athletia: e’quipe’s Brand Launch and Perfumes That Portray Shifting Emotions

We are not always positive.
Asami Kuramochi (product development)

On days when the rain keeps falling, there is no need to force yourself to feel brighter. You can accept the nostalgia and loneliness of an autumn dusk just as they are. Athletia’s eaux de parfum offer a perspective that does not ask us to be cheerful all the time.

Founded in 2020 as a skincare and lifestyle brand, athletia has explored the cycle of “moving well and resting well.” In 2025, that idea became three perfumes centered on impatience, reflection, and nostalgia. It is a brand that considers time spent in activity, time spent at rest, and even the feelings that shift between them.

Key Information
The Founders and the Brand’s Origins
The Brand’s Commitments
References

Key Information

Brand name: athletia
Launch: February 19, 2020 (concept development began in 2018)
Founding and operating company: e’quipe, LTD. (Tokyo, Japan)
Key people behind the launch: Miki Matsuoka (then marketing manager) and Asami Kuramochi (product development)
Eau de parfum launch: October 17, 2025
Official website: athletia

The Founders and the Brand’s Origins

2018: A Concept Born from Changes in Everyday Life

Athletia was created by e’quipe, the Kao Group company behind RMK and SUQQU. As its third brand, it broadened its focus beyond the time spent applying cosmetics to the skin to consider how a whole day is lived.

Behind the idea was the experience of then-president of e’quipe Yosuke Maezawa, who had lived in Zurich, Switzerland. Seeing people go to yoga after work or swim in the lake drew his attention to ways of resting that enrich time outside work. He aimed to create a brand through which people could experience the balance between being on and off duty.

The concept began taking shape in 2018. Miki Matsuoka, who led the launch, had previously worked in product development and overseas marketing for e’quipe’s other brands. When considering the new brand, she looked beyond the beauty industry: health-conscious snacks, food services combining convenience with good taste, and boxercise offering enjoyable physical activity. More people were taking care of their bodies and diets within busy lives.

The concept of beauty is coming to be discussed not only in terms of surfaces such as the skin, but also in terms of the way we live.
Miki Matsuoka

This was how Matsuoka described changing values around beauty in an interview in 2020. Supporting everyday choices, including awareness of diet and the environment, became the brand’s starting point.

2020: Three Lines Supporting Activity and Rest

Athletia launched as a skincare and lifestyle brand on February 19, 2020. It offered three lines: “tune & charge” to condition the skin, “active & go” for going out and exercising, and “breathe & sleep” with a focus on breathing and sleep.

The range of basic skincare, UV protection, room mists, and other products was not simply a way to increase the number of product types. Life calls for different kinds of support during both active and quiet moments. Products prioritizing portability and ease of use sat within the same brand as products that used fragrance to create time for relaxation.

The founding words, “Strengthen Yourself. — Beauty can be trained —,” were also connected to this way of designing daily life. Rather than leaning entirely toward either movement or stillness, the brand valued the flexibility to move between them.

Environmental consideration was also built into production from the beginning. The original Core Balance Toning Lotion used a green container made with at least 90% recycled glass. Variations in color arising from recycling were accepted as individuality rather than something to be erased for uniformity. The idea of respecting the diversity of users was echoed in the colors of the containers.

2021: Bringing Clean Beauty to Britain

An official online shop for the United Kingdom opened on October 28, 2021, followed on November 22 by a counter at Selfridges’ Oxford Street store in London. British beauty-industry publication TheIndustry.beauty also reported the UK launch that November, mentioning the three lines, naturally derived ingredients, and recycled-paper boxes. What was presented overseas was a brand that considers skincare, life, and the environment as interconnected.

Selfridges was chosen in part because of its environmental and social initiatives, including Project Ocean and Project Earth. It was also important to provide a place where people could actually try the scents of natural plant essential oils. A point of contact where people could experience scent and texture was added to the online delivery of products.

2025: Making Shifting Emotions the Subject of Perfume

The brand’s first three eaux de parfum were released on October 17, 2025. Asami Kuramochi, who worked on their planning, joined e’quipe in 2018 after experience in skincare and haircare product development. She had been involved in product planning since athletia’s launch.

Kuramochi chose the fluctuations in feeling that everyone experiences as the subject of the perfumes. Rather than pretending irritation or low spirits do not exist, the idea was to accept them through fragrance and slowly return to one’s usual self. With that intention, she gave each of three emotions, impatience, reflection, and nostalgia, a scene drawn from memory.

