Kitano Tatsujin Corporation President and CEO Katsutoshi Kinoshita

The origins of building a company with a market capitalization of 100 billion yen in one generation

President and CEO of Kitano Tatsujin Corporation
Katsuhisa Kinoshita

Born in Kobe in 1968. Experienced starting a business as a student while attending university. After graduating, worked at Recruit Co., Ltd. After that, he started his own business with no connections or prospects, and saw revenue increase for 17 consecutive years. In five years, sales increased from 18 billion yen to 83 billion yen. Profit margins were five times higher than those of competitors. He achieved rapid growth and in one generation pushed the company to become listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. He was awarded the Forbes Asia "Asia's 200 Best Under A Billion Award" and received the Dark Blue Ribbon Medal from the Japanese government.

Kita no Tatsujin Corporation sells cosmetics and health foods online, based on the idea of ​​"providing ways to solve customers' problems." President Kinoshita told us that the driving force behind the company is the joy he hears from customers when their problems are solved. The company continues to grow without forgetting its origins: "selling products that we can confidently recommend to family and friends." With an eye on the world, the company aims to become a global brand of consumer goods born from digital technology. We spoke to him about his passion.

I had decided to start a business when I was a university student. Even back then, I wanted to run a business seriously, not just for fun or as an imitation of the working world, so I joined a student company in the Kansai region called "Ryoma," which has many members with a strong entrepreneurial spirit.
At Ryoma, we created a "circle catalog" that introduced information about clubs and driving school training camps, but that was only a small part of the work. I was writing plans and proposals for projects that came through from major advertising agencies. At the time, I would wear a suit to work almost every day, then go to classes, and then come back to the office after classes were over, but although my days were busy, they were very fulfilling. When I was there, Ryoma had 20 to 30 members, but now most of them have become business owners, and about half of them have listed companies. We still have regular alumni gatherings, and each one is a great inspiration.

First get a job and then start a business

After graduating from Ryoma, students either started their own businesses or trained at Recruit and aimed to start their own businesses. In my case, I wanted to train at a regular company before starting my own business, so I chose to join Recruit. The internet wasn't widespread at the time, but I imagined that digitalization would soon take hold, connecting the entire world through multimedia. I knew that when that happened, there would be a huge shortage of content and that the mail-order business would grow. When I considered whether to pursue the promising content business or the mail-order business, I chose the content business. One of the deciding factors for me to join Recruit was that I could learn about the content business. Then, five years after joining the company as a salesperson, the internet began to take off rapidly, and I felt the time had come to start my own business, so I immediately decided to leave. I started my own business in Osaka, where I was living at the time, selling Hokkaido specialties like crab and melons through mail-order sales.
Since I started with zero capital, I created my own website and took orders myself. Once things were on track, I moved to Hokkaido.

Full-scale mail order business launched in Hokkaido

One of Hokkaido's specialties is sugar beets, a plant that is used to make sugar. When we started selling oligosaccharide foods made from this, we received many comments from customers saying that their constipation had been cured. This quickly spread by word of mouth, and the product became a record-breaking hit. Of course, we also received positive feedback about delicious local products like crab and melon, but the level of joy our customers felt when their troubles were resolved was on a completely different level. From there, we decided to not only offer delicious products, but also to "increase the number of products that can solve our customers' problems," and began to focus on beauty and health foods that help solve their problems.
At the time, we were selling products that we had procured, so we went around the country looking for various problem-solving products. What we realized was that many of the products on the market were "theoretically effective," but it was unclear whether they "really worked." Our philosophy is to "sell products that we can confidently recommend to family and friends." If there were no products on the market that we could recommend, we thought, "Let's just make them ourselves!" and so we decided to develop original products. We now offer around 30 products, including health foods, cosmetics, and some miscellaneous goods.
We don't have the mindset of simply making and selling health foods and cosmetics, but rather of providing ways to solve people's problems. For example, we sell an eye cream called "Eye Kirara," but we didn't create it with the intention of selling eye cream; product development began with a desire to do something about dark circles under the eyes and sagging skin caused by aging. As long as it solved the problem, it didn't matter whether it was a health food taken orally or a cosmetic applied to the skin. After making and monitoring many different prototypes from various directions, it turned out that the product that had the highest response rate was a "cream-type eye cream." While we sell health foods and cosmetics in an easy-to-understand way to the public, we approach our customers with the mindset of "providing ways to solve their problems."

A global brand born from digital

I think the world has been reset since the spread of the internet 20 years ago. Media has completely shifted from television and magazines to the internet, and distribution has also shifted almost entirely to the internet. However, when it comes to manufacturer brands, I think physical distribution is still stronger. There is a gradual trend towards DtoC, and we ourselves want to become a global brand of digitally native consumer goods. Currently we are only in Japan and Taiwan, but in the future we would like to expand globally and become the next Kao or P&G born from digital.

＊message＊

I believe it's important to learn as much as possible during your time at university about things you won't have the opportunity to learn once you enter the workforce. To that end, I often recommend to students that if they're looking for a part-time job, they should choose a service industry that receives a lot of complaints. Complaints arise when values ​​differ. By working in a job that receives a lot of complaints, you can interact with people with a variety of values ​​and understand why they think that way. By learning about the many different ways of thinking that come from different positions, ages, and environments, you can realize that what you perceive as unreasonable once you enter the workforce may simply be due to a narrow range of your own values. Since you won't be able to get a part-time job that receives a lot of complaints once you enter the workforce, I recommend gaining experience learning about a variety of values ​​while you're at university.

From the April 20, 2020 issue of the Student Newspaper (Yamashita Mitsuyoshi, 4th year student at Nihon University)