Kimiyo Yamazaki of YA-MAN On Five Things You Need to Know to Succeed in the Modern Beauty Industry

Collaborate to bring out the best. Learn the invention and innovation styles of each of your creatives. Some work independently, others want partners. Neither one is right or wrong. Then, everyone comes together as a team to present ideas. Welcome other opinions and ideas for discussion, respect, trust and deepen each other’s understanding to build a true supportive relationship.

As a part of our series about “Five Things You Need To Know To Succeed In The Modern Beauty Industry”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kimiyo Yamazaki, CEO of the prestige beauty device and formulation from Japan.

YA-MAN, a pioneering Japanese company in the beauty industry, is under the exceptional leadership of CEO Ms. Kimiyo Yamazaki. With an illustrious career in sales and marketing, both in Japan and internationally, Ms. Yamazaki assumed the CEO role in 1999. As a visionary leader, she focused on leveraging YA-MAN’s cutting-edge technology to transform professional-grade devices into accessible home-care solutions. Her unwavering ambition drove the company to explore untapped markets and create new demands, propelling YA-MAN to the forefront of home-care beauty devices and cosmetics rooted in rich Japanese heritage of tried-and-true beauty rituals and pure ingredients.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Post-college in 1983, I started as a sales secretary for precision electronic machinery at YA-MAN. I took the job because the company offered equal wages and opportunities to females which was very rare at the time in Japan. I asked the former CEO why and he said that because the company was small, he needed all the employees to work hard regardless of gender. Over the years, I took on a number of roles throughout YA-MAN, before ultimately being named CEO in 1999. At the time, we didn’t imagine that we would be able to scale our company to the size it is today.

Are you influenced by customer feedback?

It’s always rewarding to hear from our customers that they love our product and how it makes them feel more confident about themselves. Ironically though, hearing negative reviews can be highly beneficial. A few years ago, we had a call from an unhappy customer that inspired us to change a feature on the product which eventually led to an increase in sales.

Are you able to identify the “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that other can learn from that?

When I was in the role of Overseas Marketing Manager, I was based in San Jose, California for a couple of years and traveled around the world. This broadened my perspective and led to us expanding our business into home-use beauty devices. YA-MAN were already successful developers and manufacturers of professional beauty equipment but scaling down to personal instruments took a change in orientation. This led directly to the 2006 introduction of our facial roller which was a big hit and put us on the map in the personal care category. The lesson here is to widen your perspective and search for a bigger pond.

What’s the difference for YA-MAN between the Japanese versus American beauty consumer?

Both sets of consumers want the same thing–a smooth, even, resilient and youthful complexion. The difference is that YA-MAN already has extensive name recognition for excellence and efficacy in Japan in the mind of the consumer. Our goal is to achieve the same thing in the American market.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are?

YA-MAN’s founder, Yukiteru Yamazaki. He was a real mentor and the one who shaped me into who I am today. I learned almost everything about business from him. He always had deep insights not just about professional life but about life itself. He was excellent at bringing out the best in people.

Can you share 5 things that most excite you about the modern beauty industry?

1. Technology used in professional facial machines is now increasingly being applied to home-use devices.
2. Home-use beauty devices have become more advanced, efficacious and safer to use.
3. Home-use beauty device regulations are becoming more and more strict. This means that this market is getting big.
4. The combination of device-plus-product is a new frontier with a lot of potential. In makeup, we were first-to-market in this with Mineral Air by combining the device (AirMist Device) and the formula (AirMist Four-in-One Foundation) into a system. It’s the system that’s the product rather than the individual components.
5. I appreciate that how we define beauty has become more inclusive. No one group has the right to claim beauty as their own to the exclusion of others.

Can you share 3 things that most concern you about the industry? If you had the ability to implement 3 ways to improve the industry, what would you suggest?

1. Add more women as executives in the beauty industry.
2. Make the regulations on beauty devices the same in every country to ensure the safety and quality of the use of beauty devices.
3. Use fewer celebrity ads and promotions so that consumers would focus more on the product itself and be confident about their choice instead of being influenced by the celebrity that is hired to sell.

You are an expert about beauty. Can you share a few ideas that anyone can use “to feel beautiful”?

Tell something good about yourself in the mirror every morning and believe it!

Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to succeed in the modern beauty industry.” Please share a story or an example for each.

1. Recognize value to create meaning. Everything starts with what you want to create as value. Tell the story behind how the product came to life. Consumers love lightbulb moments and origin stories.

2. Embrace original thinking. Be obsessed with coming up with original ideas. Sometimes new ideas may feel strange or uncomfortable because they’re unfamiliar but that’s where the breakthroughs occur. Create idea-generation as your new norm as a beauty advocate.

3. Respond fast to ideas as opportunities. Timing is key to success. Be conscious about working fast as if you are making your own chances. Keeping your eyes open and acting on it only allows you to grab the chance. You never want to be second to the market.

4. See the customers’ perspective as your guide. Be open to your customers. Trust is your number one priority and keeping the dialog open can help with that.

5. Collaborate to bring out the best. Learn the invention and innovation styles of each of your creatives. Some work independently, others want partners. Neither one is right or wrong. Then, everyone comes together as a team to present ideas. Welcome other opinions and ideas for discussion, respect, trust and deepen each other’s understanding to build a true supportive relationship.

You are the person with great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?

My advice is to get out in the real world more to see and experience things firsthand. I feel nowadays people are relying on technology too much. This makes us slower and reduces the ability to think on our own. As a result, we see a lot of similar ideas lacking originality and a slowing of innovation.

You can find answers to almost every question on the internet. But there’s only one question that only you can answer. Which is “What do you want to do?” If I could start a movement, it would be to promote self-discovery for a more fun and diverse future.

Can you please give us your favorite “life lesson quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“It always seems impossible until it’s done”. I always keep this quote in mind since I have had a lot of challenges throughout my career that I was able to overcome and during the challenges. Think of all the things we take for granted that started out as a problem to be solved.

How can our readers follow you online?

You can follow us @yaman.usa on Instagram and Facebook. Visit ya-manusa.com to purchase our line of beauty products.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.