The global personal care brand who is perhaps better known for its popularity on the Asian markets, says this effort aims to offer enhanced ‘beauty’ to women on a global scale by anticipating new changes and to provide thorough assurance of ‘safety and reliability’.
According to company reps, Kao is acting quickly to meet a rise in the public's health-consciousness, environmental changes associated with cosmetics, and a growing interest in beauty with the integration of these divisions that will ultimately support the Sofina and Kanebo brands.
“Since the acquisition of Kanebo Cosmetics in February 2006, Kao has promoted mutual utilization of the two companies' competencies mainly in terms of their respective functional capabilities that sustain these brands.”
Integration is already well under way...
As of August this year, organizational integration of quality assurance and consumer divisions, which conduct and manage "safety and reliability" were completed whilst research sections for safety and analysis were integrated in September prior to research divisional integration.
The research division is set to be integrated by January 2014 and as of July next year the company says it will implement full-scale cosmetics research at the laboratories in Odawara, which will serve as the base of the Group's cosmetics research and development.
"By unifying the divisions at this time, we will further pursue efforts for safety and reliability as well as offer enhanced beauty and strive for Yoki-Monozukuri, the value of the Group, while advancing reforms in employees' awareness and organizational culture."
The company says so far these efforts have achieved certain results including generating synergetic effects of cost reduction in the amount of over 10 billion yen in total and will also work on organizational integration in sales divisions in the near future.