Visiting Switch Platina showroom in Seoul | 2018.11.01

In my recent trip to Seoul, I had the chance to visit Switch's Platina Showroom, so I thought I'll do a post on my experience~

Before I start, I should mention that just before I went, a dolly friend of mine (dtpconcepts on instagram) had just visited Platina. Her photos from Platina are here. She was the one who shared that Platina was not just a showroom, which was what I thought, but also a shop. They had wigs, clothes, doll heads (blank), doll bodies, and also raffle dolls (if any, depending on when you visit). After she told me that, I was really tempted to go. I knew it'll cost my wallet (lol) but I have also always wanted a Waseon, but never managed to buy him online, so I thought, why not?

So after that, I decided to go visit Platina, and here's how it went~~


1. RSVP via email
First of all, Switch has instructions on how overseas guests can write in to visit Platina on their website here. The website actually says to "Please RSVP at least one month in advance. No visits are guaranteed otherwise". I was hesitant to email them at first because I only had two weeks to my trip in Seoul (it was a last minute trip to catch a concert), but I decided to try and see if they could accommodate me. Luckily, they accepted my request :D

Switch gave me a date and time for the visit, and also a rough list of items available on the day I'll visit. Of course, the items available is subject to change, and I didn't see Waseon on the list, but (spoiler alert) he was available when I went. So yeah. If you have anything specific in mind, you can always consider asking Switch. They were really helpful in replying any queries I had. :)


2. Getting to Platina
Switch has provided a map, which I followed. I went by subway, so I exited Pyeongchon Station, Exit 3.

This is the building you will see at the first traffic crossing, which is the "NEON" building in the map. The crossings are further apart than I thought from the map, but they should be the most helpful in judging where you are, especially if you can't read Korean at all. There might have been smaller crossings (without traffic lights) in between, but just look out for the two main traffic crossings with traffic lights, and you should be fine.

The second crossing:

This is what the "KIA MOTORS" building look like. The logo was quite high up so it took me a while to recognise the building, haha.

After that, the map from Switch seems to show that the building immediately next to "KIA MOTORS" should be the correct building, but it wasn't. I got confused climbing up a random building, but eventually I went back down and walked a little further, and viola, I finally see the correct building. You should be able to see the "PLATINA" signboard on the 2nd storey from the streets. This is what the building looks like:

There is a convenience store on the first storey. The elevator is behind the store (you don't have to go through the convenience store). There was a sign for Platina on the side of the elevator door when I went, showing that it's on the 2nd storey:

Press 2 and we're ready to go:

You'll see the Platina poster once you exit the lift.

I didn't take photos of the dolls in the front display because I went in fairly quickly. I can't remember if I knocked first, or if the staff opened the door first, but either way, I went in before I looked at the display at all lol. There were two staff there that day, one was a lady with chin-length hair and she spoke to me in English, while the other lady stayed at the back for most of the time I visited (I think she might not speak much English?). Anyway, they were really nice and welcomed me in.


3. Inside Platina
Once inside, the first thing they did was bring me to a table in the middle of the room to show me the catalogue. They let me sit down to look through the catalogue, and the lady who spoke English sat behind the counter, and told me I can just ask for her when I have any questions.

Anyway, I wanted to quickly see all the dolls on display first, so I did a quick round around the room. The showroom is not super big, about 5m by 5m or so, with a storage/staff room next to the counter. It's a good thing I quickly took some photos before I sat down to look through the catalogue, because I realised afterwards that I didn't really take any photos inside! OTL I was too excited about buying things from Switch lol. The lack of photos means I'm going to be just describing some things, but hopefully it's still useful or interesting, haha.

So, displays first. There were 4 when I went. The first one was some art students kind of setting:

This boy is so pretty. I forgot to ask what sculpt he is (or if I did ask, I forgot what sculpt he is already ah... haha).

The second display.

The third display:


The fourth one which actually has one more doll but I wanted a closer photo of the Mocha skinned Waseon. He's so gorgeous ahh~

A further shot of the room from left to right when I was seated. There's drawings from various artists hanging on the walls. I think one was done by laminarflow.

If you see behind, there are those tall display cases right next to the walls/windows. Those had the raffle dolls when dtpconcepts went (in Oct 2018), but they were already empty when I got there because the raffle event has ended. It was a pity I couldn't see those, but oh well.

This is the cashier/counter. You can see a bit of the corner of the table I was browsing the catalogue at on the bottom of this photo.

Some of the stuff at the cashier/counter area. They have things behind the counter, and also in the room that is to the side of the counter (I didn't take any photo of this haha). I think the room is where they store their bodies because the lady went into it when I asked to see the Switch Attractive 65 body. And for dtpconcepts, she mentioned that someone was inside the room painting when she went (probably their faceup artist?).

