The concept of digital-first hubs was initially conceived during my visits to Japan. Nearly every train station featured a building that functioned as an flagship center, showcasing advertisements, displaying scrolling news and stock tickers, and housing a flagship retailer on the ground floor.

We are announcing Toshikiso Hubs are in final stages of preparation. I want to give a refresher on the hub model by discussing the historical background, the components, and the offerings the hubs offer.

Kossier and Toshikiso are the two components to drive urban digital economies. There is already demand for our platform, meaning, I do not have to sell or impress anybody at this stage. The goal for you all is understand what is coming down the pipeline and how to prepare for this new paradigm shift of digital-first urban centers.

Historical Perspective

Over 120 years ago, when the New York Times moved to central Manhattan, Times Square became one of the first locations to feature a subway station and an illuminated electric advertising display with lighted letters or billboard signs. A new era of big city and bright lights was born, and people flocked to the area to witness all of the lights.

Times Square was also among the first to introduce the "Zipper," a ticker display that featured horizontally scrolling text providing news and information for onlookers to be informed of current events. Before, it was the paper boy holding newspapers yelling out the headlines, but now people can just read the latest news from a screen while in passing or gathering.

Today, in Tokyo, large video displays and extensive advertising on building exteriors reflect a model like Times Square. In addition to the visibility of Jumbotron screens and advertisements, these locations also function as important economic centers.

This approach brought together people, businesses, merchants, and cultural activities in one central location. Tokyo implemented this model near major train stations, contributing to its development as a significant economic centre with notable resilience and serving as a reference for urban growth.

There was one more feature that is very important – the use of a spire that serves as a radio antenna to broadcast TV and radio signals. There were two types of spires – the tall tower/observation deck like the CN Tower in Toronto, or on top of a skyscraper like the Empire State Building.

These antennas allow the local community to receive radio and TV broadcasts at home and work, as well as transmit news, emergency alerts, and entertainment in the region.

The American Information Hub Disappeared

For over 120 years, all the elements of an "information hub" existed. However, in America, this model declined as media companies like the New York Times prioritized corporate news over local communities, becoming driven by partisanship and hidden agenda content, distracted.

This is the problem and the opportunity, there was a lot of original good design, good business models, good infrastructure that was in place before they fell to corporatism. It was envisioned by a maverick who saw the big picture, then the corpos come in and focus on profit to faceless shareholders who are not true stakeholders.

The nice and beautiful thing about Japan, is they stuck to the original model with a passion. It was always that one Japanese leader who keep things true and at the core vision who kept it going and improved off what works, not driven by profits but by passion and commitment to kaizen – continuous improvement.

That’s why Japan has beautiful elements of futuristic and retro elements throughout their city. I be thanking God for Japan because there is a lot of practices done in the Black American community 100 years ago that was lost, but you discover it is still intact and done in Japan. Black people visiting Tokyo and see all those sweet shops and candy boxes don’t realize our elder sistas were running same type of businesses in the 1920s to 1970s with the exact same setup.

Now, let’s talk about the components of the Toshikiso Hub, which are the information display, the spaces, the services.

Hub Information Display

At each hub location in a physical presence, there will be an information display that will stream content. For large buildings, it will be on a jumbotron as part of the façade and for smaller buildings, the display will inside in a lobby area.

The information display will show the following information.

Time and Date.  This is local to the community and will display other time zones relevant to that region.

Weather. This is the 5-day weather forecast showing weather icons and temps in large readable text.

Video Feed. This will be streaming media of advertisements, news, sports, weather, local coverage, national coverage. Be mindful that local media entrepreneurs can create original programming and display it here, sharing advertisement revenue with us. For example, video of an influencer visiting a local resale shop and try on outfits – they do videos like this in Shibuya 109 and Harajuku.

Static Media. This is like a slideshow of static media that is mostly advertisements. These are for local entrepreneurs who want a low-cost ad solution in a highly visible area. Remember the goal is to promote local merchants.

Scrolling Ticker. This is a ticker that will display news, sport scores, crypto prices, and paid personalized message such as Ed love his Japanese boo thang or text advertisement message.

Notifications. There will be a reserved space that is designated for community level information, including emergencies, weather alerts, missing person alert, and other situations.

