start playing poorly because your emotions have got the better of you. This is when your decision-making suffers.

These skills are more crucial than ever. To navigate risky decision-making in the current political and economic climate, I would suggest doing as much work as you can ahead of time: mock up a system in which you write down all of the possible factors that you can think of that might shape the outcome of a decision. Don’t just do this exercise mentally: put pen to paper and run through the situation in a notebook because – take it from me – otherwise you will lie to yourself. Assign probabilities and certainty scores as best and as honestly as you can. Have an open, accurate framework that you can then go back to after you make the decision and evaluate yourself.

How did you do? Did you consider all of the right factors and weight them correctly? Were those probabilities accurate? If not, how can you adjust, adapt and do better in future? My approach might sound overly cautious but it has proved successful for me. You don’t need a poker player to tell you that nothing in life is ever totally certain. So you need to hedge some of the time. And my most important lesson learned from years of personal thought, academic research and professional poker? Never, ever bet the house.

Konnikova is a professional poker player and the author of ‘The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win’, published by Penguin Press.
As told to Gregory Scruggs.

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Lawrence, who is the Deepmind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge and a senior AI fellow at the Alan Turing Institute, is also dismissive of some of the dystopian visions of where this technology could take us. He questions, for instance, the possibility of artificial general intelligence – the idea that machines could master any intellectual task that a human could.

Here, he sits down with David Phelan, Monocle’s technology correspondent, to survey the road ahead.

First of all, what should I call you?
Though my official title is Deepmind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge, I don’t work for Deepmind, the Google-owned AI firm. It endowed the chair and put in a certain amount of money with which the university pays for the position. It’s a lot less money than you might think – academics are pretty cheap. I have a lot of job titles so people normally just call me Neil.

Should we be afraid of AI? In your book, you write that the possibility of machines becoming so clever that they operate beyond our control is slim.
To the extent that it could happen, it has already happened. A simplistic view of AI technologies leads to significant misunderstandings. It also propagates vivid, sci-fi-like narratives, for very human reasons. But machines going beyond our control – in banking, for instance – is an interesting issue because you’re talking about a world in which there was a whole human system of interacting with, editing and controlling data. Think of systems such as double-entry bookkeeping, in which you can train someone relatively quickly to understand what they’re doing and then they’re able to bring their whole human judgement to the task. What you’re seeing with the digital world as it stands is a disempowering of people, whether they’re in banking, law or accounting. The ability of human judgement to influence an individual decision, where the context is well understood, has been sort of eliminated.

What are the benefits of AI? How can it help us?
I use the notion of an “artificial general vehicle” in my book to show the absurdity of the idea of “artificial general intelligence”. Is there a vehicle that’s right for all circumstances, whether you want to go to the shop at the end of your road or trying to get to New York? No. There’s no such vehicle. Exactly the same is true for intelligence. Artificial general intelligence is an absurd notion and deeply misleading when it comes to how businesses should proceed.

But you can imagine that, in 10 or 20 years, everyone in a business will be able to interact with a computer and steer it as finely as the best software engineer can today. That would be a major shift in power structures: to go from being restricted to a few hyperscalers [companies with huge data centres with enormous computing resources] that are able to build large-scale software systems to things being distributed throughout organisations. That would be deeply transformative.

Are there dangers connected to AI?
Our current structures in terms of software, hardware and behaviour are now distinctly out of date. The information infrastructure has shifted so profoundly that things are now not being done correctly. The problem is that none of us knows what the correct way is.

Today there is a whole business literature around what you should do but the only thing that we really know is that those who are pronouncing what we should be doing are likely to be wrong. Well, one of them might be right – but which one? What you’re seeing is a period of uncertainty when business leaders are faced with the difficult task of making decisions about technologies with which they’re not always intimately familiar. As a result, their business judgement tends to flip: people are all in or all out. But the truth is that there’s something in between.

If I tell you to pay attention to something, that might focus your thinking but then you won’t be scanning the horizon. We want our business leaders to be horizon-scanning as well as focusing on customer needs. Taking advantage of developments such as AI requires restoring business leaders’ confidence in the fact that their fundamental intuitions about businesses and customers still hold.

However, because the information infrastructure has been roughly constant for years, most businesses have split what they do into different parts for efficiency. Unfortunately, that tends to disconnect the business from its customer base and undermine agility. In short, the opportunities are enormous but the challenge that we tend to face is around re-examining structures and the culture, and how it’s servicing customer needs.

