Suntory Global Innovation Center

I was put in charge of FOSHU products in 2010. At that time, we actually weren’t looking to make a green tea product with quercetin glycosides, but were instead moving towards the development of a functional beverage packaged in a 350-ml PET bottle. We had already put our FOSHU application in.

Although the health claims of our new beverage were attractive, it seemed somewhat of a waste to put this exceptional ingredient in a functional beverage. My gut told me that we would do better making a green tea in the same line as our core Iyemon brand. When I suggested this, the people around me looked at me as if I were speaking gibberish! It seemed I had really thrown a wrench in the gears with this unthinkable suggestion.

The Iyemon brand strives to portray an authentic image, represented by the Iyemon-han character played by Masahiro Motoki. There were a good number of people who felt that we risked destroying that image if we put quercetin glycosides in Iyemon and sold it as a FOSHU product. But since I was in charge of developing the Iyemon brand, I was the very person who had built that image to begin with—and that probably made my audacious suggestion a bit more palatable.

There are so many people in the world concerned about body fat, and I was sure that they would be delighted to get an effective body fat-reducing FOSHU product with the delicious, familiar taste of green tea. Also, since everyone already knew the Iyemon brand, and were used to the 500-ml PET bottle, they would feel confident drinking it. I was sure of it.

The fact that we succeeded in pulling off such a major shift from functional beverage to green tea has everything to do with the Suntory culture, where passionate employees can speak their minds and initiate change, and where flexibility is permitted in the course of product development.

So we dared to shelve a functional beverage it had already gotten approved and put all of our efforts into Tokucha—and the result was tremendous success in capturing a full 50% of the FOSHU beverage market.

I think there are two main reasons why Tokucha ended up being such a hit product. The first has to do with our research and development team—particularly the people working on the research side. They put a staggering number of hours into coming up with an ingredient that would do some good in the world, and then proving scientifically that the product was both effective and safe. The second reason was our ability to take those major research findings and leverage the Iyemon brand so that they would successfully translate into an approachable product with broad appeal.

It doesn’t matter how good the ingredient you develop is—if your marketing team can’t convert it into a product that customers want, it can’t be of any benefit to people. And no matter how talented your marketing team is, if you don’t have skilled researchers and developers in your R&D department, you can’t reliably extend your value chain all the way to end users.

Research and development teams communicate through science, so their messages are necessarily complex. It’s critical to be able to translate those messages into something clear and to the point that buyers can understand in an instant. The question is how to add an approachable charm to something based on science. Of course, in this business, whether customers fall in love with your product depends on whether you manage to bring together solid research and emotional appeal. This “charm” aspect is something that our founder Shinjiro Torii built into Suntory’s corporate culture from the beginning.

Now, we’re hoping to build on our success by widening our perspective to include the global obesity problem. We’ve gotten to a point where even the Japanese—known for having one of the world’s healthiest diets—are struggling with excess body fat. If we turn to the wider world, we find huge numbers of people battling obesity at a level so severe, our problems in Japan are nothing by comparison.

Food and beverage products that are both appealing and backed by scientific evidence have the potential to fill all kinds of market needs across the globe, and Suntory is already in possession of these products. This inspires me to take pride in my company and my culture; in short, it makes me proud to be Japanese.

If we look at things from a global perspective, Japan is nothing more than a group of tiny islands tucked away in the far eastern corner of the world. But our little archipelago is blessed with such natural beauty, such beautiful seasons, such delectable cuisine—not to mention innovative technology backed by exacting science. I want us to take pride in our heritage—be proud to be Japanese—as we go out and offer the world a product that can truly help people suffering from obesity everywhere.