Key Takeaways:
Shiseido is set to enter 2026 in full transformation mode. Following a year of grueling revenue pressure as net sales declined by 8.5% in H1, cost restructuring, and shifting regional dynamics, the company announced a set of organizational and personnel changes designed to streamline operations, accelerate digital integration, and tighten alignment around sustainability and creative excellence. Changes are set to go into effect on January 1, 2026.
The move underscores Shiseido’s most comprehensive internal restructuring plan since the launch of its medium-term strategy (focusing on sustainability, digitization, and restructuring), and signals that the company is looking beyond near-term turbulence towards building a more coherent, future-ready global structure.
Sustainability for Success
A key component of the reorganization is the consolidation of sustainability functions under the newly created Sustainability Strategy Acceleration Office, which will live within the Corporate Transformation Acceleration Department. The office will include the DE&I Group, reflecting Shiseido’s intent to embed social and environmental responsiveness directly into strategic execution rather than distributing these capabilities laterally across departments. Both the prior Sustainability Strategy Acceleration Department and the DE&I Department will be dissolved.
The shift reflects Shiseido’s recognition that sustainability has matured from a communications platform into an operational mandate—one that must be embedded in transformation efforts rather than treated as an adjacent initiative.
Creation at the Core
Creativity, long a signature of the company’s brand identity, is also being centralized through the formation of the Art & Creation Division. This new division will integrate the Beauty Creation Center, Shiseido Creative Co., Ltd., and the Art & Heritage Department.
Shiseido Creative Co., Ltd.’s functions will move into a newly formed Creation Department, while the Art & Heritage Department will be dissolved and reconstituted as the Corporate Value Creation Office.
The restructuring suggests Shiseido is looking to elevate its creative assets at a moment when brand differentiation, heritage storytelling, and design consistency are becoming more critical across global markets.
Digital Differentiation
Perhaps the most consequential shift is the establishment of a comprehensive Global Digital Division, bringing together all major IT and digital units, including the Business Transformation Department's IT arm, the Digital Transformation Office, Shiseido Interactive Beauty, and multiple global IT governance and infrastructure teams.
The timing is strategic. Shiseido confirmed that its core system, FOCUS, has moved from implementation to results-generation. With this transition complete, the Business Transformation Department will be dissolved, replaced by two new bodies. These are the Global Business Engagement Department, tasked with strengthening global governance of business processes, and the Global Enterprise Application Department, responsible for the standardization and unification of enterprise IT systems.
Meanwhile, the Digital Transformation Office will be reshaped into the Global Digital Platform Department, which will focus on internal digital capabilities and consumer-facing innovation.
Shiseido is now committed to treating digital not as a support function but as a global operating backbone; one capable of reallocating resources dynamically across markets.
Leveraging Leadership
Shiseido’s restructuring comes with a series of vice president level appointments across risk management, external relations, global business processes, enterprise application, digital governance, digital platform development, R&D, and creative functions. Notable appointments include:
The personnel shifts mirror the broader architecture Shiseido is constructing—one oriented around integration, efficiency, and cross-functional synchronization.
Hopes for a New Financial Reality
Shiseido’s 2025 earnings context gives this reorganization its urgency. Revenue pressure in China, softness in travel retail, and restructuring in the Americas contributed to lowered full-year forecasts and intensified scrutiny on cost efficiency. Against this backdrop, the 2026 organizational plan reads not as an incremental adjustment but as the next stage of a long-horizon rebuilding effort that consolidates functions, eliminates redundancy, and constructs a global digital and creative apparatus capable of supporting both prestige growth and operational discipline.
If successful, the restructuring positions Shiseido to operate with sharper governance, a more unified digital core, and a creative organization designed for global coherence. It also signals a shift toward embedding sustainability and DE&I into operational engines rather than corporate silos.
In an industry where agility, data integration, and brand distinctiveness increasingly determine competitive advantage, Shiseido is betting that structure itself can be a lever of transformation.
