Even within the town of Kumano, also known as “The Brush Capital”, which produces approximately 80% of the calligraphy brushes in Japan, Ochi Co., Ltd is the oldest and longest-established manufacturer of makeup brushes. Since its founding in 1935, the founder Kiyoshi Ochi, worked diligently day and night devoting himself as a craftsman making lip brushes. Even after the business was taken over by Fumio Ochi, the second generation, we have continued to devote ourselves to make-up brushes.

We handle more than 150 brands, mainly domestic major cosmetics manufacturers and develop an average of 250 new products every year. The production capacity of the entire group exceeded 1.5 million units per month. Currently, we are closely monitoring the development of the overseas, salon and volume retailer market and working hard on improving sales so that more people can use Ochi Co., Ltd.’s makeup brushes.

In addition to brush fiber preparation and tailoring, every step of the brush manufacturing process incorporates traditional methods. Most of the brush manufacturing process is done by hand and without relying on machines or cutting devices. High quality is maintained not only at the Kumano factory headquarters but also at our overseas factories as well. Especially at our China factory in particular, we have subdivided the manufacturing process, promoted manualization and invested time in rearing craftsmen equipped with skills that are not inferior to the quality level of Japan.

In 1990, we established a joint venture in China (amicably dissolved in 2006) in pursuit of cost reduction in response to customer requests. In 1991, we established a wholly-owned subsidiary in China and established a subsidiary in Laos in 2018. At that time, the infrastructure in China was not yet in place and it was a long road with many obstacles. However, now that the craftsmen have been trained and the quality control system has been strengthened, we can actively recommend production in China. We regard competitive pricing as a manufacturer’s responsibility and will continue to take on the challenge of further cost reduction.

We will contribute to the creation of better products by making use of our accumulated experience and proactively make proposals from the design stage. In addition, even when manufacturing at the overseas factories, we take responsibility of thoroughly eliminating defective products through our own inspection standards and do our best to meet delivery deadlines.