AnyMind Group acquires Japan-based beauty distributor Sun Smile

AnyMind Group has acquired all shares of Sun Smile Inc., a Japan-based distributor and brand owner in the beauty and personal care sector, marking its entry into offline retail. The acquisition is AnyMind Group’s 13th overall and seventh in Japan.

Founded in 1997, Sun Smile operates across manufacturing, distribution and wholesale in the beauty and personal care category. It develops its own brands, supports overseas brands entering the Japanese market and distributes products nationwide through partner retailers.

The acquisition will allow the platform to extend its business process as a service (BPaaS) model beyond digital channels to include offline retail distribution. It aims to link social media, e-commerce and physical retail through an online-to-offline (O2O) model supported by data and artificial intelligence.

Across the Asia-Pacific region, consumer behaviour in beauty and personal care has increasingly shifted toward journeys that begin on social media, move through e-commerce and often conclude in physical stores. Platforms such as TikTok Shop have played a growing role in product discovery and purchase decisions.

The platform has expanded its content and social commerce operations in response, including the recent acquisition of NADESHIKO Beauty, which operates short-form video media focused on stimulating early-stage demand.

Speaking of the development, Tokuya Tanaka, CEO of Sun Smile, said, “Our company has long focused on creating brand value and expanding in the cosmetics and beauty goods sector, leveraging our product planning capabilities and distribution network. In recent years, as brand building originating from SNS and e-commerce accelerates, we recognize the growing importance of providing consistent brand support across online and offline channels and operating businesses premised on data utilization. By joining AnyMind Group, we believe we can combine our cultivated strengths in distribution and planning with AnyMind's capabilities in social marketing, e-commerce, and AI utilization to offer brand companies even more advanced support than before. Moving forward, we aim to accelerate the creation of new mechanisms supporting brand growth by combining both companies' expertise and foundations, further evolving value creation within the Japanese market.”

Talking about the acquisition, Kosuke Sogo, CEO and co-founder of AnyMind Group, added, “Consumer journeys in beauty and personal care no longer end at the screen; they move seamlessly from short-form video and social commerce into e-commerce and physical retail. Sun Smile’s nationwide distribution network and experience in brand building are a powerful complement to our BPaaS model. By integrating our data, AI and operations, we will help brands grow faster and more efficiently from discovery to purchase, whether that happens online, offline or both. We will continue to build a new-generation business infrastructure that enables brands to grow both domestically and globally.”

Through the integration, the platform will enable cross-selling between its existing customers and Sun Smile’s supported brands, connect online demand with offline retail sales through unified data, and apply AI-driven planning and demand forecasting across production and retail operations.