US scientist Roy Amara once said that people tend to overestimate the impact of new technologies in the short term while underestimating their long-term effects. Is that true with AI?
Bill Gates said something similar: that things in the short term happen more slowly than you expect but, in the long term, they happen much more quickly. That’s another challenge; the type of timeframe for making decisions really sits between those two. My advice to business leaders is to refine their communication machine because that would allow them to steer around what will be a complex and evolving landscape. We can talk about making efficiencies but people know about that. It’s about how they deploy and integrate AI in existing infrastructures.

How about sectors such as healthcare and education? What opportunities can AI offer them?
People have wanted to see what benefits that it could bring for a decade but we have delivered virtually nothing because there’s a total separation between macroeconomic interventions and microeconomic need. There are disconnects between companies and their customers, and, even more seriously, disconnects between governments and citizens. To the extent that there’s something dystopian about AI, that’s the root of the issue.

In a company such as Amazon, there’s a notion that you have to dive deep when anecdotes and data are suggesting conflicting things. People lean on data too much and I have seen Jeff Bezos quoted as saying that it’s usually the anecdote that’s right.

The digital systems that we now use give people the impression that things are OK from a data perspective. That’s problematic and reflects a weird desire to centrally control everything. We know that this doesn’t work. That’s what is negatively affecting education and local authorities: the people who are at the coalface have been undermined in their ability to deliver because their tools have become separated from something that, say, a normal teacher can work with. A nurse, like my wife, might spend 30 per cent of her time on data entry.

AI offers an enormous opportunity to put that right. People could sit down with a nurse and look at their day job today and give them a series of tools that could quite quickly be designed to support them in that data entry. We need a world where that nurse is capable of building that type of service themselves. And that’s a fundamental shift in our information infrastructure, which is going to take time. So, if deployed in a different way – not centralised but in smaller pockets – AI could have a significant impact.

Where do things need to change?
The ability to work with all of this innovation in software is currently guarded by a few digital providers. While they’re accruing power, the rest of us aren’t able to grow and benefit in terms of productivity. This has already affected health, education and social care. We are beholden to what large hyperscalers choose to deploy and they’re stuck in that loop. We need innovation by those who understand the role, the job and how to make things better, and AI is an extraordinary route to that.

Finally, a matter of manners. Should we be saying please and thank you to Alexa?
There are differing views on that. My answer is that I do because it’s about my own dignity. Voice services such as Alexa provide a human interface and play on our sense of interacting with other people. I think that means it’s keying deeply into my dignity and I don’t want to demean myself. What we see again and again with social media is that it’s degrading our social interactions. Now, I don’t know whether that’s right or wrong but it’s something that I’m thinking about. I’m choosing to say “please” – at least, when I remember.

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Monocle joins the surfer and watersports enthusiast for an early-morning paddle around the rocky coastline near his home in Clearwater Bay. As the sun shines through the clouds, the 44-year-old Parisian claims to be a little older and wiser during Trump’s second term: less prone to panic, better equipped to avoid burnout and more able to tackle stressful situations. The serial entrepreneur also hopes to solve the universal issue of technology addiction. “I want to create a new product to rebalance tech usage,” he says. “No one has made one yet. If they had, I’d be using it.”

Waking up at 06.45 to answer emails on his phone, his day finishes in the same way at 23.30. “The problem of having a global business is that there is zero downtime,” says Duc, listing some of the ways that he has tried to disconnect, from using a dumbphone to locking his devices in a glass jar. For now, nature and sport are the best tonic. Duc moved to a seaside village in eastern Hong Kong 12 years ago, right before the birth of the first of his three children. Kayaks and paddleboards line the beach, while wild boars can be heard grunting in the forested hills. 

Technology addiction has been on Duc’s mind for the past five years. “I was extremely close to burnout,” he says. There is an obvious irony in that the businessman who has made a big success out of connecting us with technology has failed to find a way of cutting his own cord. But striking a balance between traditional and modern forms of communication strikes to the core of how Native Union began. 

Duc was running an export furniture brand when, largely for fun, he bought a traditional telephone handset from a market and connected it to his iPhone. He ended up starting a business to produce and sell the gadget with another entrepreneur whom he was sharing an office with. Native Union’s first product, the “MoshiMoshi” handset, sold three-million items in two years before being made obsolete by cheap copycats. 

Back then, the idea was to allow Blackberry and iPhone users to speak on the phone while using the screen at the same time. Now, 15 years later, Native Union is bringing back its best-selling product for the opposite reason: to allow smartphone users to focus on phone conversations and put their screens away. “The art of the conversation has been diluted,” says Duc. “When you look at the most important talks between Trump and Putin, they are still made with an ergonomic telephone. The microphone is by your mouth and you feel that you are on the phone.” 

