The analytical mindset from my BCG training continues to anchor my leadership. At the same time, as a marketer, I place great importance on listening to those around me and turning their feedback into meaningful improvements. Our primary customers include lawyers, doctors, accountants, business owners, and professionals in the fields of IT, finance, and pharmaceuticals.
Through interactions at our stores, customer events, and everyday conversations, I regularly hear about their career and life challenges, how kay me supports them, and areas where we can improve. Additionally, daily reports from our retail teams and quantitative data allow us to understand their true and unmet needs.
Coming from an American management consulting background, I often encountered surprising and sometimes unfamiliar perspectives from individuals in the retail and fashion industries. Initially, I focused on compromise and adaptation. However, as our organisation grew and I engaged with people with diverse values, I realised that progress is fastest when team members share our core philosophy, principles, and strategic mindset. This insight helped us clearly define our hiring approach. Today, across all departments, we collaborate with colleagues who take pride in what makes kay me unique and joined the company because they resonate with our vision.
Coming from a background outside of fashion design and having worked in marketing consulting, I have always embraced the value of uncertainty by engaging directly with the market and our customers. For example, before developing new products, we conduct customer research to forecast demand, enabling efficient production that also supports sustainability. Every decision is grounded in quantifiable evidence, like survey results, sales data, and customer feedback, allowing us to balance empathy for our customers with measurable outcomes.
At kay me, many of our signature services, including ‘try & buy’ and the vision of a full-wardrobe ecosystem, were born directly from the voices of our customers and frontline teams. We treat feedback as a living asset, not a one-time input. Every day, our staff reports, in-store conversations, online comments, and service interactions are captured and reviewed so even the smallest insights are not lost.
We continue to run customer surveys today, both before production and throughout the customer journey, to understand real needs with precision. Our customer support team also plays a critical role. They listen deeply and now use AI tools to help analyse emerging pain points and patterns more quickly. The technology helps us spot themes, but every response back to customers is written by people because personalisation, empathy, and timely care are central to who we are.
Once we identify an opportunity, we act fast: we prototype, test on a small scale, and expand only when we see genuine value for customers. This bottom-up approach ensures that our biggest innovations grow from real experiences in our stores and community, keeping kay me closely aligned with our mission of supporting those who take on challenges.
My grandmother’s words: “life is not about what you obtain, but what you can do for others”, have never been a slogan for me, they were the rhythm of her days. As a child watching her in the small kimono shop, I saw how one person’s devotion could lift another person’s spirit. The quiet joy on customers’ faces as they left her shop is the same joy I hope kay me brings into the world. That memory has been my compass from day one. That belief became kay me’s north star, especially during moments of complex transformation. When we entered international markets, built new product lines, or questioned whether to grow faster or grow truer, we always returned to that single question: Does this decision help someone move forward with more confidence, comfort, and dignity?
The goal is to make people’s lives easier, lighter, and more hopeful. That is why our innovation is always human-led, from creating clothes that save thousands of hours of women’s time, to preserving the skills of Japanese artisans so their craft lives on for future generations, to designing services that remove friction from everyday life.
Every strategic decision is filtered through contribution: are we adding value to people’s lives, or simply adding noise?
As we expand globally, we do not chase scale for its own sake. We grow only where our purpose can make a meaningful difference. Whether it is supporting a professional woman navigating her daily battles, sustaining local craft communities who rely on us, or nurturing a workplace culture where accountability and compassion coexist, every part of our ecosystem must reflect that core philosophy.
In that sense, kay me’s transformation is not about becoming bigger. It is about becoming deeper – more aligned with humanity, more committed to care, and more faithful to the belief my grandmother lived by.
Our mission remains unchanged, no matter how the world evolves: to create comfort, empower confidence, honour craftsmanship, and use innovation to serve people – not replace them. This is how we build a brand not only for today, but for the next 300 years.
