Turning away from volume: choosing and concentrating the brand portfolio (2024)

Consistency across two presidencies, and what comes next

The backbone of this decision is best read as a process: what began under Kikukawa Masazumi as a set of individual business disposals was gathered by Takemori Masayuki into a single phrase — do not chase volume — and converted into a measure applied to the company as a whole. Selling off the Bar-San insecticide line was no more than a retreat from a peripheral field, but the disposals of Guronsan and Harikkusu, together with a roughly 30% cut in SKUs, reached into detergents, fabric softeners and oral care themselves. The scope is plainly different from the tidying-up it started as.

Where a policy of not chasing volume finally leads remains an open question. That profitability per SKU has risen and results have regained their pre-pandemic level can be credited straightforwardly to selection and concentration. Whether concentrating on higher-priced brands alone can sustain growth in a domestic market shrinking with an ageing, low-birthrate population is the question that waits beyond the strengthened earning power promised by the second stage of Vision 2030.