This was what was on my table after a while. The catalogue on the bottom, and a bunch of wigs and the Waseon head in the back. I did end up buying most of the stuff I asked to see... hahahaha

Okay, that's all the photos I have inside the shop. I'll be describing the rest in words~

So when I first got to the shop, I took a look at all the dolls on display. The 2 staff stayed behind the counter to let me roam (lol), and I was free to see all the dolls on display. There are signs saying do not touch, if I remember correctly. I only had my phone, so I took photos with those.

At the table, there were a few things:

1. The clear file with the main catalogue showing a photo of the product and the price in Korean won. There were clothes, wigs, shoes and other miscellaneous items. In my photo above, you can see the misc items in the catalogue.
2. A page showing the wigs available (style, size, colours). I suppose this is because the wig stock changes often, so they prepared a separate sheet to show the wigs they have.
3. A stack of photocards/postcard-sized photos of the doll heads that are available. 

I immediately started finding Waseon in the list of photos (lol). The staff left me alone to browse, and I could just wave/motion to get them if I have any questions. It was a very pleasant experience overall. Anyway, I asked for the price of the blank head, which she informed was only available in Normal skin. The head was 160,000won blank. I'm not sure if they might have other colours because I didn't think to ask (I just assumed they don't, since Mocha and white skin were limited edition).

Anyway, I also asked to see a bunch of wigs in various sizes. Switch wigs are available in 3 sizes, M, B and L. I can't remember the exact sizing but L is closest to 9inch, while B and M are slightly smaller, to fit the various sized Switch heads better, I think. Since there was more size choices than the usual 8-9inch I was expecting, I decided to ask which size they thought would be better for my incoming Kanadoll Adrian. They were very helpful and searched up the doll for me to see the head size (which just wrote 8-9inch lol). Although the lady spoke English, I found it better to speak simple English to avoid confusion., and to show any photos for clarification. I ended up showing a photo of Kanadoll to help her understand what I was asking, and we realised Kanadoll didn't have a more specific head size so I just bought some L wigs thinking I can have someone else in my crew wear it if it didn't fit. I also picked up some wigs for Waseon, who wears M sized wigs.

For clothing, I didn't have much cash budgeted for spending after the head and wigs, so I just bought a Soave (turtleneck) in an olive green colour. They have more colours than on the Switch website, but I think you can also find these colours on Faythz (according to another dolly friend), so there's that. Regardless, Platina has items that were out of stock on the online Switch website, so I was super tempted to buy alot of things. The prices are also slightly lower than the English Switch website. For example, the wigs were 27,000won in Platina while they sell for 30USD on the website.

But alas, my wallet has a limit, so I just bought a Waseon head (blank), 5 wigs, and a Soave top. They're the items shown in the top row. The striped top in the bottom row was a gift, and the silver package had my ticket for visiting Platina and some photos of their dolls.

The ticket for my visit:

For all the items above, I paid in cash. I also bought a Switch Attractive 65 body, which I paid with a debit card. In the first RSVP email, Switch did mention that they accept credit card, but may not be able to accept all cards. Mine was a VISA and it worked, so there's that, if anyone is interested in getting things by card. The staff actually brought out both the old body and the Attractive body when I asked what the differences in the bodies were, because I couldn't tell from the photos on the website. Apparently the hands and feet are bigger, and there are slight updates to the detailing of the body overall, the back being the most obvious one. It's not so easy to tell unless you have both bodies side by side!

They left the bodies for me to look at, and unlike Volks (when I visited Volks Korea in 2014), they didn't need me to wear gloves or anything to handle the body. Side note, Volks Korea has either moved, or the shop is no longer there... because I went to find it on this trip but there was another shop in its location :(

Anyway, Switch let me handle the 2 bodies but I didn't move the dolls too much because I was worried my hands were leaving prints (I am a bit paranoid when it's not my own dolls xD). I ended up getting the new body (aka the Attractive body), and asked if they could ship it back by EMS. They said it's okay, and I paid for the body and shipping (555,000won total). I forgot the exact cost of each, but I think the body was 525,000won? Anyway, it's cheaper than the online price ahhh. The body has arrived on the day I'm typing this (9 Nov 2018), and overall it's been a very pleasant and lovely experience going to Platina. They were super helpful and nice, both in person and on email, and I really had fun~

Back to the visit, in total I spent about 1.5-2 hours there. I brought the head, wigs and clothes home with my luggage, and only the body was shipped via EMS.

