Press & Awards
WWDJAPAN picks Assort among the Japanese salons doing well abroad
On 31 March 2025, WWDJAPAN published a feature on Japanese hair salons that have gone abroad. It picked four salons that have done well overseas, and Assort was one of them.
What the feature is about
More and more Japanese hair salons are going abroad, the feature says: the home market feels tighter as the population falls, and social media now makes it easy to reach people in other countries. WWDJAPAN asked each of the four salons how it thinks about going abroad, how it brings in guests in its salons outside Japan, and what it plans next.
The feature first ran in WWDBEAUTY, the beauty supplement of WWDJAPAN's 24 March 2025 issue.
What it says about Assort
Assort's part names our salons in New York, London, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and Melbourne, under the heading 'Answering love calls from around the world, with pop-up salons in each country'. Our CEO Ken Kobayashi speaks for Assort.
WWDJAPAN explains the name: Assort comes from 'assortment', a mix of many kinds. It stands for Ken's motto, 十人十色 — every person is different. And from the day it opened, Assort has run on one idea: to bring Japanese hairdressing, its technique and its way of caring for guests, to the world.
The article's headline speaks of a big turnaround, thanks to consultation videos that reached people all over the world. The rest of the article is for WWDJAPAN's members; the link is below.
About WWDJAPAN
WWDJAPAN has followed the fashion and beauty business as a weekly paper since 1979, published under licence from the American WWD.
Thank you to WWDJAPAN, and to everyone who read the feature.
Written by Assort