My journey as an entrepreneur began in 2005, when I was an undergraduate student. This was the age of the flip phone, and I felt excited by the potential of mobile retailing and blog marketing.
The first five years were a headlong pursuit of sales growth. Rather than sticking to any one retail category (like clothing, nail care, or skincare), I tried out one new thing after another and seized all the growth opportunities I could. This approach paid off—by the end of those five years, my business had a team of more than ten people and sales revenue topping 1 billion yen. But I began to feel that something was missing.
It was then that I came across the following customer review...
My daughter had a complex about her hair, but your haircare product solved the problem. She has regained confidence and is back at school. Thanks so much!
I’d been fixated on sales growth until then, but reading that review opened my eyes to the real value that people were getting from our products.
I realized that the business can create a chain of happiness. The Chain of Happiness, now central to our corporate mission, represents the idea that our products create happy experiences in customers and that this happiness spreads out to others in a positive chain reaction.
In the ten years since then, the world has changed in remarkable ways. But there is something about I-ne that remains unchanged and should always remain so. We recently reworded our mission statement to express this quality that makes our organization unique:
We are Social Beauty Innovators for Chain of Happiness
We'll keep trying to transform society to be more beautiful to create a chain of happiness in a "Beautiful and innovative manner".
This will remain our mission in the years ahead, guiding us to create social value through our business.
Yohei Onishi, President and CEO I-ne Co., Ltd.
