COSME Tokyo 2025 live: International scents for the Japanese market

COSME Tokyo is Japan’s largest cosmetics trade fair, drawing international beauty and fragrance companies hoping to enter a competitive Japanese personal care market to exhibit products and connect to distributors.

Personal Care Insights speaks to two international product developers, Style & Scents Global and Elvis+Elvin, who are looking to expand fragrance product lines in the region with distinct cross-cultural scents.

Both fragrance manufacturers highlight balancing Japanese fragrance preferences — which emphasize fresh and subtle scents — with their cultural fingerprints to break into the market and distinguish their products from the crowd.

Japanese scents-ability

Style & Scents Global is exhibiting two new brand ranges at COSME Tokyo, Maho De Sun and Ksyusha - La Collecion. The Maho De Sun line comes in colorful, pop-style bottles with a flared gold cap. Meanwhile, the Ksyusha line showcases a clear glass bottle and black cap, featuring more muted colors on the label to express a more subdued design. Both lines come in 30- and 50-ml sizes.

Style & Scents Global has factories in UAE and India and exports to over 70 countries worldwide. Japan is a new frontier for the company, says Benjamin Peter, general manager. 

“Japan is a new market for us — it is a unique one, and we are looking forward to having distributors so we can bring our products to consumers,” says Peter.

Peter highlights the company’s market research into Japanese trends which have identified light and fresh scents as being the most popular, influencing the formulation that went into the two new brands. 

Japanese consumers are looking for clean and subtle scents that are not overpowering. The resulting fragrance formulations are unisex and “do not have a strong personality base, but have fresh and floral notes,” he says. 

He adds that the fragrances are also designed for longevity, so the consumer knows they will have the same fresh feel from morning until evening. 

Elvis + Elvin is a luxury beauty brand from New York, US that specializes in skin care, hair care, makeup and fragrances. The brand’s Eau de Parfum comes in a short glass bottle with a wide diameter that reflects a refreshed yet minimalist classic design. 

Jessica Liang, brand marketing executive at Elvis + Elvin, demonstrates the perfume atomizer, which produces a fine mist spray. The brand’s fragrances, which include solid perfumes, are formulated with sugar cane alcohol, which is a lighter alcohol, says Liang.

“Our perfumes fall into four categories: the woody, foodie, flower and fresh scents,” she says. Most of Elvis + Elvin’s perfumes fall into the flower and light scents, which is also a preference for Asian fragrance trends. 

“We try to stay balanced and match both the US and Asian markets,” she says.

Scents of culture

Both brands highlight the challenge of breaking into the Japanese market, which can have regulatory hurdles and a distinct consumer base. Rather than producing a whole new line for the overseas market, Elvis + Elvin is banking on the flexibility of its US bestsellers to do well abroad. 

“The Rose and Water Lily scent is a bestseller in the US markets, so we hope the Japanese market will love it too,” says Liang. This fragrance opens with notes of rose, followed by the floral water lily. 

She says the brand incorporates its New York identity in its products, highlighting its made-in-the-US fragrances to help it stand out against the majority of products that come from the UK and France. “The US customer prefers to see something that is local,” says Liang. 

Alternatively, Style and Scents Global has experience navigating cultural scent preferences. One of its fragrance lines, Maison de Orient, showcases culture-spanning fragrances that blend French oils with bold Middle Eastern scents. Peter calls this fragrance combination “French-Oriental.”

“Since we are from the Middle East, we come from a place where fragrances are very strong, bold and intense. We are seeing a turn toward a combination of French fragrances with Arabian scents, so that is where the French-Oriental family has come in,” says Peter.

This background in adapting to changing global preferences, plus its ability to combine Eastern and Western tastes, is part of Style & Scents Global’s optimism as it enters the Japanese market. 

“We have taken a long time to study the market and then introduce our fragrances here,” he says. “We believe we can be competitive with the best price and a high-quality product.”

Additional reporting by Alexandra Branscombe.