Combining brawn with beauty in fun cosmetics

BeautyTech.jp
BeautyTech.jp
Published in
5 min readJun 27, 2019

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Two Japanese companies from separate industries — one a firefighting equipment maker and another a gravestone manufacturer — are entering the cosmetics industry showing that brawn and beauty can go hand in hand. Both companies are gaining recognition with their unique and out-of-the-box ideas and clever usage of modern platforms such as social media and crowd-funding.

Power shower using firefighting foam

Kinuami makes possible a special type of shower where foam mixed with natural silk-based ingredients is generated from the showerhead to cover your whole body as a treatment for your skin after you’ve washed.

The project stemmed from three companies from different industries: Morita Group’s Morita Miyata Corporation, a company with over 110 years of history and which produces and sells fire trucks and firefighting equipment; NITTO CERA, a 100% subsidiary of LIXIL; and the crowd-funding platform Makuake.

Originally, Morita Group, which owned the foam-generating technology for firefighting purposes, had the idea of creating a foam shower product for the nursing industry. The opportunity to turn it into something more came when NITTO CERA saw a prototype of the technology and approached them about collaborating.

Furthermore, they called on Makuake Incubation Studio (MIS) to support concept designing and conduct test marketing, and from 2018 the three companies began their joint project.

As using Kinuami requires the continuous purchasing of the custom chemical agent, they realized that if they weren’t providing a completely new experience in the shower — something that went beyond the usual shower experience — the product would not become a hit.

Thus they ended up having around ten different varieties of the chemical agent, including one that specialized in cleansing, one focusing on treatment, and another focusing on moisturizing and skincare. At the same time, in order to realize the ideal consistency of the foam, they conducted a survey where the satisfaction-levels of different aspects were assessed using a 5-level rating system. This led to the birth of a product that provides a new beauty experience: a foam treatment for after body-washing.

The chemical agents are mixed with a variety of plant constituents, including the moisturizing ingredients of argan oil and fibroin protein sourced from natural silk. The device’s design adopts a rounded shape associated with the smoothness of silk. It can also be mounted on the shower wall with a single magnet and can easily be changed to “foam-generating mode” with the turn of a switch.

Courtesy of Kinuami

Crowd-funding for the project began in March this year and has involved a digital-based strategy with the three companies promoting Kinuami through press releases, social media posts, videos, and tech-related media, along with targeted ads on Instagram. The resulting response has amounted to 290,000 retweets on Twitter. The popularity of their video that shows foam emitting swiftly from a showerhead exceeded expectations and in the space of around two weeks the scheduled 100 units of the product had already sold out.

Having received a greater response than expected, they’ve started work on ready the product for general release and are also looking at the possibility for uses outside of the beauty field.

Botchan — men’s cosmetics that break away from traditional masculinity

And Cosme is a brand that sells the men’s cosmetics line “Botchan” that features impressive pop-inspired and colorfully designed bottles. As it turns out, the brand was launched by a gravestone manufacturer.

The manufacturer’s decision to go into cosmetics is down to both the shrinking gravestone market caused by Japan’s aging population and their long-held desire to shed the gloomy image of the gravestone industry and take on more cheerful work.

CEO of And Cosme, Ryuta Kato, says that he became interested in developing cosmetics after getting to know the manager of a cosmetics ingredient manufacturer: “What I noticed about men’s cosmetics was there weren’t any on the market that I wanted to buy. When the younger generations are looking to buy they tend to want to use their money on their own self-improvement rather than just buying according to brand. You have the typical men’s cosmetics sold in drug stores that really push that ‘cool sensation’ aspect, but many men feel that this style doesn’t suit them. I wanted to develop cosmetics that targeted those men, instead of going for the usual stereotypical image of masculinity, and I wanted to instill the product with the concept of facing your own individuality.”

In order to add a touch of playfulness to the mostly serious-looking bottle designs of men’s cosmetics — with their usual color schemes of white, blue, black or silver — the company instead went for a brand image with a more colorful palette and a lively illustrative style.

They have also been particular about the ingredients and texture, mixing in natural plant-based components such as artichoke leaf extract and enantia chlorantha bark extract, and creating a mixture that is free of alcohol, paraben, and artificial colors. Features such as sebum control, proper moisturizing that avoids stickiness, and a ‘citrus forest’ scent with a eucalyptus oil base make it also a consideration for women too, and in fact, women make up 50% of their user base. Their products are largely in-demand as gifts, however, it’s also common for them to be shared among couples.

With the idea of developing a ‘genderless’ product, development is said to have taken around two years and involved consultation with LGBTQ groups, of whose suggestions and ideas were actively implemented. The result is a men’s cosmetics brand imbued with the concept of breaking away from ‘masculinity’.

The response has been huge since the February 2018 release. The brand has been extensively taken up by Vogue Japan, Harper’s Bazaar Japan, and various social media beautician personalities. They are also rolling-out popup events mainly at department stores such as Isetan Shinjuku and Hankyu Yurakucho.

Recently, at The Wardrobe Hostel, which has five branches throughout Tokyo, they’ve started selling Botchan “backpacker sets” that include travel-size skincare kits with an original sacoche bag.

From here on they plan to continue holding a popup event every month and increase their visibility. Preparations to enter the China and US markets have also been kicked off and are progressing steadily.

Text: Ching Li Tor
Original (Japanese): Lina Ono

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BeautyTech.jp
BeautyTech.jp

BeautyTech.jp is a digital magazine in Japan that overviews and analyzes current movements of beauty industry focusing on technology and digital marketing.