Kosé’s goes global with open innovation
Kosé is currently involved in a number of open innovation initiatives with external partners. This includes tie-ups with Panasonic and Casio, supporting a company founded by a third-year senior high school student, and joint development with their newly-acquired company Tarte. All this is part of Kosé’s aim to become a “company with a global presence”.
Kosé started becoming aware of new value creation, including with user experiences and putting open innovation onto their radar during the period between 2012 and 2014, the “Phase I: V-shaped recovery period” of their VISION2026.
In March of 2014, they acquired the American cosmetics brand Tarte. In 2018, they launched the Japanese cosmetics industry’s first accelerator program. Then in December 2019, they brought to fruition tie-ups with Panasonic and Casio in their newly-opened concept store “Maison KOSÉ”.
Expertise gained from working with electrical appliance manufacturers
Within Maison KOSÉ are five nail printers that were born out of collaborative development with Casio. Patterns selected from the registered nail designs can be printed onto customers’ nails in a short space of time. This is a marriage of the printing technology of Casio and the beauty expertise of Kosé.
The “Snow Beauty Mirror” smart mirror currently being developed by Panasonic is also set up in-store for demonstration. Just by sitting in front of the mirror, it will analyze the quality and tone of your skin and create an ultra-thin “customized sheet” for covering spots or other parts of your skin you want to hide and that adapts to your skin so naturally you hardly notice it.
A key factor in these tie-ups was an attitude of going beyond the borders between companies and departments to figure out how to make the best use of each other’s strengths. There were also many difficulties when combining and connecting together the different technologies and ideologies of both Kosé and the partnering companies. On the other hand, both parties brought forth ideas that the other party hadn’t thought of, and these proved to be recipes for the birth of new types of value.
Opening up the sunscreen market with a young entrepreneur
Kosé’s second accelerator program kicked off from June 2019. With the theme of “Bringing technology to sensibilities and new experiences to beauty”, ideas were sought after in line with six different fields, including the creation of new customer experiences, the promotion of research and development, and business creation in new fields. After the demo day in December, the company accepted was Sunshine Delight Co., Ltd (established in July 2019).
This is a company run by Eika Ito, who is a third-year senior high school student. She started the business after realizing the threat of ultraviolet rays when her mother, who works on a farm, kept getting noticeable skin spots no matter how much sunscreen she would apply. In aiming for a lifestyle where people can be in the sun without worry, Ito has been working to teach others about the importance of maintaining a sunscreen-using habit from infancy.
It’s said that we’re exposed to half of the ultraviolet rays we’re subject to in our entire lives already by the time we’re 18 years old, and the ultraviolet rays we’re exposed to as children greatly affect our skin as adults. Confronting this reality, Ito has come up with large-sized bottles of sunscreen that can be safely and reliably used on children, and are targeted to day-care centers, as well as picture books and songs for teaching and encouraging children to develop the habit of using sunscreen.
A Kosé joint-development staff member had this to say during a press conference: “In the era of living to 100 years old, it’s essential to start the habit of using sunscreen from childhood. Kosé’s presence in the current sunscreen market is, however, still small. Through this project with Sunshine Delight, we’d like to bring Kosé to the level where people turn to Kosé for their sunscreen needs and where the first cosmetics product a person uses in their life is by Kosé.” It was also mentioned that this cooperative effort focuses on Kosé’s future of cosmetics, and also reflects the prospects of increasing Kosé’s product portfolio.
The birth of a new Awake through a partnership with Tarte
Makeup brand Tarte, which promotes their concept of “high-performance naturals”, boasts 10 million followers on Instagram and is currently growing rapidly thanks to overwhelming recognition and support from their consumer base of American women in their 20s and 30s. Since being purchased by Kosé, Tarte’s sales have grown over five-fold and in 2018 exceeded US$358.47 million.
Kosé’s acquiring of Tarte is rooted in an encounter between Tarte founder Maureen Kelly and Kosé President Kazutoshi Kobayashi, who became friends through Kelly’s love of Kosé’s Awake and which in turn led to the buyout. Having known that Kosé was thinking of rebranding Awake, Kelly offered to work together on the project. Kosé decided to start off the planning of its brand and continue working on it together with its new acquisition Tarte.
The Awake brand has touted ecological consciousness since its launch in 1995, however, through the renewal this time, the brand adopted the globally-trending concepts of veganism and cruelty-free. The brand now has the theme of realizing the ideal skin you have after waking from a long, restful sleep, and through the keywords of Purity, Protection, Potency, and Permeability, it advocates the usage of naturally-sourced raw ingredients. At the same time, Awake has rolled out a promotional campaign that utilizes social media and has recreated the brand into one that is also receiving attention from overseas markets.
While firmly upholding their VISION2026, Kosé is partnering with a variety of companies and repeating a process of trial and error while exploring the potential for growth. Other than those introduced here, there are even more collaborative initiatives in the works, including new developments with Milbon for their salon channels that they’ve been working with for years, and a partnership with Maruho, a company specializing in skin medicine. With this, Kosé’s scope of cosmetics manufacturing is continuing to widen even further.
Text: Ching Li Tor
Original text (Japanese): Yukari Akiyama
