Little Rooms CEO Kie Taira, Who Founded Her Company at 24, on Her Standard for "Products That Sell" and a Cash Crisis

Taira calls the company a "Life Engagement Studio." The name means raising people's engagement with their lives and daily living, and making them better. Its overarching vision is to improve both the daily lives of its users and the lives of the members who work there.

As a business, it sells interior goods and sundries related to everyday living. It handles everything from furniture such as sofas to small accessories, delivering as products the things it believes will "make life better if you have them." It also carries curated products, but the core of the business is original products that it plans in-house, outsources to other companies for manufacturing, and then sells.

Taira turns 33 this year. She founded the company at 24, and it has now entered its ninth year. Minamikawa, who had just set up a personal agency, was genuinely impressed that she had kept it going for nine years.

Taira joined an advertising agency straight out of university. However, she was in a department outside the core advertising business, and left after about two years to start her own company.

She says she had wanted to start a business since she was young. The direct trigger was an internship during university, where she worked for about three years at a company running media for women. That is also where she met her current co-founder. While there, she watched up close as the company's CEO, then 24 or 25 and about five years older than her group, went all the way to selling the company to a large corporation.

When Minamikawa asked whether it was really true that money wasn't the goal, Taira said it was. What drew her in was how cool it looked for young members to be doing what they loved with people they liked, while delivering something to a lot of people. But when pressed with "So you don't want money?", she candidly admitted, "Eventually, I do," drawing a laugh from Minamikawa.

Ending up in interior goods was not part of the plan. Because her internship had been at a media company for women, Taira was interested in services she herself could be a user of. So even after going independent, she started with a media business.

It was a time when sharing information on Instagram was just starting to take off, and Taira's team was posting about decorating and arranging rooms. Comments began appearing on the posts asking, "Where can I buy this?" Thinking that these followers might buy if they started selling, they moved into selling interior goods.

Her co-founder was a fellow intern from the same cohort, also a woman. The company began when the two of them said, "Let's do this together."

Minamikawa prompted her by saying that co-founders clash in every industry, citing personal experience that YouTubers fight and apparel people fight too. Taira replied, "We've gotten this far as good friends." She said they have also settled the financial arrangements properly. A pointed question followed: did she ever feel, "I'm the only one doing the work"? But the first round ran out of time before she could answer, and the topic went no further.

In the second round, the conversation turned to the worst period of the past nine years. Taira said the company had faced crises many times, both in personal relationships and financially.

The toughest financially was before the company created the bead sofa brand that is now its flagship. Business had stalled, and inventory from another product made earlier wouldn't sell through, leaving them no choice but to clear it out at sale prices. When that happens, cash keeps draining away. When they decided to make the bead sofa, she said, the company's balance really was around 2 million yen.

Taira looks back on it as a challenge like "the last time at bat." Although they had taken steps on the funding side, the situation was nerve-racking. She described it as a period when paying salaries might be the end of them—or when they might not even be able to pay them at all. Even then, she said, she and her co-founder stuck together and got through it.

Taira described the features of her top-recommended product, the bead sofa, as follows. She believes there aren't many single-seat sofas out there that cocoon you the way it does. It holds your body firmly, yet it is light enough for a woman to lift on her own. The cover is washable and replaceable, so you can pick your favorite color and swap it out.

What Taira emphasized was that simply placing it creates a resting space in your home. Even in a not-so-large room of about 8 tatami mats, putting in one sofa divides the space and creates time for yourself to read a book or drink coffee. Internally, the company calls this "zoning." The idea is that partitioning the space also partitions your state of mind. Lounging around in bed makes you feel guilty, Taira says, but sitting properly on a sofa and doing what you enjoy resets your mood.

When Minamikawa said, "It's so comfortable I'd probably end up watching vertical videos forever," Taira shot back, "That's up to you." Minamikawa, who liked how it cocooned you without being too firm or too soft, wanted one for the office, and Taira promised to send one.

Asked about the future, Taira said she wants to handle a wide range of things related to daily life, not just furniture and sundries. She wants to deliver products that customers choose because they are personally convinced they are good, helping them build a better life. The idea is that even with everyday items, a cute package alone can lift your mood.

In that vein, she revealed that the first product the company made at its founding, which failed badly, was a toothpaste. It came in a pink package and had a strawberry-mint scent. When Minamikawa said, "Even an amateur like me can tell that wouldn't sell," Taira laughed and admitted, "It was a facile idea," and "It all comes down to me being inexperienced."

Another failure Taira cited was a product they over-ordered and were left with unsold. It was a simple ibul blanket that could be used for children or as a rug. They expected it to sell quite well and misjudged the quantity.

The cause Taira identified was choosing the colors too much according to her own taste. But her analysis wasn't the simple conclusion that "making what you like is bad." The colors may have been her preference, but whether she would actually use that product herself was another matter. So she ended up making it on the assumption that "this kind of person would probably like it" or "some people probably like this." According to Taira, the common thread in her failures so far is that when you make something because it seems like it'll resonate with someone, or because someone will probably like it, it generally fails.

Here Minamikawa brought up the merchandise that Minamikawa's wife produces for them. Because the wife kept making T-shirts and stickers she personally liked, a year of merch sales produced a net profit of 300,000 yen, and their tax accountant scolded them: "What are you even doing this for?"

