<Shopify Merchant Interview Series>
From a non-alcoholic beverage business to men's skincare.
Kei Kinoshita, President and CEO of Beverich Co., Ltd., is someone who keeps identifying growing markets and entering them through the D2C model. After building his career in the IT and internet industry at NTT Data, Lancers, and Mercari, he founded Beverich Co., Ltd. in 2022. In his first business, which he jumped into with no experience in physical goods, he built up know-how in D2C and e-commerce.
However, the business came to an end for a reason outside his own control: the manufacturer stopped production. Even so, Kinoshita moved forward without wavering from his core principle of "management that isn't built around any one business."
He took stock of the challenges that had become clear over three years, turned those very challenges into the criteria for choosing his next product line, and launched a new business: a men's skincare brand. Starting from zero, learning, and starting again. We asked him about that decision-making process and about his Shopify-centered e-commerce strategy.
(Kei Kinoshita, President and CEO, Beverich Co., Ltd.)
What He Wanted Was to Run a Company — the Business Theme Came Later
—— First, could you tell us about your background and how you came to found Beverich?
Kei Kinoshita (hereafter, Kinoshita) I originally majored in computer science in graduate school, then joined NTT Data as a systems engineer right out of school. After that, I moved to Lancers, a crowdsourcing startup, and then to Mercari — I've built my career in the IT and internet industry the whole way through.
I launched Beverich in September 2022. Through various experiences at Lancers and Mercari, I came to want to run a business of my own. I'd also been at Mercari for a fairly long stretch, about 7 years, so I decided it was time to try something new and founded the company.
The company name is a coined word combining "beverage" and "rich," named after the non-alcoholic beer import business I started with first. I began retailing through Shopify, then later expanded e-commerce sales to Amazon and marketplaces as well.
—— So it wasn't a case of founding the company around a specific business theme from the start.
Kinoshita That's right. The non-alcoholic beer business is something I came across while preparing to start a company. If anything, wanting to run a business or found a company came first, and the business itself came after that.
—— Looking back now, do you think that order was the right one?
Kinoshita Yes, I do. Starting from the feeling of "I want to found a company," rather than starting with a specific business, was personally a good thing, I think.
The non-alcoholic beverage business unfortunately came to a halt because the manufacturer discontinued the product, but I think if you start a company because you're set on doing one specific thing, the sense of loss when it ends is quite large.
Of course, I had spent three years growing that business, so it was sad when it ended, and it was a serious blow as a business too, but emotionally I wasn't all that discouraged. Being able to feel positive about starting a new business again — I think that was a good thing.
"No Point Clinging to It" — The Decision Around Discontinuation
A business pivot is a choice that most entrepreneurs face at least once. When and how to make that decision has no single right answer, and the entrepreneur alone bears the consequences either way. Multiple studies analyzing why startups fail cite the timing and direction of a pivot as one of the factors that determines whether a business lives or dies.
In Beverich's case, the trigger for the pivot was an external factor: the manufacturer stopping production. A business grinding to a halt for a reason outside the company's control is, for any founder, one of the heaviest situations to make a call on. How did Kinoshita make his decision?
—— The manufacturer's discontinuation must have felt unavoidable, but what was the process like as you moved toward switching to the next thing?
Kinoshita When the manufacturer told me they were stopping, I didn't just say "understood" right away either. I made the case that there was this much demand and so on, but in the end it wasn't going to happen.
Once it was decided that it was really going to end, and since it wasn't something I could control on my own side, I switched gears — there was no point clinging to it. If that was the case, I decided to spend my time on the next thing and stay forward-looking instead.
It might be more about my personality than strategy. Once I truly understood there was no way around it, I disclosed it to customers as early as possible, and from there we sold through our remaining inventory within a few months.
—— Looking back on that first business again, was there anything you only came to understand once you'd actually entered the market?
Kinoshita My whole career up to that point had been building apps, so this was my first time selling a physical product, and honestly I couldn't see anything clearly at first.
Once I actually got into it, five challenges with the business became clear: we were sourcing goods made by another company rather than manufacturing ourselves, the products were imported, they were heavy, the shelf life was short at just one year, and the gross margin wasn't great. Imported goods from overseas inevitably came with a high cost basis, and not manufacturing in-house was a real sticking point.
On the flip side, though, precisely because it was something most people would want to avoid in terms of profitability and ease of operation, fewer people were doing it. In a sense it was a niche with little competition, and even within that narrow range, there were customers who bought from us. I was able to enter the market because I was an amateur — but I also couldn't see the pitfalls because I was an amateur. Both sides of that were true.