Hub Spaces

Our physical buildings will not just process data but accommodate third spaces and digital experiences. Because of Toshikiso API capabilities with over 1,000 endpoints, we can operate a lot of business models and spaces.

We can showcase example next-generation business models such as a co-op operated aquascape relaxation room take tokens for payment every 15 minutes until they scan out, and the space plays ambient music while customers can enjoy a peaceful moment.

We can facilitate models like chillhop cafes, NFT art galleries, pop-up shop spaces, War Hammer and Pokémon gaming lounges, co-working spaces. We can also partner with entrepreneurs who want to create a space in each of our hubs. They can sell press-on nails and customers QR scan a display and get the press-on mailed to their home address.

Be mindful there will be virtual spaces in areas where we cannot establish a hub. These will have a relay station that can stream data from a satellite and the data will be processed in one of our global hubs we have in Asia, Europe and North America.

In addition, we will have nodes that are smaller hubs that synchronize data and services from the main hubs to micro-serve suburban, rural areas outside of a large city.

Digital First Commerce

This is a major boost to the local economy – we will allow merchants to list their products on our e-commerce website and facilitate the fulfillment in a mobile-first fashion. This is the project we worked on where we wanted to bring the mega-commerce site like Temu and Alibaba Express to local merchants and customers in the hub community.

The merchants can list products or services, or a PSS combination of both as it is powered by our Merchant and the Flow platform. So a nail salon can have customers schedule appointments and with Kossier, previous nail salon customers get higher priority time slots and can book with their favorite stylist.

We can also sell digital media and software. Our business and consumer line of digital software such as MichiBook and Stony|Ellis will be sold digitally through all of our hubs. We will have our own app store where customers can download the digital media they purchase. This also includes streaming media such as music, podcast episodes, and video content.  

We can even do food orders where someone can order a meal and book a reservation and the meal to be served and how many will be seated. We can sell digital tickets to local comedy clubs, local sporting events. All can be redeemed through Kossier as a digital ticket.

Customers have several fulfillment options, including BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store), home or site delivery, and slow shipping. The shopping platform facilitates communication between customers and merchants within the community to support efficient transactions and the exchange of goods.

Infotainment

You are looking at an actual prototype video we released last year of our jumbotron that is powered by the MochaStar! Platform. The reason why I’m mentioning this is because if we can stream media to our hubs, we can stream media to people households and mobile devices.

Our hubs are a media streaming company in case you haven’t figured it out yet. We stream media and data. So that means we can replace radio and TV as a source of information and the local community can stream our content on their media devices as well.

The means, media entrepreneurs can create their own TV series, their own podcast, their own music label and stream their content directly to their consumer on a pay-per-view or monthly subscription. We handle the content delivery, content syndication, and payment distribution back to the entrepreneur.

We can work with advertising agencies who pop up in these areas who can place advertisements and listings on our services and operate on a reseller agreement. To kickstart advertising, we are likely going to airdrop advertising credit tokens to merchants in the community to place ads on our hubs to get their name out.

But yes, just like the radio tower on top of the Empire State Building, we can broadcast content in a local community, featuring their local music scene to their customers, and bring back local genres and cultures instead of corporate TV and radio stations.

Summary of Hub Impact

If you peeped our strategies of both the Kossier digital lifestyle app and the Toshikiso Hub building, we developed a comprehensive digital-first solution aimed at advancing urban economic development with an emphasis on local fiscalism.

What we have created was a way for customers to find merchants, and merchants find customers. We built a hub center that can radiate information services to facilitate this connection. That allows us to create streaming commerce, streaming media, and streaming information as the solution to drive fluid economic activity.

The biggest opportunity is the new paradigm of business development. We can handle the line-of-business operations, so all a laundromat has to do is create wash/dry/fold spaces with QR codes.

All a fish fry joint has to do is set up a ghost kitchen style to take orders and process deliveries or takeout. All an artist has to do is place some flat screens and digital frames on white partitions and stream an art gallery exhibition with digital art on a digital lease with tokenized royalties.

But you may have missed the biggest one of all – you create a successful business model in that one local hub, you can quickly scale up to all of our hubs worldwide very quickly, possibly the fastest scale-out in the world of a business that can go to zero to one hundred.

With Kossier and Toshikiso Hub, the new era of urban digital transformation is here.