“This one will be even more beautiful than the first one,” he says. Whether version two will be as popular is yet to be seen. At the moment, cables and chargers account for the largest chunk of the firm’s revenue. Magnetic powerbanks are the best-selling single product but that changes with each new launch. Native Union has already moved into bags and, next year, the brand will launch a portable light, which Duc already uses when working at night. 

By that point, half of all Native Union products will be made outside of China for the first time in the company’s history. Some electronic production has moved to Vietnam, while bags are made in Indonesia. It’s a de-risking strategy rather than a departure. “China is the most advanced place in the world to produce a high-quality technology product,” says Duc, who must work to Apple’s exacting standards in order to stay on the shelves of its shops. Native Union is also making an increasing number of technology-related products and small accessories for European luxury brands. Many of the big houses have come to accept that the best quality in this category is in China, even if only a few are willing to be open about it. 

As we get back on the water and begin paddling towards the beach, Duc explains that he has no plans to leave Hong Kong. Every few weeks, he boards the high-speed train from Hong Kong to China for a factory visit. “My manufacturing partners do a lot of innovation themselves, so being closer to them means that we are first to see their new materials and techniques.”

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Japan’s pet-industry numbers are impressive: the country’s pet-product market was estimated to be worth ¥1.9trn (€11.6bn) last year, up 21 per cent from 2019. Pet food accounts for 38 per cent of all sales, while pet supplies rake in 17 per cent. As demographic shifts take their toll, there are now more pets than children in Japan – 15.9 million pets compared to about 14 million people under the age of 15 in 2024 – and even though the number of pets is slightly in decline, the amount of money spent on pet care has been growing every year since the pandemic.

The sheer number of exhibitors, particularly in the luxury sector, attests to the sector’s breadth and depth. Between the organic meals, herbal fur packs and full-body hair-drying machines, it’s clear that Japan’s pet world has moved into the “lifestyle” sector. Tavo is showing the latest car seats for dogs and Grand Motor has a full mise en scène for a camper van adapted for pet use, complete with fans, water and beds. OGK Giken is a favourite for its stylish over-the-shoulder pet carriers, while Japanese cycle brand Maruishi is drawing attention for its brown-and-green Pet Porter electric bike with pet-friendly front basket.

Pet food is an important sector, encompassing dog-friendly dashi stock, deli dishes and fluffy birthday cakes. Clothes are everywhere too. Tombow, best known in Japan as a school-and-office stationery brand, is showing a collection of climate-sensitive dog jackets and pet harnesses to help hoist ageing dogs along on their daily stroll. Mimimerry is displaying a selection of lace and satin crinoline dresses with ¥50,000 (€307) price tags and names such as Miracle Echelle. Visitors can find everything from Birkin-style dog bags to embroidered bomber jackets for pets.

Companies from the wider region are also making their debut. Heaven Yang is the business manager of Guangzhou brand DJJ Dog Shoes, which sells tiny trainers for small dogs, while Velver from Hong Kong makes gold necklaces using the nose prints of pets. “China is upcoming and growing – but we see growth potential for dog shoes in Japan too,” says Yang. “It’s an underdeveloped market.” Meanwhile, Lee Seung Jae, the CEO of Pengineer, is introducing the Abuba, South Korea’s bestselling dog-carrier backpack, to Japan. The company also produces premium dog goggles, which promise safety, comfort and eye protection from dazzling sunlight.

Over at Airbuggy – whose ubiquitous state-of-the-art pet carts ferry Japanese dogs around town in enviable splendour – long queues are already forming. The scale of the stand reinforces the brand’s dominance. “We wanted to broaden awareness of the pet-stroller market,” says Airbuggy’s Yoko Shimada. “With more than 150,000 Airbuggy pet-cart users, we also wanted to take the opportunity to provide free maintenance stations for our customers and show them our selection of accessories.”

As families shrink, dogs are increasingly lavished with attention as though they were beloved offspring. “We are seeing a growing desire for unique, customised products,” says Shimada. “People want to create their own one-of-a-kind stroller where they choose the colours of the frame, carrycot, handle and drink holder, as well as adding studs and Swarovski decorations.”

