The World Wrap Masters Japan returned from 1st – 3rd September 2022 and was organised in partnership with Japan Car Wrapping Association with second time World Wrap Masters Japan champion, Hiroki Kawakami winning the competition.
Caption: Judges Kiss Lajos and Tadashi Kariya
Judges from the USA and Europe judged all competitors on their quality of work, technique, and speed. The Material Sponsor of the competition was 3M Japan and the Printing Sponsor was Mimaki Engineering. Other sponsors included Design Lab.in, Wrap mania Tool & Equipment, Nitie, LEISTER Technologies, Mac Auto Garage, Laplus Design, Decorative System Co Ltd, Nakamura Co Ltd, G-design, Yamax Co Ltd and Max Decal.
Caption: 40 competitors at World Wrap Masters Japan 2022
40 wrappers competed with 38 competitors from Japan, 1 competitor from Korea and 1 competitor from Vietnam. Competitors ages ranged from 22 to 53. The competition occurred across 3 days with day 1 featuring the pre-event briefing, the opening ceremony and the first round. Day 2 featured round 2 and round 3 of competitions with day 3 including the semi-final and the final. All rounds featured both vehicle wrapping and creative rounds, day 1 competitors were tasked with wrapping boxes, day 2 competitors wrapped ice cooling containers and on the final day they wrapped food containers. The semi-finalists featured competitors from Rinda Factory, YMG1 co ltd, Art Factory, Yamax inc and TOMEI co ltd/Cabana. During the final, 8 competitors battled to be crowned World Wrap Masters of Japan 2022. Yuki Hayashida from Osaka came third, Kazuhiko Okabe from Toykyo came second and Hiroki Kawakami from Kanagawa came first.
Hiroki previously won the first World Wrap Masters Japan competition in 2019 and competed in the World Wrap Masters Final 2022 competition at FESPA Global Print Expo 2022 in Berlin. As with all World Wrap Masters competitions it offers wrappers the opportunity to meet and network and educate themselves further. Hiroki comments “Attending this competition allows me to meet new people and winning it I hope it encourages others who are not that knowledgeable about car wrapping to get involved and I hope my experience can help the industry and the community”.
Hiroki comments that this year’s competition was “more difficult as the competitors were more experienced compared to the competition in 2019. The scoring was more difficult so I had to ensure that all my finished work over 80% and that it was good quality in order to win.”
Caption: Top 3 winners of World Wrap Masters Japan 2022, Hiroki Kawakami, Kazuhiko Okabe, Yuki Hayashida alongisde judges, Kiss Lajos and Tadashi Kariya and main sponsors including Mimaki and 3M.
Hiroki strives to keep learning and educate himself every day saying: “I still learn new things everyday as there are always new techniques to be learned and as a wrapper it is important to keep improving yourself and to keep growing my skills.”
Watch the live streaming from day 1, day 2 and day 3.
Hiroki now qualifies to compete in the World Wrap Masters Final 2023 which will take place at FESPA Global Print Expo 2023 from 23rd – 26th May 2023 in Munich Germany. The final will take place on 25th – 26th May where all winners from previous World Wrap Masters competitions from 2022 – 2023 will compete to be crowned the World Wrap Masters of 2023. For more information on future World Wrap Masters competitions please visit here.