Harajuku: the designers behind indie stores?

I recently checked out several indie shops in Harajuku that sell gothic and rock fashion (Yellow House, SimSinn, Richard's, ACDC Rag, Bodyline,...).

All of them said that you can only buy their goods in Harajuku, more precisely in their very shops. There is no other store or website that offers them (except for Bodyline who have their own internet presence).
That made me wonder about the clothes origin though and why they are so exclusive to those shops.

I can't imagine that the shop owners design those clothes themselves.

It surprises me though that designers would agree to sell their popular (in the corresponding scene) fashion only, and really only, to a little indie store. I know, it's a harajuku store and as thus somewhat iconic but most of the shops are quite frankly !really! small.
(Before I came there, when someone told me of the iconic Harajuku I rather thought of loads of dark fashion stores in a normal boutique style. However most of those shops look more like market stalls.)

I guess to me the idea of retailing them somewhere else if they are so popular would make sense from a designer's p.o.v.. But I can be mistaken.

The last idea I had, was, that they are from a bigger clothing retailer that is unknown to the puclic (like those companies that create clothes for malls' or supermarket chains' private brands). So there would not be exclusive designers behind them and maybe somewhere in the world those same clothes appear but with a different tag.

Sorry that this got so long. But as a fan of this fashion the discrepancy between their popularity (in the Japan oriented rock/goth scene), the fact that the clothes rather look factory made than homemade and the tininess/informalness of the shops really preplexed me.

I can't imagine that the shop owners design those clothes themselves.

What made you think so?

Of course, it could be that there is the owner, the designer or designer team, and the store clerks, but I can easily imagine that they hire exclusive, and probably very young designers for their brand/store. That has been the tradition of Harajuku for more than four decades.

Frankly, even fashion college students design clothes like that. I'm not saying that they are low in quality, but they look very indie to me, which has a charm of its own.

I also don't think they can sell them that cheap if they hire designers with any kind of name value.