If anyone is going to Korea and is considering visiting Switch, I hope this post has been informative! Or at least entertaining in some way, haha. I recommend visiting if you like Switch dolls and have time when you go to Seoul, but do budget for the amount you'll spend because it's super tempting to just buy everything when you're inside.... ahhhh. Well, it's money spent without regrets, so I really don't mind.

Anyway, the next part would be after visiting Platina, aka the box opening photos of my loot from Korea, which I'll do as a separate blog post :) I'll have a link here when it's up~

Thank you for reading~ :)

Visiting Ninestyle Cafe | 04.10.14

I realise I forgot to post this, haha. I went to Ninestyle cafe last week to get Elly her wig and clothes since I wasn't too happy with the default from the SDGr. Lovely Dress ver. of Tae. The black wig was just too ...uptight/good girly for her? Yeah. She's a fun loving kind of girl, a bit more carefree and spontaneous so the colour was really not right.

Anyway, I got the address beforehand and used a combination of GPS and Naver maps (sort of like a Korean version of Google maps) to get the location. It's in Hongdae, which is a more hip/happening place (so is Volks, by the way. Volks is in the active region though, while Ninestyle is not in as busy an area), but the cafe is located in a quieter area. It's almost residential/what I would see near school. Yeah. The cafe is on the 3rd floor and as with Volks, I was looking upwards for any signboards to show me I was in the right place, lol.



Found it.



This is the shop that's beside the building Ninestyle cafe is located. I mean, there wasn't much landmarks or anything special around, save for signboards.

There isn't a lift either, but the only stairs I found looked a bit...private? Like it doesn't look like the public should be venturing in anytime. But it's open so I went up. Passed by what looks like a tailoring shop's working room (thought I might be in the wrong place), but continued up the stairs and finally I saw this sign.


It all feels a bit...random? Haha. I mean, it is a small shop, so I guess the location and all isn't the best.

The door to the shop :) Also. The toilet is right beside the entrance...


I didn't take any interior shots but I saw some when googling for ninestyle cafe before going, and it pretty much looks the same. There's a cafe part of it, and a shop part. The cafe part was packed - no empty tables for me, cos I went at about 3pm, and I guess the doll owners who want to have meetups there are there early. There's display booths for people to take photos of their dolls in, but the general feel of it is kind of like how the doll meets in Singapore are (except ours are at non-doll cafes, so sometimes we kind of just invade the cafe for too long >_<)

The shop part of it was pretty wonderful. There's dolls from different companies on display. I saw BeWithYou dolls (Age27 Wood) on the cafe counter (He's so huge in real life, I totally can't imagine it. And soooo gorgeous. The body and the face and gah, really nicely sculpted. His feet are gigantic, by the way), and the doll models on the ninestyle page (The dollshe, sch A and Yeonho are the ones I remember), and the clothes are organised by sections with the dolls placed around as display (I think some in the display glass case might be for sale?). They sell wigs from Formydoll, Wig Wing, and they also have stuff from Sadol (and a little bit from Anotherspace), so it's not all Ninestyle items, like I thought. Oh, and they sell makoeyes and Enchanted doll urethane eyes at the counter too. Supplies as well (strings, s hook etc).

One thing that took me a while to figure out was the price tags. At first I thought they didn't have a price tag, but later I realised that the sticker with the long string of numbers under the barcode has the price (take the last 5 digits of the barcode number, I think). Yeah. That part wasn't too user friendly. But once I got that out of the way, I spent way too long in the shop trying to stretch my limited budget. Got stuff for Elly and I wanted to get some yosd jeans for Cypher but nope, didn't have enough money for that. I totally skipped out the SD13 and SD17/70cm boys section because I didn't want to see what I didn't have enough money to buy, haha. It's much harder to resist when the goods are in front of you compared to when it's an online shopping cart.

Anyway, for anyone who might want to know, I got a 5% discount on my total because I paid in cash (vs paying with a card, I guess?), so that was an unexpected surprise :D The lady behind the counter (there's only 1 person manning the whole shop) wasn't really able to speak English well, but she's friendly and she asked where I'm from etc. Haha. She gave me a pair of doll panties as gift after I paid (well, she walked over to the shop area and gestured to the small items, saying "gift" and asking me to choose 1, haha). Yeah. Overall, a nice experience though I totally skipped out on the cafe portion of it (too engrossed with the shop).

 Maybe next time I'll bring Elly out or something and sit around in the cafe, but I don't really want to battle with the subway crowd to Hongdae with a doll in my bag. The passengers have a habit of just pushing you out of their way if they're trying to move from carriage to carriage... I'll see how.