Labradors are trying out Airbuggy’s large Air-Cruiser and there’s a long wait for the photo booth. Ageing is a big topic at the event, with owners seeking ways to extend the life of their canine companions. “It has been more than a decade since dog ownership peaked and many of those pets are getting on,” says Shimada. “We anticipate further growth, especially in sectors such as senior pet-care services and insurance. We also expect a rising demand for products and services tailored to specific categories, such as extra-large or smaller breeds. Internationally, we have begun to expand into key markets including the United States, Asia and Europe. In Europe, we have set up a stock point in the Netherlands and, from June, we will launch e-commerce to serve the broader EU market.”

Airbuggy is just one of a number of companies that have adapted human products to meet the demand for pet equivalents. Nappy brand Unicharm is storming the market with its animal nappies – pet-care sales at the company accounted for ¥139bn (€853m) in 2023 (1.7 times greater than 2018), amounting to 15 per cent of total sales.

Toothpaste giant Lion is another crossover success story. “People want to live with their dogs as long as possible, so there’s interest in health-related products – particularly, in our case, dental-care items,” says Lion Pet’s Akiko Ebihara. “We’re seeing growing attention being paid to dental brushes with ultra-fine bristles that can be selected according to the dog’s mouth size. We also receive a lot of inquiries not only about the products but also about how to establish toothbrushing as a comfortable, lasting habit, especially when dogs are reluctant.”

China’s increasingly affluent and dog-loving middle class is inevitably a big focus of attention. “Overseas, we are currently focused on Asia, particularly China, where we aim to contribute to the development of healthy habits for pets through our strength in oral-healthcare products,” says Ebihara. “In the future, we plan to extend our presence to other countries where many families have pets.”

This year also sees the debut of two new zones at Interpets: PetTech and Pet Disaster Preparedness. Vets are being coached in the importance of a business continuity plan in case of disasters, while pet owners are trying out a simulated evacuation scenario and being introduced to the burgeoning industry in preserved pet foods, emergency pet supplies and nursing-care products for injured animals.

Pet technology is likely to dominate the industry in coming years with GPS tracking, cameras, automatic feeders, smart toys and an array of online services and AI products. Panasonic is showing Ziaino, an air purifier designed to remove pet smells, while house builder Hebel Haus has spotted a niche in the market and is promoting its pet-centric developments.

Every day at Interpets, there are talks on business, healthcare and longevity. The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries discusses pet-food safety laws and there are multiple awards, including one for long-lived dogs, cats and their families.

Where Japan leads, others follow and success here points to growth around the region. “The focus on pet wellness and advances in related technologies mean the pet market in Japan will evolve and diversify,” says Ebihara. “There’s a growing sense of pets as ‘family’.”

The post Barking up the right tree: Inside Japan’s billion-Yen luxury pet lifestyle boom appeared first on Monocle.

The first lift takes you up to the 73rd floor, where you’ll find a slick lounge with polished parquet floors and panoramic windows. From there, another whisks you to the 107th floor. One final ascent on the penthouse’s internal elevator brings you up to a vast space with double-height windows that allow you to look down on helicopters hovering below.

Want to nip out for dinner? Maybe you should consider investing in a parachute. Left something in the car? Then prepare for three lift journeys and a protracted chat with the valet. Even seasoned staff might find it exhausting. My ears are still popping.

We’re told that there’s interest in the Sky Palace among the usual suspects: a member of the UAE’s royal family has viewed it, as have several Emirati billionaires. A steady flow of prospective buyers has come from the US, Russia and China. But for all its height and hype, the Sky Palace enters a market that – dare we say it – is slowly coming down to Earth.

Luxury in Dubai is turning low-rise. Developers are shifting their focus to waterfront villas and low-slung hideaways, particularly in ritzy enclaves such as Jumeirah Bay, where homes are being sold for as much as $90m (€79m). Some 9,000 villas were completed in Dubai last year, with almost 20,000 more in the pipeline for 2025. Part of this shift is practical. Many people want to build to spec and avoid the awkwardness of sharing a lift (or several). But it’s also a sign of a maturing market. Demand remains high but supply is catching up. Sure, if you’re into brag-worthy views that stretch to the horizon, the Sky Palace delivers. Just don’t expect everyone in Dubai to be impressed, as tastes are clearly changing. And try not to drop your keys outside: it’s a long way down if you lose them.

Rashid is a Dubai-based journalist and a Monocle contributor.

Want to read more? Bjarke Ingels and Dubai-based developers ARM Holding are redrawing the city’s map, making it greener than ever. Click here for the full article.

This story originally appeared in The Monocle Minute

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The post A sky-high penthouse is on sale in Dubai – but Emirati luxury is moving down to earth appeared first on Monocle.