Abstract

The case ‘Consumer Minimalism: The KonMari Lifestyle Brand’ details how Marie Kondo (Marie), a young Japanese woman, capitalized on the trend of consumer minimalism to build a business through her company KonMarie Inc. Her de-cluttering and organizing method, called the KonMari MethodTM, helped her achieve a self-worth of US$8 million in a decade. Marie had had a penchant for cleaning and organizing her home since childhood. By the time she turned 19 in 2003, her friends began offering her money for her tidying services.. After graduation, though she took up regular employment at a staffing agency, she began to offer her tidying services as a part-time professional service. Marie soon had a waiting list of customers that stretched over six months. Realizing the business potential in this concept, Marie quit her regular job and converted her side hustle into a full-time business. The case then focuses on the various promotional initiatives including book publishing, talk shows, working with celebrities, and appearing in a Netflix series that led to Marie becoming a celebrity in Japan and later in the US. Finally, the case describes how she leveraged her image to build the KonMari brand and diversify into other revenue streams like designing and selling work related products and content, conducting coaching programs on work life management and certification programs to become a KonMari consultant, and launching an online store selling home products. The case ends with the stake sale of KonMarie Inc. to Rakuten followed by Marie’s foray into selling premium online home products.

Learning Objectives

The case is structured to achieve the following Learning Objectives:

• Importance of understanding consumer trends to create business opportunities
• Understand the approaches to positioning and branding for a small business
• Be aware of the benefits of individual brand equity
• Learn how to leverage your core brand to diversify and scale up your business
• Understand the founder’s challenge of continuing business philosophy post stake sale

Keywords

Consumer Minimalism; Millennial Behavior; Brand Equity; Experiential Marketing; Consumerism; KonMari; Marie Kondo; Branding; Decluttering; Lifestyle methods, Social media; Brand Extension