The Untold Story of KOTOSHINA's Birth ~ Celebrating Our Brand's 10th Anniversary ~
Hello, everyone.
This is Matsumura from KOTOSHINA Kyoto BAL, an organic cosmetics brand born in Kyoto.
In November 2022, KOTOSHINA celebrates its 10th anniversary.
This long journey has been made possible thanks to everyone who has loved KOTOSHINA along the way.
Behind our brand's beginnings lay a great deal of hard work, effort, and no small amount of luck from many different people.
In this column, we'd like to share a bit of that story, hoping it gives you an even deeper appreciation for KOTOSHINA.
《Breathing New Life into Unused Resources》
"Tea seed oil," an ingredient essential to everything KOTOSHINA makes.
We talk about it now as though it's simply part of who we are, but before our brand existed, this oil was considered useless and simply thrown away.
The tea industry has always centered on tea leaves, and because tea seed oil could only be produced in small quantities, it was never treated as a real product — tea farmers used it quietly, on a small scale, mostly just for themselves.
But KOTOSHINA recognized the abundance of skin-beneficial vitamins and oleic acid this discarded ingredient contained, and by breathing new life into it, opened a path for it to be used as a genuine organic cosmetics ingredient.
In a sense, we were already practicing the kind of "sustainability" that's only now becoming a mainstream standard.
《Achieving Organic Certification Once Called "Impossible"》
Before KOTOSHINA existed, exporting Japanese organic green tea as a cosmetics ingredient and obtaining organic certification (Cosmebio) for products made with it was considered such an impossible challenge that other companies in the industry dismissed the idea outright.
At the time, organic standards for cosmetics simply weren't aligned between Japan and the West — no matter how highly regarded a Japanese ingredient's safety was (even with organic JAS certification), it still couldn't be recognized as "organic" in Europe or the US.
But in 2010, Japan and the EU reached a mutual agreement recognizing the equivalence of each other's organic certification systems, making it possible to export organic JAS-certified green tea from Uji, Kyoto, directly to the EU as a certified organic ingredient.
This was an incredibly fortunate turn of events for KOTOSHINA — and thanks to it, we became one of the first brands to obtain Cosmebio organic certification for cosmetics made with Japanese organic green tea.
We hope you enjoyed this story.
Holding true to your convictions often means choosing the harder path. For KOTOSHINA, that meant grappling with questions like "how do we bring tea into cosmetics?" and "how do we achieve European organic certification for cosmetics made with organic green tea?"
Through all these challenges, the KOTOSHINA products now in your hands finally came to be. We hope this gives you a renewed sense of the care and dedication behind everything we make.
To celebrate KOTOSHINA's 10th anniversary, we've prepared two special sets. Each one comes with an original mini tote bag, made especially for this milestone, filled with a curated selection of our most beloved, best-selling items.
10th Anniversary Moisture Care Kit
Contents:
・KS Lotion White N GT, 150mL
・KS Cleansing Milk N GT, 20mL
・KS Face Wash Gel N GT, 20g
・KS Cream White GT, 20g
・10th Anniversary Tote Bag
Price: ¥6,600 (tax included)
Available at: Kyoto BAL, Kobe Hankyu, Online Shop
Sale period: November 1 – December 25, 2022
10th Anniversary Special Care Set
Contents:
・KS Beauty Oil GT, 30mL
・KS Premium Cream GT, 50mL
・KS Lotion White N GT, 30mL
・10th Anniversary Tote Bag (not for individual sale)
Price: ¥18,480 (tax included)
Available at: Kyoto BAL, Kobe Hankyu, Online Shop
Sale period: November 1 – December 25, 2022
