Marketing Background of Hello Kitty

Marketing story of Hello Kitty

Hello Kitty is the biggest selling brand of the Sanrio Company Ltd, which was founded is 1960 by Shintaro Tsuji. Hello Kitty is part of the Japanese pop culture of "kawaii" (cute). It all started in the early '70s. Sanrio was trying to develop its own in-house design department. The president, Shintaro Tsuji told his group to draw animals. In 1974, a young designer named Yuko Shimizu came up bad" impression. The first product produced was a small clear vinyl coin purse. The products quickly caught on and dwarfed the rest of the company’s sales within a year or two. Hello Kitty is actually 25 years old but has perpetual youth. For Japanese company Sanrio Co, a stationery producer, she has become a major brand success, multiplying profits in the financial year ended March 31, 1998 by thirteen times-during a recession.

Who is the target market of Hello Kitty?

Adored by many demographic segments of the market, Hello Kitty's main target audience, as expected, is children, but Sanrio says it has now successfully extended the brand to teenage women from above 20 years. Hello Kitty has become an icon with global appeal. As the girls, who first bought her when they were young, grow older, they nostalgically buy Hello Kitty products as adults.

How well Hello Kitty was marketed in the world?

Created by Sanrio Ltd, founded in 1960 by Shintaro Tsuji, Hello Kitty is one of the truly phenomenal brands to emerge from Japan. For over three decades, this simple mouth-less cats of sparse lines and a bow has mesmerized children, youngsters and grownups alike across Asia, Europe and the Americas. In the US alone, Hello Kitty has expanded into 4000 stores nationwide with more than 200 Sanrio specific shops. Created as a gift item to be exchanged between families, Hello Kitty now adorns more than 22.000 products across categories and contributes more than half of Sanrio's USD 1 billion annual sales.

Much has been discussed about the endurance of this...