Anyway, have a photo of Elly with her new wig and clothes (I know the photo doesn't show much of the clothes though, ahhhh)

Visiting Volks Korea!

Actually it's more of a box opening than photos of the Volks Korea shop because we're not supposed to take photos inside, so even though I managed to take some shots before a shop assistant came by to inform me that no photos are allowed, I'm not going to be posting those photos. Anyway, the funny thing is I've actually walked past this area a few times while doing site analysis, because for some reason my site for architecture studio this semester is in Hongdae.

So here's the outside. The advertisement is pretty high up, and I didn't see it at all the last few times I've walked past. I'm still kind of in disbelief about that, considering that I went to search how the outside of Volks Korea look like so I would know it when I see it (which didn't work, haha).



Outside the shop, on the stairs (Volks is on the 3rd floor).




Yup, no other photos inside the shop.

Let me just say that I spent my afternoon just browsing inside the shop, and it was just so nice to see everything in person. I'm so used to online shopping for dolls that seeing everything in real life in a physical shop is a bit of a dream come true/surreal, outside of doll conventions (I've only been to the local ones in Singapore which isn't big enough to have doll companies come down, so we just have local owners selling things :) ). And Volks. I think I have a recent obsession with Volks, and seeing their dolls and items in real life didn't help that obsession, haha.

They have a whole shelf for FCS-heads, bodies, hand and feet parts. The heads are blank and you can really see the difference in head size and features etc. Unfortunately even though I'll be in Korea until the end of December with an address in the univeristy hostel, I can't order any FCS D: The shop assistants told me it'll take 2-3 months for an FCS so they can't let me order. AHHHHH Welllll D:

I then proceeded to shop for clothes and shoes, because Volks shoes are so damn detailed. And I stood there for really long, deciding what to get with the budget I set myself (I wanted to drop by ninestyle cafe as well, but I didn't have enough money after going to Volks, haha. I brought Cypher out for the ninestyle cafe but didn't really take him out in the end, because I ended up not going). Then before I left, I saw the poster they had for the current releases, and omg, Lovely Dress ver. SDGr Tae!

The shop assistant offered to show me the doll (all the shop assistants are damn nice. They came by to talk to me, and even though their English is limited, they do speak rather well compared to my studio mates, haha. And they are really friendly. I talked to another shop assistant about my dolls for a while, and showed her some photos, even though I only have 1 Volks doll, so my photos weren't usually of Volks dolls. I don't know, Volks and their effy rules about Volks only, so I didn't want to be rude but she was totally okay with photos, as long as I didn't take Cypher out.) So yeah, she showed me the box, the certificates and clothes etc. And then she took out the doll, and let me hold her (Just a note, I had to wear gloves to handle the dolls, as do the assistants. Just to be clean about it, I guess. I mean, I understand the idea of it but meh, when it's my own dolls. Okay, moving on...). Once I held the doll, I was pretty much sold. I mean, I've liked Tae and I want a girly girl doll (oh, my tomboy and boho girls. Haha.). Long story short, I caved and bought the SDGr Tae. :D

After that I went back to find my friends and we went to Namsan Tower (yesh, me with my doll...), and I was really tired, so excuse the box opening photos.

The bag of clothes I got at first, and my Tae :D


The clothes. For the boys, really. I think I'll go to ninestyle cafe for the clothes. And maybe the wig for her (I'll think of a name for her soon!)










I skipped taking a lot of photos of the different parts because I just wanted to get to the doll XD


Such a pretty face!


Her faceup looks better in person. I've never really been a big fan of Volks faceups (they're a bit soft for my taste. And I don't mean the colours, but the way they do the eyebrows etc, their eyebrows, for example, aren't the crisp kind I prefer. Too much soft blending for my taste), but she'll have to keep this for a while until I get back to Singapore where all my faceup materials are. Her eyes are hot-glued in, which I've not went to unglue either. But overall the soft dreamy feel seems quite close to whatever character she'll be, so we'll see how that goes :)


And her with the default outfit and wig (not everything cos I was lazy). I don't think she suits black, huh. I like the photo above better (the one without a wig) because she has more potential, haha. But I'm going to slowly think about it.


Also, now that I've officially taken my impulse buying to a new level, I'm most likely going to sell my LLT Roderich head. He's still without a character, and I feel like I'll rather sell him and use that money for other dolls. But it'll have to wait until I get back to Singapore because he's back home, haha. I'm sorely lacking my doll stuff here, seriously. Almost like starting from square 1. I mean, Cypher has his clothes and all, but he's a LTF. Tae is a SD sized girl. Of which I don't have much stuff for, to begin with, even at home, and of which I have NOTHING here for her.