Two Japanese Brands have Experienced a Setback in Their Business

Chaileedo Press
Mar 8, 2023
2 min read

Updated: Mar 8, 2023

Recently, Japanese makeup group POLA announced that it would close its high-end brands' Amplitude and ITRIM.

On March 6, the official website of POLA ORBIS HOLDINGS issued an announcement, saying that due to the severe business environment and lower-than-expected performance, the company decided to shut down two cosmetic brands, Amplitude and ITRIM, and gradually close stores and end online sales. It is expected to be completed by the end of 2023. "Although we have implemented various growth measures, we judge that it will be difficult to find any advantages in continuing to conduct business in the future." POLA Group said in the announcement.

In the Japanese beauty market, POLA Group is one of Japan's four largest cosmetics groups, along with Shiseido, Kao and Kose. During its peak period, it also competed with Kose Group for the position of the third-largest cosmetics group in Japan. However, in recent years, POLA Group has gradually fallen into the bottleneck of performance growth, and began to fall behind.

According to public data, during the six years from 2017 to 2022, the net sales and revenue of POLA Group only achieved a small year-on-year growth in 2018 and 2021, and the net sales and revenue in the remaining fiscal years declined to varying degrees. At the same time, the group's operating profit margin is declining, and the operating profit margin in 2022 is less than half of that in 2017. Considering that the impact of the epidemic in 2020 will be obvious, the Group's net sales, revenue and operating profit margin will decline significantly. These data show that POLA Group has been going downhill since 2018.

According to public information, Amplitude and ITRIM are two high-end beauty brands launched by POLA Group in September 2018, mainly developed in Japanese department stores. CHAILEEDO noticed that these two brands have entered the SKP multi-brand beauty store in Beijing, and have also opened overseas flagship stores on Chinese e-commerce platforms.

At present, Amplitude's Tmall overseas flagship store has been closed. The overseas flagship stores of the ITRIM brand on Tmall Global, JD International and Xiaohongshu are still operating normally.