Case 47 — Shiseido · Masahiko Uotani · 2021

The mass brands are slow, low-margin and off-strategy — and they are your only ballast. Do you sell them to finish the prestige transformation?

It is early 2021. You have spent seven years turning Shiseido into a prestige company: sales passed ¥1 trillion in 2017 and profit hit a record in 2018. Then the pandemic closed the airports, and 2020 ended with sales down to about ¥920 billion and a net loss. Your personal-care division — Tsubaki shampoo, Senka cleanser, uno for men — does around ¥100 billion of sales in Japanese drugstores at thin margins against Kao and Unilever, and it grows slowly. It is also the only part of the company that does not depend on a Chinese consumer, who is now a quarter of sales directly and more through duty free. CVC has offered around ¥160 billion for it. Your Chinese business is recovering faster than anywhere else.

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