The resilience that athletia values is the flexibility to adapt and recover when faced with difficulties. Having considered how to balance activity and rest, the brand extended that perspective inward through perfume. By portraying emotions through seasons and weather, it created fragrance stories that do more than simply push the mood upward in one direction.

The thinking behind the fragrances was shared in the making of the containers, too. Kuramochi gave the designer a clipboard expressing the concepts and emotions, and they took time to consider the form. They also addressed the challenges of ensuring the upside-down bottle’s safety and stability. Through both scent and shape, they explored a form capable of returning to itself after wavering.

The Brand’s Commitments

Creating Olfactory Depth with Natural Plant Essential Oils and Synthetic Fragrance Materials

In all three eaux de parfum, natural plant essential oils make up at least 90% of the fragrance materials. This figure concerns the composition of the fragrance, not the proportion of the finished product as a whole. While making use of the green and earthy character of essential oils, synthetic fragrance materials were also used to give depth and lasting nuance to the scent as it develops on the skin.

This combination shows an approach that values natural ingredients while also using technology for the experience of use and for expression. In 2021, Kuramochi spoke about clean beauty as follows.

I think it is only by not hiding what we cannot do, and honestly disclosing even the reasons why, that we can move toward the essence of clean beauty.
Asami Kuramochi

Communicating ingredients and production methods so that users can make choices. Rather than stopping at the word “natural,” this approach makes clear the technology that is needed and why, and it carries through to the choice of perfume materials.

Three Scent Landscapes Portraying Impatience, Reflection, and Nostalgia

LOST IN THE CROWD portrays the impatience of spring in a city. As the weather warms and more people fill the streets, gusts and blowing dust make it hard to feel settled. Its composition layers the stimulation of elemi and nutmeg over bright citrus, then moves toward woody weight. It portrays spring not just through lightness, but also with a trace of roughness in the air.

UNTIL THE CLOUDS CLEAR, by contrast, takes reflection during the persistent rain of early summer as its subject. Thoughts arise and disappear while one waits for a break in the clouds. It connects that scene to the cold, green impression of lemon and galbanum, the floral richness of jasmine and ylang-ylang, and the earthy lingering notes of labdanum and vetiver (in Japanese). From rain-soaked plants to an afternoon touched by soft light, this creation overlays the passage of waiting time onto changes in scent.

TWILIGHT HUES contains the nostalgia of an autumn dusk. Grapefruit and pink pepper express the sparkle of a city colored by the red evening sky, while osmanthus, the fragrant olive blossom known in Japan as kinmokusei, evokes dry leaves dancing in the wind. It eventually moves into a smoky finish, placing bright memories and melancholy in the same scene.

What separates the three creations is not simply a difference in season. Feeling unsettled in a springtime city, turning thoughts over in the rain, or being overtaken by nostalgia at a farewell: providing a place for different feelings is the idea shared by these perfumes.

Including 1-Dodecanol and Planning the Products

The fragrances also contain 1-dodecanol, treated as one of the components of the skin’s own scent. According to Kuramochi, research into this ingredient and development of the perfumes proceeded separately and ultimately aligned with the direction of the project. The research did not come first and determine the three stories. Its light, soap-like scent, which did not interfere with fragrance creation, was also a specific characteristic considered in deciding to include it.

The inclusion of this ingredient as a fragrance material and the perfumes’ stories of accepting emotions support the products from different angles. The first keys to understanding the creation of the three perfumes are the emotions Kuramochi selected and the scenes that reflect them.

A Green Upside-Down Bottle and a Stand for Returning to Yourself

When the perfume is set down, the green-glass bottle is upside down, held in a paper stand. Its form reverses the conventional arrangement with the cap at the top. The officially stated intention is to create a base to which one can return to oneself together with the fragrance. A flexible axis is entrusted to a form that remains standing even when inverted.

The packaging was created by Sayuri Shoji of SAYURI STUDIO. She also worked on athletia’s brand logo and packaging; for the 2025 perfume, she handled art direction for visuals and films as well as packaging design. Following the logo’s expression of movement and stillness, the perfume also conveyed the brand’s thinking through form.

The packaging comes to communicate the product’s appeal to customers without words.
Sayuri Shoji

This is how Shoji describes the work of giving packaging a personality through repeated dialogue with clients. Even a bottle standing quietly is given a role in reflecting its user’s feelings.

The stand uses FSC-certified paper: paper made from certified materials that take responsible forest management and related considerations into account. Making use of the textures of glass and paper, the design allows the bottle, cap, spray, and stand to be easily separated for disposal after the fragrance has been enjoyed. Take it out and use it; return it, and it stands in the room. This form, including that back-and-forth movement, expresses athletia’s approach to perfume as a companion to everyday life.