14 December 2020, 3:13 amTOKYO - When Japan announced a state of emergency due to the coronavirus pandemic this year, people were urged to declutter their homes to pass the time, with Tokyo's governor even roping in household-organising celebrity Marie Kondo in promotional videos.
Mitsuko Iwama, a 71-year-old housewife, is a case in point. Pre-pandemic, she would have been spending a lot of time at the gym but after being stuck at home and cleaning her closets more often, she decided to part ways with kimonos that her parents bought her decades ago. Buysell Technologies Co Ltd, the company used by Iwama which collects goods from people's homes and resells them through online stores and at old-style in-person auctions, has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of pandemic-induced tidying.
Similarly, Mercari Inc, which operates a popular flea market app, reported a 52% jump in sales for its July-September quarter compared with the same period a year earlier.