Land acquisition earmarked for Japan leisure development property

Hong Kong, June 4, 2019 – Eight together with real estate investors Derek Arculli and Yang Yu today announced that its investment arm has successfully acquired land for its first real estate development project. The project is budgeted at JPY6.35B (approx. HK$450M/US$58M) as a first pool of capital to be deployed for creative and brand-led property acquisitions in Japan’s leisure and hospitality markets.

“After a year of mainly deploying our own equity across small deals, we’re thrilled to have now closed our first dedicated development project,” says director Nicolas Gontard of Eight Capital Partners. “We’ve been studying a number of exciting deals all across Japan – Kyoto, Okinawa, Nagano and Hokkaido – during the past year, and found many convincing reasons to start locking deals on the ground. We’ve now secured a first landmark deal in Niseko, Hokkaido."

“What is really driving us is to continue making projects of high creative value that raise people’s eyebrows and get them talking.” says fellow director of Eight Capital Partners, Chris Fjelddahl. “This is how we created the Odin brand in Niseko. By now it appears a lot of people around Asia’s metropolitan centres have experienced some of our projects - the restaurants, bars, retail, hotels, or residences.”

Odin was created by the Eight Capital Partners team in 2008, with a first development project the following year. Since then, the work has involved a number of developments and land deals which culminated in 2016 in the opening of an iconic retail building called Odin Place at the centre of Niseko, Hirafu. It hosts, among others, Moncler and Burton Snowboard stores.

“With Eight Capital Partners we’ve always had a vision of walking before we can run. We like taking things step-by-step. And if we do things fundamentally right, providing great quality and service, we believe growth will come,” adds Gontard.

About Eight Capital Partners

Eight Capital Partners is a private equity business spun off in 2018 from real-estate focused branding firm Eight Partnership. It is dedicated to creative real-estate transformations, often co-investing with developers, land-owners, and fund managers. Eight Partnership is an award-winning brand consultancy and brand design firm with experience on iconic projects in more than 20 countries across all asset classes - mixed-use, residential, resort, hospitality, retail, commercial, cultural, infrastructure and industrial. Clients include Blackstone, Mori Building, Swire Properties, Toyota, Xintiandi and more. Eight Capital is especially known for its successful Odin Properties project in Niseko, Hokkaido.