Yusaku Maezawa is a Japanese billionaire entrepreneur and art collector. He is the founder of Start Today and launched Zozotown, Japan’s largest online fashion retail website, in 2004. He is also the founder of the Tokyo-based Contemporary Art Foundation, which supports young artists.
Early Life and Career
Maezawa attended Waseda Jitsugyo High School in 1991, where he started a hardcore punk band with his classmates called Switch Style, where he played the drums. The band released their first EP in 1993. Instead of going to college, Maezawa moved to the United States with his girlfriend in 1995, where he started collecting CDs and records. He returned to Japan in 1998 and used his album collection to launch Start Today, which began selling imported albums and CDs through the mail.
Start Today / ZOZO
The Japanese billionaire founded Start Today in 1998 by building on the mail-order album business. The same year, his band signed with the label BMG Japan. Start Today moved to an online platform by 2000 and started selling clothing, becoming a public company. In 2004, Start Today launched the retail clothing website Zozotown, which became a publicly-traded company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s “Mothers” Index. In 2018, he launched ZOZO, a custom-fit clothing brand, and an at-home measurement system called the ZOZOSUIT in over 72 countries and territories. Maezawa resigned from ZOZO in September 2019 after selling a stake of 50.1% in the company to SoftBank for US$3.7 billion (400 billion Yen) and selling 30% of his personal stake in ZoZo to Yahoo Japan.
Contemporary Art Foundation
Maezawa is the founder of the Tokyo-based Contemporary Art Foundation, which he started in 2012 with a goal of “supporting young artists as a pillar of the next generation of contemporary art.” The Contemporary Art Foundation hosts collection shows twice a year. In 2016, Maezawa bought an Untitled (1982) artwork of a devil by Jean-Michel Basquiat for a record purchase price at auction of $57.3 million and broke a record again in 2017 with a $110.5 million auction for another Untitled (1982) of a skull by the same artist. At the same 2016 auction, Maezawa bought pieces by Bruce Nauman, Alexander Calder, Richard Prince, and Jeff Koons, spending a total of $98 million over two days. Maezawa plans to open a contemporary art museum in Chiba, which will house his collection.
Spaceflights
Maezawa announced on September 17, 2018, that he would be the first commercial passenger to do a flyby around the Moon. He will fly on board a SpaceX Starship, which has been in development since 2017. The flight is slated to take place no earlier than 2023, with a duration of nearly six days. He originally planned to take six to eight artists with him as a part of an art project he has created entitled #dearMoon. However, in March 2021, Maezawa changed the requirement to members of the public. Finally, in December 2022, Maezawa announced that he had chosen his crew members, selecting his favorite artists, such as DJ Steve Aoki and T.O.P.
On May 13, 2021, Maezawa announced he would be joining Space Adventures on a trip to the International Space Station in December 2021, via a Soyuz spacecraft. He spent 12 days on the orbital station with his assistant, Yozo Hirano, where he completed the top 100 things demanded by public, as well as recorded highlights in preparation for the SpaceX lunar flight.
The flight lifted off on December 8, 2021, from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan as part of the Russian-operated Soyuz MS-20. On December 18, Maezawa announced that he will start a campaign in which every participant will receive a sum of money “from space.” The campaign started on December 19. He returned as planned on December 20.
Conclusion
Yusaku Maezawa is a Japanese billionaire entrepreneur and art collector who has made a significant impact on the fashion and art industries. His innovative ideas have led to the establishment of successful businesses and a world-renowned art collection. His ventures into space travel have also made him a pioneer in the field, opening up new possibilities for commercial space travel. Maezawa’s entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to supporting young artists make him an inspiration to many.
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Sources:
https://www.instagram.com/yusaku2020/
https://www.forbes.com/profile/yusaku-maezawa/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yusaku_Maezawa