Kuchikomi Mar. 04, 2008 - 02:22PM JST ( 1 )

In Tokyo’s Ginza district, several luxury brand stores opened one after the other last year. Have a look inside and you will see smartly dressed young women waiting on rich customers. But while a lot of women long for jobs at luxury brand stores, the reality is a lot different. Their working conditions are almost blue-collar.

Currently, full-time jobs at luxury brand shops are very competitive. An insider says 20,000 applicants send their resumes for 100 job vacancies, for example. Some of the successful ones talk to Shukan Post about their working environment.

Akemi Noda, a full-time saleswoman at one store, said, “I need to stand all day long in high heels. I spend half of the day in a storage space doing inventory, lifting heavy boxes. Even if I have back pains, I can’t use an anti-inflammatory analgesic plaster because it smells.”

Stress is another problem. “The store is very strict about making sure nothing goes missing. Everyone must undergo a security check when coming to and leaving the shop. We can’t go home until the manager confirms all the items are intact. That is very stressful,” said Ayu Yoshino, 28, a full-time employee at a jewelry store. She adds, “The shop always sets a profit goal. For example, in the Christmas season, we have to sell 50 million yen worth of jewelry a day.”

Wages are also unimaginably law despite their brand image. “My base salary is 220,000 yen and after tax, it comes to 190,000 yen with bonuses twice a year,” said Noda. “My total income is 3,400,000 yen. Even if I get promoted to a managing position, the salary won’t go up much. So no matter how long I work, my income remains almost the same. We don’t get overtime, either.”

Many of these brand shops have three ranks of employees: full-time, contract and temps. Contract and temp employees are not paid bonuses in general, and some are paid less than 220,000 a month.

Kyoko Suzuki, 23, who studied in the UK for two years and is fluent in English, became a luxury brand store saleswoman because she couldn’t get a job as an airline flight attendant. She now lives in a single room apartment in an area about a one-hour commute from Ginza. After paying rent, utility and phone bills, she only has 70,000 yen a month left to spend. She spends 30,000 yen for food as well. But she also needs to spend another 40,000 yen for clothes and cosmetics every month because her colleagues are fussy about her fashion at the shop. She said she can’t save money at all. She is now looking for a job in which she can make use of her English skills.

Kana Yoshioka, 23, also a saleswoman,  said: “In my workplace, there is an unwritten rule that we must not go to McDonald’s and other fast and cheap food joints for lunch because of the brand image of our uniform. But I can’t pay much for lunch with my low salary.”

She adds: “Some of my colleagues were buying our store’s goods at a special discount for staff and then selling them online. But they were fired after management found out about it. They are very strict about such private trading of their goods through online auctions and hock shops.”

Toyoko Yamada, a professor at Aichi Shukutoku University, who researches commercial branding, analyzes the reality of luxury brand shop clerks. “The reason why these women put up with the hard working environment with low wages is because they have strong pride in the fact that they work for a prestigious brand. They are more popular with guys if they are working for Hermes or Chanel, for example, rather than for a bank. I think they are hooked by the gorgeous image even if they are dissatisfied with working conditions.” (Translated by Taro Fujimoto)