SHIRO | Honest Craftsmanship Born of Hokkaido’s Land

シロの世界観と代表製品「SAVON EAU DE PARFUM 22 40ml」を表現したブランドイメージ

“Rather than looking at something that already exists and thinking, ‘It looks profitable, so let’s compete there,’ we found things that did not exist, things we wished there were more of, and made them. That is how SHIRO became what it is today.”

— Hiroe Imai (SHIRO Founder / Brand Producer)

Basic Information

Established: 1989, as its predecessor, Laurel Co., Ltd. It launched its own cosmetics brand, LAUREL, in 2009, changed the name to “shiro” in 2015, and rebranded as today’s “SHIRO” in 2019.

Founder: Hiroe Imai. She is currently Representative Director and Chair, as well as Founder / Brand Producer.

Official website: https://shiro-shiro.jp/

The Founder and the Brand’s Origins

Roots in Sunagawa, Hokkaido

SHIRO’s story begins on a farm in Sunagawa, Hokkaido. Born in Asahikawa, Hokkaido, in 1974, Hiroe Imai graduated from a junior college in Muroran. While accompanying a friend to a joint recruitment fair, she happened to stop at Laurel’s booth and decided to join the company. At the time, Laurel owned an expansive farm roughly the size of ten Tokyo Domes. In Hokkaido, where the television drama Kita no Kuni kara (From the North Country, beginning in 1981) had helped fuel a lavender boom, the company manufactured and sold tourist souvenirs such as herbal soaps, potpourri, jams, and dressings.

A Turning Point: Developing a Facial Lotion

As Japan’s economy deteriorated following the collapse of the asset bubble in the 1990s, Laurel’s food business remained strong. A turning point came in 1998, however, when a major company asked it to develop a facial lotion. Imai, then an employee, took charge of the project despite having no previous experience and completed a “Herb Water Mist.” She personally experienced every stage, from development to manufacturing.

That experience became a foundation for the future SHIRO.

Becoming President at 26 and Building the OEM Business

In 2000, Imai took over the business from its founder and became President and Representative Director of Laurel at the young age of 26. She steered the company from manufacturing food and miscellaneous goods toward cosmetics, using its own factory as a strength to win one corporate client after another. It eventually moved fully into OEM production, manufacturing everyday products such as shampoos and body care for other companies’ brands, and grew to supply at least 130 brands.

Yet amid that success, Imai realized something did not feel right.

“One day, we realized that we could not see our customers’ happy faces, the very thing that matters most to a manufacturer.”

— Hiroe Imai

As long as the company remained an OEM contractor, client brands pressured it to cut costs, sometimes leaving it little choice but to compromise on ingredient quality. Imai’s belief grew firmer: the joy of making things lay, above all, in “creating things we genuinely want to use ourselves.”

The Birth of the In-House Brand LAUREL (2009)

In 2009, Imai launched the company’s own brand, LAUREL, guided by a commitment to “make and offer things we want to use every day.” Its early products included shampoos in flask-shaped bottles and cold-process soaps. It also became the first in Japan to import Mediterranean laurel directly, establishing a brand DNA centered on “simply delivering the goodness of ingredients.”

In 2011, it launched the skincare line sozai LAUREL. Product development began to focus on familiar materials often treated as food by-products, including Hokkaido’s gagome kombu, a kelp with a distinctive viscosity that swells in water, and sake lees, a nutrient-rich by-product of sake production. The practice of visiting production regions and selecting ingredients through conversations with their producers also took shape around this time.

“Conventional cosmetics manufacturers generally buy botanical extracts and similar materials by the drum, and in most cases use them without knowing what raw materials went into them or how they were made. SHIRO is meticulous about the ingredients from their very source, so I think the difference is considerable.”

— Hiroe Imai

Rebranding as “shiro” and Expanding Worldwide (2014–2018)

The company withdrew entirely from OEM production in 2013 and changed its brand name from LAUREL to “shiro” in 2015. Alongside the Sunagawa flagship, shiro cafe and shiro beauty locations opened one after another. In 2016, it opened its first overseas store on London’s King’s Road.

“We wanted to establish our place within one of the largest cosmetics hubs in the world.”

— Hiroe Imai, Business of Fashion (2018)

The London opening was more than an overseas expansion: for Imai, it also became an opportunity to reconsider the brand’s foundations.

“When we opened a store overseas, the old ‘shiro,’ including its logo, felt somehow weak. To be honest, I felt, ‘We cannot compete on the world stage like this.’”

— Hiroe Imai, WWD JAPAN (2020)

That experience led to the major rebranding that followed. The company also opened in New York in 2018.

Becoming “SHIRO”: A Tenth-Anniversary Decision (2019)

In 2019, marking the tenth anniversary of the company’s own brand, Imai undertook a rebranding that replaced the lowercase “shiro” logo with uppercase “SHIRO” and completely refreshed the packaging. Retaining its simplicity, the navy color and uppercase logo projected the presence of “a brand that can compete on the world stage.”

Some fans, however, criticized the rebranding on social media with a hashtag meaning “change for the worse.” Imai described her response as follows.

“I reflected that we had not managed to convey our intentions to consumers. […] I was honestly surprised to realize again how many fans there were of products we had discontinued. They made me see how deeply our products had become rooted in so many people’s lives.”

— Hiroe Imai, WWD JAPAN (2020)

Through this dialogue, SHIRO continued to move forward. During the pandemic in 2020, it developed and launched the Hand Refreshing series just one month after infections began spreading. Its integrated in-house system, covering development, manufacturing, and sales, made that speed possible.