So what does sell? Taira says that when people inside the company get excited saying "This is really great," it usually works out. She suggested that when many different people's feelings that "this is good" overlap, it leads to sales.

On top of that, Taira added the question of whether she herself absolutely wants it. And not just wants it, but wants it badly enough to pay for it. At the close of the conversation, Minamikawa named this as the most important lesson. Not something you think is "good" out of self-satisfaction, but something you'd want enough to pay for yourself—that lifts the creator's spirits, and it sells. Minamikawa said this needed to be passed on to the wife as soon as possible.

As for future plans, Taira says she is putting emphasis on offline. Sofas in particular are something you can't judge without sitting on them, and buying one online is a high hurdle. For people who feel that way, she wants to increase the places where they can try sitting.

There is currently a showroom in Daikanyama where you can actually sit on the products. The bead sofa is a simple single-seater priced at a little over 40,000 yen. There is a wide range of cover colors, all of which are kept at the showroom, and you can actually swap them on to try. Visitors can take home fabric samples of the colors they are interested in.

On her work style, Taira says she has always worked hard. But now she is mindful not to get too involved in day-to-day operations herself, because she believes a CEO's job should be thinking about the next future. Even so, she says, she sometimes ends up busy anyway.

On her days off, she walks her dog and uses spare moments to work at cafés in Daikanyama. Her dog is a Jack Russell Terrier and Maltese mix, and when stress builds up, she sniffs the dog. She also said that lately she doesn't check messages much on weekends, puts off anything that can wait until Monday, and has a drink to unwind.

She drinks often, more often with company members than with business partners. The members are all drinkers too, to the point that people ask, "Isn't that why you hire them?" But Taira firmly denied that drinking is a hiring criterion.

What she looks for is flexibility. The company is still small, so a work style of "I only do this" is hard to sustain. There are many situations where someone does a different job starting tomorrow or takes on something outside their specialty. There are many moments that can only be overcome by everyone pitching in together, so she wants people who treat everything as their own concern and can work hard together with a positive attitude. Taira said many of the members actually are like that.

Minamikawa prefaced the next question by noting that back in Minamikawa's younger days, there were even physical punishments. Then came the question: nowadays, a CEO's choice of words alone could get you posted about online or sued—was there anything she was careful about? Taira's answer was specific. Many members in the company are in their mid-20s, a big age gap. So when something would come across as too heavy if she said it directly, she has members at the manager level in between relay it instead, in a form that's easier to accept. Conversely, after a manager says something harshly, someone else steps in to follow up. In this way they support one another. She also has older subordinates, members one or two years her senior.

The third round was Taira's turn to ask Minamikawa questions. Taira herself wants to connect what she sees and feels in her private life to her output at work. To that end, she makes a point of going to see beautiful things and visiting exhibitions. She then asked what Minamikawa does.

Minamikawa answered that there isn't much done specifically to use in work. Stories from going drinking with fellow comedians, or minor troubles like little fights, sometimes end up being featured on shows. But back when work was scarce, there was a period of deliberately trying things in private life that nobody else would do. Some good came of it, but the stories ended up sounding contrived. These days, Minamikawa said, it's just a matter of naturally doing things that genuinely spark interest.

Asked about ways to relieve stress, Minamikawa recommended sprinting full-out up a hill. There's a long slope of about 300 to 400 meters nearby. At 44 this year, Minamikawa's legs stop lifting at around the 200-meter mark. But if you keep running, the brain decides it's a crisis and all unnecessary thoughts vanish completely. When it becomes "I'm going to die if this keeps up," all worries disappear, and after a few runs you're left thinking, "What was I even worried about?" Minamikawa explained.

Minamikawa feels the same sensation in the hobby of jiu-jitsu. During sparring, when an older guy opponent comes at you seriously trying to break your arm, your mind goes completely blank while you defend. Minamikawa described this as getting "totonou"—that refreshed state—like a "sauna for the brain." Minamikawa recommends it to juniors too, but no one takes it up, and since it gets called boomer behavior, Minamikawa tries not to bring it up much. Taira laughed and said that if she ever spotted Minamikawa on a hill, she'd leave well enough alone.

Finally, Taira asked what advice Minamikawa would give to their 33-year-old self. Minamikawa answered that the years around 33 were the most hellish. Between getting married at 29 and having a child around 35, there was no work at all, and there were many months with zero pay. Being married brought a sense of responsibility, and Minamikawa tried all sorts of things, like working hard on material, but nothing helped. Minamikawa even wrote fake jobs into the schedule book.

So Minamikawa would want to tell that past self: "Nothing you do is going to work, but it's not your fault. It's just that kind of period." Minamikawa recalled that the period lasted about three years.

When Taira asked how Minamikawa kept their mental health intact, Minamikawa answered that it was then that martial arts came in. It started with kickboxing and eventually led to Systema. Being pushed to the limit by a tattooed instructor gave a feeling of having "worked," despite not working at all. By wearing down physical stamina, Minamikawa convinced themself, "I'm working," and just barely kept it together mentally.

At the end of the conversation, Taira said it was her first time talking in a ring and she had been nervous, but she was happy that Minamikawa, who normally seems uninterested in interior goods and sundries, had taken an interest in the sofa and even her private life. Minamikawa named the point that what everyone truly wants—what you'd want enough to pay for yourself—sells as the biggest takeaway of the day. And Minamikawa closed the conversation by saying this needed to be passed on to the wife, who makes their merch, as soon as possible.