“A lot of stuff is happening,” says Marc Wesseling. It’s rainy season in Tokyo, he’s about to move his creative agency, UltraSuperNew, out of the Harajuku office they’ve occupied for almost 20 years, and he’s got big plans to turn the rooftop of their new Shibuya home into a treasure storehouse (more on that later).

Wesseling has spent two decades living and working in the city, first moving there while part of KesselsKramer, and then joining forces with former BBH account director Tomo Murakami to launch UltraSuperNew in 2007. “It’s a fantastic market and the Japanese are amazing people, but it’s also a very difficult market to enter,” he says of the early years. “More than even the UK, it has a very strong island culture where people are more hesitant with foreigners, so we’ve always had to prove ourselves. In Japan, relationships are more important than money.”

When Wesseling set up UltraSuperNew there were plenty of specialised companies offering production or web development, but far fewer boutique agencies that could take clients from strategy and creative through production, digital design and beyond.

His vision was to build an alternative: an agency that offered everything under one roof. UltraSuperNew initially launched with a digital focus, but had its big breakthrough when it won the Red Bull Japan account. At the time, UltraSuperNew was a tiny operation: eight people pitching against all the biggest ad agencies. The team had to put together point-of-sale, a script for a TVC and a concept for a guerrilla event, and Wesseling says they threw absolutely everything at the pitch.