Sales grew 50% year on year in 2021, and reports in 2026 described revenue as having increased roughly twelvefold over the previous nine years to approximately ¥23 billion. Imai became Representative Director and Chair in 2021 and now directs product creation as the brand’s producer.

The Brand’s Commitments

A Philosophy of Fragrance Creation

SHIRO’s fragrances emerge from a consistent question: what would we want to use every day? Imai visits lavender fields herself, contacts the development team immediately when an ingredient catches her attention, and receives a sample at home within a week. That is the pace at which its product creation moves.

“For example, perfume used to present two choices: expensive fragrances from luxury brands or inexpensive ones sold in drugstores. I wanted a pleasantly scented fragrance somewhere in between, so I made one. Everything begins with whether I want it myself. If I can buy it somewhere, I do not think I need to make it.”

— Hiroe Imai

Commitment to Ingredients: Knowing the People Who Produce Them

SHIRO’s principle in sourcing ingredients is to visit producers directly and understand the thinking behind their work. It began importing shea butter directly from a women’s cooperative in Ghana and deliberately switched its tamanu oil supply from Hawaii to Okinawa, also helping create employment for local seniors. Ethical sourcing, including the active use of discarded and non-standard materials, is central to the brand.

The same approach runs through its fragrance collections. In the high-end SHIRO PERFUME line, distilled waters from Kito yuzu in Tokushima Prefecture and Ezo mugwort in Hokkaido are used in place of water. Plant-derived ingredients also used in skincare give the fragrances greater depth.

Packaging Design: An Aesthetic of Stripping Back

For at least a decade, the packaging has consistently evolved toward greater simplicity. During the LAUREL era in 2009, flask-shaped bottles and colors evoking the scents were characteristic, with designs intended to encourage even those unfamiliar with the brand to pick them up. In 2011, sozai LAUREL identified the ingredients’ places of origin on the packaging itself, expressing an ethical approach to making products in which the producers were visible.

After the transition to “shiro” in 2015, decoration was pared back further. The 2019 rebranding as “SHIRO” introduced navy and the uppercase logo, developing a design with a presence in the global cosmetics market. Its home-fragrance diffusers use simple glass bottles without the fragrance name printed on them, maintaining a sustainable design that can be washed and reused repeatedly.

Even as it releases an astonishing number of at least 100 new products a year, that consistent simplicity remains unchanged.

The Fragrance Range

SHIRO’s fragrances fall broadly into two groups: its standard fragrance line and SHIRO PERFUME.

The Standard Fragrance Line

Designed for everyday use, this line is distinguished by its unisex approach. It comes in several formats, including eau de parfum (40 ml), body cologne, home-fragrance diffusers, and solid perfume. The range offers a consistent experience of the same scent, whether worn on the body, diffused through a room, or enjoyed while moisturizing.

The following five scents form the core of the regular range:

  • SAVON: A fresh, clean fruity scent inspired by soap. Its light citrus and fruity top notes make it easy to wear in a wide range of settings.
  • WHITE LILY: A floral scent with striking cleanliness and transparency. Lily takes the leading role, while the reformulated version, layered with magnolia and other flowers, has a rounder impression.
  • WHITE TEA: A deep tea scent within citrus freshness. Combining calm with cleanliness, it is also a popular gift.
  • EARL GREY: A black-tea scent with the fruity sweetness of bergamot, recreating the rich aroma of the moment you drink a cup of tea.
  • KINMOKUSEI: The sweet, radiant scent of osmanthus. It is one of the fragrances characteristic of SHIRO’s attention to the seasons.

In 2022, the formulas for SAVON and WHITE LILY were changed in response to new regulations from the International Fragrance Association (IFRA). Imai herself explained the background and her thoughts to customers in a video.

SHIRO PERFUME

A more fully developed perfume series created for the brand’s tenth anniversary, this collection was selected from numerous compositions submitted by perfumers around the world. They were invited to compose freely around “the scent that remains most vivid in your memory” or “your own identity.” Their names are not disclosed, but perfumers from diverse cultural backgrounds, including Asia, Europe, and North America, participate. Each fragrance is accompanied by a story describing its perfumer’s memories and vision.

A feature shared by the series is its use of distilled waters and extracts from ingredients such as Kito yuzu, Ezo mugwort, and birch in place of water. These lend greater depth to the fragrance materials, linking the brand’s commitment to skincare with its fragrance philosophy.

Representative creations include the light FREESIA MIST, layering apple, apricot, bergamot, and flowers, and SPICE OF LIFE, where spices meet woods (top: ginger, black pepper, bergamot; heart: rose, cardamom, cinnamon; base: incense, woody notes). New fragrances continue to join the range, with seven additions released in July 2025.

Also in 2025, a gel perfume joined ZERO COLLECTION FRAGRANCE, which repurposed unused fragrance materials sitting in storage along with glitter and hand gel from discontinued products. It expressed the brand’s approach to sustainable production through fragrance as well.

An Interesting Aside…

Just six months after opening on April 28, 2023, Minna no Kojo, or “Everyone’s Factory,” in Sunagawa had welcomed approximately 200,000 visitors. In addition to viewing the manufacturing process up close through the factory’s glass walls, visitors can create an original fragrance at the especially popular Blender Lab by mixing several scents, such as SAVON, WHITE LILY, and WHITE TEA. It has become a destination of pilgrimage for fans from across Japan.

Imai is now said to be envisioning a future in which Sunagawa and SHIRO grow together, taking inspiration from brands such as L’OCCITANE and the ways they enhance their value through ties to their regions.

References