Koyo Bear — Scheybeler+

In the basement of a Tokyo table-tennis club, Philip Eggersglüß and Maximilian van Laack found the archive of Koyo Bear, a pioneer of Japanese post-war sports footwear. In the 1950s, with the champion Ichiro Ogimura, Koyo Bear had made the Sharpman: the first shoe designed for table tennis.

Philip and Max rebuilt the brand with Ogimura's family, specialist factories, the NTS Table Tennis Club and a Japanese creative team. The rule was strict: no nostalgia, no embellishment, nothing that wasn't in the archive.

The job was not to create a brand but to steward one — to bring a historically important name back into contemporary culture without pastiche, and to align a team spread across three continents.

the sharpman

Brought to the world by Japan's table-tennis champions of the 1960s and 70s, the Sharpman dominated the international stage for decades. Designed by Ogimura, it gave players movement, grip and flexibility no shoe had before — the footwork his attacking game depended on.

marty supreme

In 2025 the filmmaker Josh Safdie and A24 found the new Koyo Bear and proposed a collaboration with the film Marty Supreme. We helped translate the archive into contemporary product, graphics, photography and a website — a coherent platform for Philip and Max at a rare cultural moment.

graphics and product

The Sharpman returned, in a limited edition for Marty Supreme, with the archive intact.