The long-standing skin care, hair care and cosmetics and fragrance company has upgraded the centre’s R&D potential by expanding the site and increasing its number of researchers.
The 969 ㎡ site area, located in Zhangjiang High Technology Park, Shanghai, was founded on 21st October 2015, with the new building opening on 1st November 2016. Its opening ceremony was held on 11th November 2016.
Improving efficiency
Over the last year, Shiseido has transferred its marketing function for the Chinese market from Japan to China to provide independent and effective operations that appeal and target the Chinese cosmetics, beauty and personal care markets directly.
These marketing activities, which include research and planning, formula design, product design, product assurance and production will now take place from the China office.
The China Innovation Centre’s expansion follows Shiseido’s developments in both Japan and the US. In May 2015, Shiseido Americas Innovation Center was expanded and then re-opened, and Japan’s Global Innovation Centre will be inaugurated at the end of 2018.
The company has nine innovation centres located in five countries worldwide and hopes these expansion efforts will help increase innovation and consumer appeal.
Achieving Vision 2020
Shiseido’s recent developments represent a push towards increasing its brand value and implementing business structural reform on a global scale, in a bid to reach its mid- to long-term strategy Vision 2020 that is in place until 2020.
The established brand has upped its R&D functions at its innovation centres and connected the operations that take place at each to provide a seamless and integrated approach to product development.
Shiseido China Research Centre, otherwise known as China Innovation Centre, was established in Beijing in 2001.
For 15 years, China Innovation Centre has researched numerous trends, consumer behaviours and activities on make up habits as well as skin and hair to develop products that accurately meet consumers’ needs in China.
Since the setup of the Shanghai branch in October 2015, China Innovation Centre has been supporting the R&D efforts for products of Urara, Pure＆Mild and Aquair brands.
Global R&D efforts
In order to reach its Vision 2020 goals, the company is increasing its investment into R&D to harness innovation in its products globally.
To achieve this, Shiseido will use a hub-and-spoke system. The Global Innovation Centre in Japan will be used as a hub to carry out basic research and analyse new research fields. Each regional innovation centre will act as a spoke that will develop values for local consumers.
Regional market surveys to pursue in-depth research on consumers’ skin, behaviour and attitudes will be conducted at the expanded China Innovation Centre and the innovation centres in South East Asia, the US and Europe to provide informed and up to date insight.
Collectively, the nine innovation centres will work more closely with local marketing teams to establish an improved understanding of how local consumers receive information and make purchasing decisions.
Shiseido will increase the number of research personnel worldwide from the current level of approximately 1,000 to 1,500 by 2020 and raise the R&D-to-sales ratio from the current 1.8% to 2.5% in 2020 to ensure it can successfully structure its global R&D objectives.