Shiseido

Shiseido CASE #14 SHISEIDO COMPANY DECISION FOCUS: Shiseido was founded by Yushin Fukuhara as Japan’s first Western-style pharmacy in 1872, and has shifted back and forth from cosmetics and pharmacy. Established in the Ginza district in Tokyo in 1872, Shiseido is today a global manufacturing and sales corporation in the fields of cosmetics, salons, pharmaceuticals, toiletries, and nutritional products. After inaugurating its global business with sales to Taiwan in 1957, Shiseido began marketing to Europe in 1963 and to the United States in 1965. In Japan, Shiseido has long been considered an important force in the arts through its product designs and advertisements, which were originally overseen by the company’s first president, Shinzo Fukuhara. In 1987, the grandson of the founder took over as president. The same year Shiseido announced a 6 percent decrease in sales and a write-off in inventory of $239 million. In 1998 product mix consisted of cosmetics (74%), toiletries (16%), and other businesses (10%). They began to streamline domestic cosmetics lines to reduce inventory, eliminating products with a consistent turnover, while developing new technology and items. Shiseido’s management policies are embodied in its “Global No. 1” long-term vision, Shiseido identified three goals: technological excellence, diversified shiseido, market, products, sales, stores, cosmetics, global, expand, percent, domestic, department, male, distribution, competition, supermarkets, must, business, very, through, should, current, company, alternative, target, store, operations, one, new, important, globally, expanding, e-commerce, share, overseas, over