Rei Cosmetics founder Nami Soejima saw a simple gap in the beauty market: American consumers were becoming obsessed with Japanese cosmetics, yet many of Japan’s most trusted brands were still difficult to buy in the U.S. She shares how she turned that frustration into a growing retail business, navigated tariffs and cross-border logistics, and learned that patience and trust are essential when doing business with Japanese companies. Website: https://www.reicosmetics.com/ Social Media: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Anime NYC (August 20-23rd, Javits Center): Booth #5632 https://www.reicosmetics.com/blogs/news/rei-cosmetics-at-anime-nyc-2026 Harness the Full TikTok Shop eCommerce Suite (Sept 15th) https://maven.com/ecomm-biz-school/learn-tiktok-ecommerce-in-2-hours See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How Rei Cosmetics Is Bringing Japan’s Best-Kept Beauty Brands to the U.S.

Grit Daily Startup Show

Nami, I am so stoked to have you here for a number of reasons. We were just talking about anime, which is something I love just before we hit record, which I thought was cool. And you were mentioning there's some stuff happening there with a convention. But first of all, how are you today? Are you feeling great? Welcome to the show.

I'm doing great. And thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk about anime. I can actually go on forever on that, but also aboutRay Cosmetics, which is the company that I run right now.

Yeah. And, you know, I know it's one of those things where I've heard about like Korean skincare popping off, but we're talking about J Skincare here, right? Which is a competing industry and you're leading it. So why don't you talk to me about how far back this goes for you? Was this your first business that you launched into or did you attempt other things before coming into the consumables?

Yeah, this is honestly my first foray into startups. I've been working for a really long time, but I've been in corporate environments, mainly at agencies serving a lot of large brands. But I sort of stumbled into this because I am Japanese by origin. And my friend Chiaki and I, who both live in New York City, we're talking about how hard it is to actually get J-beauty.

In New York. So we would go back to Japan, buy a bunch of things, come back here, and we would repeat that over and over again. And we did see Korean skincare and we said, how come we can't just get Japanese products the same way we can with Korean products?

How Rei Cosmetics Is Bringing Japan’s Best-Kept Beauty Brands to the U.S.

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

How Rei Cosmetics Is Bringing Japan’s Best-Kept Beauty Brands to the U.S.

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.