FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
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Joint Venture brings istyle cosmetics to Bangkok 

Joint Venture brings istyle cosmetics to Bangkok 

SIAM PIWAT Group yesterday signed a joint venture agreement with istyle Inc , a listed company in Tokyo Stock Exchange, to open its first @cosme store in Thailand.

 
The joint venture, istyle Retail Thailand Co Ltd, is formed under a 70 per cent and 30 per cent partnership respectively between istyle Inc and Siam Piwat Group. 
The first @cosme store in Thailand will be located at Iconsiam, which will officially open by the end of this year.
Siam Piwat is the owner and operator of prestige retail developments in Bangkok such as Siam Paragon, Siam Center, and Siam Discovery.
Kei Sugawara, director, chief financial officer and senior vice president of global, istyle Inc, said the company believes that Thailand and Bangkok in particular have strong potential, citing the two key factors of GDP per capital and total consumer spending on cosmetic products per month.
“We have studied the Thai market and found that Bangkok’s GDP is high and consumers in Bangkok, compared with consumers in other countries in this region, are the top spender on beauty and cosmetic goods. In addition, we also found that Thai women really love things that related to their beauty, which is a very good opportunity for us in expanding our beauty business to this potential market,” said Sugawara.
“In the next three years, we expect that we will have around 50-60 @cosme stores around the world. Currently, we have stores in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Now we are going to open another five @cosme stores in Thailand, with he the first store at Iconsiam. We believe that the Southeast Asian region has potential. Anyway, Thailand is the most important market and that is where we have decided to start ,” he said.

Joint Venture brings istyle cosmetics to Bangkok 
Usara Yongpiyakul, chief executive officer of Siam Piwat Retail Holding Co Ltd said istyle Inc’s @cosme is a phenomenon in Japan that has taken the entire beauty sector by storm. Two out of every three young Japanese women, age between 20 and 30, use the portal for beauty advice.
 “We (Siam Piwat) believe in partnership and collaboration as the best way to succeed in the fast-evolving retail environment. The @cosme retailing concept that merges online consumer engagement with offline sales is extremely innovative and will be exciting for Thai consumers. Next to that, this joint venture will facilitate the arrival in Thailand of many new, high quality Japanese beauty brands that have not been available to consumers in Thailand,” she said, adding that the @cosme business will further strengthen Siam Piwat’s retail portfolio, which already includes the Loft, Korean lifestyle store ALAND, multi-brand decorative store ODS, and multi-brand casual wear store CAZH, among others. 
Usara said that with this joint venture, the company is planning to open five @cosme stores in Thailand with the first store will be at Iconsiam and the second at Siam Center. Locations for the other three stores are under consideration and working process. The first @cosme store, which is located at Iconsiam will be officially opened at the same time as the opening of the shopping complex saying late this year.
“Now, we are focusing on the plan to open five @cosme stores in Thailand. We will do our best, with our strength, to make sure that these @ cosme stores will be very successful and we hope that this will be a sensation for Thailand market and Thai consumers will enjoy this new-to-Thailand concept stores,” she said, adding that for Thailand, the company expected the total sales earned by @cosme stores to reach Bt300 million totally in the first three years.
iStyle Group has been growing very rapidly, with sales of the fiscal year ending June 2018 leaping 50.7 per cent from the previous year and reaching around Bt8.55 billion (JPY 28.47 billion). 
 

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