The Inefficiency of Carrying Everything Can Become a Barrier to Entry

This episode reflects on a piece about Muji, and what it means that a single store sells furniture, clothing, food, stationery, and cleaning supplies all at once — an approach that runs against the usual logic of specialization and efficiency.

It touches on the idea that carrying everything creates its own kind of barrier to entry. Any one Muji product might be imitated. But threading a single aesthetic through thousands of products, consistently, over decades — that's a different kind of difficulty entirely.

There's also a personal thread running through it: eighteen years running a small eyewear shop, and the choice to stock vintage frames, rare constructions, and little-known labels alongside things that simply sell. The customers who say "I've never seen glasses like this" — that reaction, it turns out, comes directly from the inefficiency.

A brief thought on AI and inventory optimization closes the loop: the more every shop chases the same sales data, the less it matters where you shop. Which suggests there may be real value in going the other way.

A quiet look at how accumulated inefficiency, over enough time, can become something no one else can easily copy — and why that might be a form of strength.