From diversified retailer to a station-front drug-and-cosmetics chain — and the making of the Matsukiyo brand (1996)

Rearranging the place, the assortment and the name

The core of this decision was to narrow a diversified retailer down to drugs and cosmetics, and to move the place where it sold from Matsudo to the station fronts of central Tokyo. The hit at Ueno Ameyoko was close to an accident, but the thing it revealed — that young women will buy cosmetics if they are cheap — was carried by Kuniyuki Kiyoshi as vice-president and Matsumoto Kazuna as president into the company’s future. Abandoning diversification to stake everything on one business pays hugely when it lands and is hard to reverse when it does not. Reading the coming abolition of resale price maintenance as a tailwind, and combining freely priced general cosmetics with the footfall of the city centre — that was Matsumotokiyoshi’s choice in these years.

Putting the company’s own name in front of the products in its television advertising belonged to the same turn. The manufacturers’ goods on the shelves are much the same everywhere; so build a shop that is chosen by the name “Matsukiyo,” and let advertising do that work. The trouble is that a format binding station fronts, cosmetics and commercials together was, precisely because it was easy to understand, easy to imitate. By around 2001 competition had dulled the growth and the question of where to look next became pressing. Even so, it was this choice — recasting a pharmacy as a station-front specialty chain and growing the company name into a brand — that shaped the Matsukiyo of today.