Kao's SENSAI enters Thailand, opens a Jakarta flagship
Kao's prestige skincare brand SENSAI has opened its first store in Thailand and is opening a flagship in Jakarta, treating Southeast Asia's top department stores as one market rather than one country at a time.
Kao's prestige skincare brand SENSAI has opened its first store in Thailand and is opening a flagship in Jakarta, the company said, as it presses its expansion across Southeast Asia's top department stores to reach more of the region's affluent shoppers.
The Bangkok store, inside CENTRAL Chidlom (1027 Ploenchit Road, Lumpini, Pathumwan), opened on 31 July and runs 10:00 to 22:00, according to Kao. It is SENSAI’s first store in Thailand; the company said the goal is more touchpoints with affluent Thai customers and wider recognition for the brand there.
In Jakarta, SENSAI is opening what Kao calls its flagship store in Indonesia, at Plaza Indonesia (Jl. M.H. Thamrin Kav. 28-30) from mid-August, also open 10:00 to 22:00. The brand has been sold in Indonesia since 2025, and the new store is its fourth location in the country, Kao said. The company described a store design built around SENSAI’s identity and a treatment menu performed entirely by hand, ending with a cup of green tea offered in the spirit of what it calls ichigo-ichie (literally "one time, one meeting": the idea that an encounter happens only once and deserves full attention).
One Asia, one shelf
Kao frames both openings as part of what it calls an integrated Asian operation, running stores, e-commerce and travel retail across the region as one push rather than separate national campaigns. SENSAI is one of six brands the company has designated to lead global growth in its cosmetics business, and Kao says the line is now sold in more than 40 countries and regions. The brand traces to 1983, arrived in Japan’s domestic market only in September 2019, and opened its first Asian flagship in Shanghai in October 2023. Kao discloses no sales target or growth figure for the push.
The two addresses are not incidental. CENTRAL Chidlom and Plaza Indonesia are both first-tier luxury malls, the kind of building that already houses the European maisons a Japanese prestige line is trying to sit alongside. Treating Southeast Asia as a single shelf, rather than negotiating market by market, is a newer posture for Japanese beauty houses, which have traditionally built up distribution country by country. Whether "one Asia" behaves like one market — or whether Bangkok and Jakarta shoppers respond to the brand differently — is a question a fourth Indonesian store and a first Thai one won’t settle by themselves.