Flipping the First Business's Challenges to Choose the Next Product
Kinoshita took the challenges that became clear over three years in his first business and turned them directly into the criteria for selecting his next product line. Rather than letting a failure remain just a failure, he put it to use in the next design. And there's one more thing that runs consistently through how Kinoshita chooses products: whether or not he himself is the target customer.
—— Could you tell us why you chose men's skincare as your next business?
Kinoshita I set out to fix the five challenges from the first business. Since skincare products would be developed as our own in-house brand, they'd be manufactured domestically, they're light, cosmetics have a long shelf life, and the gross margin is better secured than with beverages. That was the big starting point.
—— Did you personally have any prior attachment to skincare?
Kinoshita I myself hadn't done any skincare at all originally, but as I got older it started to bother me, and when I took my wife's advice and started doing something about it, I really felt my skin condition improve. Ever since then, skincare has become a high priority for me personally.
It was the same with the non-alcoholic beer business — I was also abstaining from alcohol myself at the time — but I do think you get a higher resolution and better understanding when you work on something you're personally interested in. Because I'm the target customer, I can genuinely want the product myself, and it's more enjoyable to work on — that's become something of a motto for me.
—— In terms of business potential, with so many existing men's skincare brands already out there, how did you think about the room to enter that market?
Kinoshita I think the number of people buying these products is still going to keep growing overall, so I felt there was room to get in there.
Also, our product has a fairly distinctive edge: it's "for middle-aged and older people." Existing brands don't really narrow things down by age group very much. There's a broad "men's" category, but very few products specialize specifically in middle-aged and older men.
Launch of "HOPEN ALL IN ONE GEL," the Men's Skincare Brand HOPEN's First In-House Product
Kinoshita describes it as "skincare specialized for the skin of middle-aged and older men." On March 28, 2026, HOPEN's first product, "HOPEN ALL IN ONE GEL," went on sale.
—— Could you tell us about the features of the new skincare brand's product?
Kinoshita The formulation was also developed to capture the characteristics of middle-aged and older men's skin. That skin type is a genuinely tricky one — it's oily and shiny but also prone to dryness at the same time. We formulated it to care for both of those at once. The price runs somewhat higher per bottle for a month's supply, but in exchange it's packed with carefully selected ingredients.
For more on HOPEN ALL IN ONE GEL, please see Beverich Co., Ltd.'s press release.
Why Shopify Became the Foundation of Beverich's E-Commerce
From retail to wholesale to marketplace expansion, Shopify has consistently been the starting point of Beverich's online sales. Why choose Shopify out of the many platforms available? And what kinds of improvements has the company made along the way while running its e-commerce operations?
(HOPEN's official site, built on Shopify)
—— You've consistently chosen Shopify as your e-commerce platform — could you tell us why?
Kinoshita Back when I was at Mercari, I watched the excitement around B2C e-commerce platforms up close. Among the many domestic platforms out there, I felt that having a certain scale of global usage translates directly into faster product development, faster improvements, and a broader ecosystem connecting to all kinds of apps.
When it came to running things myself as a merchant, I figured a global platform's UX quality would really pay off, so I chose Shopify. From my experience as a product manager watching services over the years, I could tell firsthand that a platform with real scale keeps improving continuously, so I didn't hesitate on that choice.
—— How did you actually handle day-to-day operations?
Kinoshita I did everything myself from the initial build. I installed various apps, and at first I even handled things like shipping notifications on my own, bit by bit. The build itself wasn't all that difficult — I learned by tinkering with it myself.
—— During the non-alcoholic beverage business, I get the impression you put a lot of effort into running a blog/column as well.
Kinoshita With ads, once you stop, it's over, right? But content keeps accumulating, so I wanted to make sure to put real effort into that.
On top of that, since I myself was abstaining from alcohol, I figured there'd be search queries around things like the effects of quitting alcohol, how to quit alcohol, and non-alcoholic beer to drink during that time, so I built up content aimed at capturing those searches.
Whenever I sensed people were searching for something, I'd put content out there for them. My experience directing SEO back at Lancers also came in handy there. I'm planning to build out a similar column for the new skincare brand as well.
Even when a business stops, management continues. For Kinoshita, the non-alcoholic beer business wasn't an ending — it was an accumulation of knowledge for the next business. The moment something is judged to be outside his control, he switches to the next thing. The product challenges that became clear over three years were turned directly into the criteria for choosing the next product line. The experience of discontinuation became the foundation for the next business.
In Part 2, we hear about the e-commerce design for the new brand, how the RuffRuff app is used, and his reflections looking back on three years of running a business.
