Yakult Honsha

Yakult Honsha[lower-alpha 1] was founded in 1935 to sell its flagship product, Yakult—a beverage made using lactic acid bacteria, a bacterial strain discovered by Minoru Shirota in the 1920s.[1] Yakult Honsha is a multinational corporation that sells various other products and owns the Tokyo Yakult Swallows baseball team. The company regularly promotes what the Financial Times called its "idiosyncratic philosophy of 'Shirota-ism'", namely that it should sell its products at an affordable price, and that a healthy intestine promotes longer life.[2]

Yakult Honsha Company, Limited

Yakult Honsha Building in Shimbashi, Tokyo
Type	Public KK
Traded as	TYO: 2267
Industry	Probiotic Drinks
Founded	1935 (1935)
Headquarters	Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Key people	Sumiya Hori (Chairman), Khamis Agear (EVP for global operation)
Products	Yakult
Website	www.yakult.co.jp/english/

History

A Yakult lady in Japan

Since 1963, Yakult has employed women known as "Yakult ladies" (ヤクルトレディー; Yakuruto redī) or "Yakult aunties" (ヤクルトおばさん; Yakuruto obasan) to sell or deliver the products to individuals at their homes while traveling on bicycles or motorcycles. The initiative, meant to utilize Japanese women in the workforce, is responsible for up to 60% of all bottled Yakult sales. However, the number of Yakult ladies in Japan has declined from 65,700 in 1973 to 42,500 in 2009.[3]

In the early 1980s, Carlos Kasuga, whose parents immigrated to Mexico from Japan in the 1930s, founded Yakult Mexico.[4][5]

In 1998, the company gained international attention for its losses in the derivatives market, totaling US$813 million.[6] In 2000, The Japan Times reported that Yakult Honsha had been paying a criminal syndicate annually to keep them from disrupting shareholder meetings, but that the money was concealed as payments to an advertising company.[7]

Yakult established a US subsidiary and committed to building a factory in Fountain Valley, California in the United States in 2010, and it began production in 2014.[8][9][10]

Yakult is manufactured and sold in India under a 50:50 joint-venture with Danone.[11] For over a decade, Danone owned 21 percent of Yakult Honsha shares, but in 2018 Danone announced it would reduce its holdings in Yakult to 7 percent, while still remaining the largest Yakult Honsha shareholder.[12]

Notes

1. Yakult Honsha Company, Limited (株式会社ヤクルト本社, Kabushiki-gaisha Yakuruto Honsha)

References

1. Caramia, Giuseppe; Silvi, Stefania (2011). "Chapter 1: Probiotics: From the Ancient Wisdom to the Actual Therapeutical and Neutraceutical Perspective". In Malago, Joshua J.; Koninkx, Jos. F.J.G.; Marinsek-Logar, R. (eds.). Probiotic Bacteria and Enteric Infections Cytoprotection by Probiotic Bacteria. Dordrecht: Springer Science & Business Media. p. 6. ISBN 978-9-4007-0386-5.
2. Bland, Ben; Soble, Jonathan (November 27, 2013). "On the trail of the Yakult Ladies". Financial Times. Retrieved September 5, 2018.
3. 久保, 智 (July 27, 2009). "朝日新聞社）：堅調ヤクルトレディー　地域密着、不況知らず - 経済を読む - ビジネス・経済". Asahi Shimbun (in Japanese). Retrieved September 6, 2018.
4. "I am 60% Japanese and 60% Mexican". Inside México. July 2007. Archived from the original on March 26, 2014.
5. Valls, Luis (6 July 2013). "Carlos Kasuga, el líder detrás de Yakult • Forbes México". Forbes México (in Spanish).
6. "Japan Company Derivatives Loss". The New York Times. March 21, 1998. Retrieved September 5, 2018.
7. "Yakult paid off gangsters: Sources". The Japan Times. January 13, 2000. Retrieved September 5, 2018.
8. Mueller, Mark (June 27, 2010). "Yakult To Build Fountain Valley Plant for U.S. Expansion". Orange County Business Journal. 33 (26): 1, 23.
9. Yu, Jane (May 19, 2014). "Yakult Drink Factory Kicks Off Production". Orange County Business Journal.
10. Mendoza, Raymond (May 29, 2014). "Yakult Factory Becomes Toast of Fountain Valley". Orange County Register.
11. Prakash, Saumya (21 May 2012). "Yakult Danone: Spreading far and wide". Business Standard. Retrieved Jan 7, 2017.
12. Gretler, Corinne (February 14, 2018). "Yakult Declines After Danone's $1.8 Billion Share Sale Plan". Bloomberg News. Retrieved September 5, 2018.

Further reading

• Inoue, Shigeru (2018). Toki Shirite Koso: Yakuruto Sōgyōsha Matsunaga Noboru 時知りてこそ: ヤクルト創業者・松永昇 [Only when you know it: Yakult founder Noboru Matsunaga] (in Japanese). Kaichōsha. ISBN 978-4-86656-021-2.