Press & Awards
NEXT LEADER features Assort in its special on Tokyo's next-generation management
NEXT LEADER, Kamishobo's monthly magazine for the people who lead salon teams, ran a special on the next generation of salon management in Tokyo in its February 2018 issue — and Assort was one of its cases.
What the article is about
The issue's cover theme was TOKYO NOW. Its special, 「東京・次世代マネジメント 『美容バブルを知らない世代』がイノベーションを起こす」 (Tokyo's next-generation management: the generation that never knew the beauty-industry bubble is bringing new ideas), looks at how a new generation runs salons in Tokyo, one case at a time.
Assort is Case 5, Aoyama. Its headline plays on our name: the magazine prints アソート (assort) with the gloss 取り揃える — to gather a wide range — and calls Assort a place that gathers hairdressers' individuality.
What it says about Assort
The piece opens like a visit: down the stairs to a salon below the street that feels like a secret base, where English is heard as in a café and guests from many backgrounds sit side by side. It introduces Assort as a salon that reaches around the world, with salons in New York, Hong Kong and Amsterdam as well as Tokyo.
Its map of the company's thinking puts diversity at the centre as Assort's strength — people of many ages working together, and a company that sees its role as giving each person a stage to grow — under the vision 「美容の価値を高め、世界で戦える強いブランドに」: to raise the value of hairdressing and become a strong brand that can stand anywhere in the world.
It tells how the salons abroad grew from the staff themselves: rather than a plan from the top, someone raises a hand, and the plan for a new salon abroad starts from there — so hairdressers who want to work abroad come to Assort.
It also notes that because many of the staff speak English, word spread among people from abroad living in Japan and guests from abroad began to come, and that Assort puts its effort into hair photos and videos shared online.
Our CEO Ken Kobayashi speaks for the company.
About NEXT LEADER
NEXT LEADER is a monthly magazine from Kamishobo (髪書房), a publisher in Minami-Aoyama, Tokyo, that makes books and magazines for hairdressers. Since its first issue in January 2010 it has written about managing a salon — people, training, hiring and the shop's results — for the managers and leaders who run salon teams. It calls itself 次代を担うリーダーの羅針盤, a compass for the leaders of the next generation, and is read by the members of its salon club.
Thank you to NEXT LEADER and Kamishobo, and to everyone who read the article.
Written by Assort