Fortune in the kitty

But since her invention by a young designer in 1974, Kitty has triumphed repeatedly over massive odds. Born in Japan right at the start of history’s most frenzied consumer bubble, she could not have hoped for more than a short spell as a passing fad. The Japanese are notoriously fickle when it comes to trends, and the children’s side of the market is by far the most cut-throat of them all.

But as the 1980s and 1990s rolled on, Kitty’s fame soared to ever-greater heights. Her simple feline face has undergone ten subtle makeovers, she has gained a pantheon of furry friends and, above all, she has become uncompromisingly cool. Over her 30 years she has weathered the rise of video games, Pokémon, virtual pets and a host of other competitors. But with a tiny staff and a keen nose for the next big thing, Sanrio has hit on a formula that rivals the biggest icons from Disney and Warner Brothers.

In a rare interview with The Times, Sanrio’s managing director, Susumu Emori, explained that the secret of longevity is variety. Every month the company comes up with 500 new products and snatches 500 old ones off the shelves to make way for them.

The other key to success has been to change the profile of Kitty fans. The original stuffed dolls and trinkets were designed for little girls. Emori now declares his target audience as the late teens to early twenties. The autumn line-up includes a Goth Kitty, Kitty jewellery, Kitty fireworks and a vast array of mobile phone accessories.

“It’s a tough business because the life cycle of each new product is around three months,” says Emori. “That means we are very flexible when it comes to keeping Kitty cool.”

One of Emori’s proudest coups is his new range of 200 “localised” Kitty dolls. Each Japanese prefecture and major city now has its own version of the little cat representing that region’s speciality — in Gunma she is peeking out of a cabbage, in Nagoya she is holding a chicken and in Okayama she is dressed like the legendary character Momotaro.

“Tourists go to a place, or people just pass through on business and they think to themselves, ‘What would be the best souvenir?’ ” says Emori. “Kitty is such a strong brand that she will always make the best present — the safest present because everyone loves her — so by making her local we were creating the perfect souvenir of every place you go.”

But the company is taking no chances when it comes to keeping its star in the limelight. In a new campaign called “The Celebrity’s Cele- brity”, Sanrio is doing everything it can to make sure that Kitty is seen with the right people. Mariah Carey, Lisa Loeb, Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears have all made public appearances wearing Kitty’s face somewhere. Other stooges in the Kitty coolness drive include Sarah Jessica Parker, Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore.

Even more important than innovation, says Emori, was the point — reached at “some intangible moment in the mid-1990s” — when Kitty made the critical leap from children’s plaything to teenage craze and adult obsession. Here even Emori admits that Kitty was blessed with two incredible strokes of luck that created what, in Sanrio annals, is recorded as “the Kitty boom”.

The first was thanks to a young Japanese starlet whose 15 minutes of fame put her on every Japanese TV show and magazine cover in the mid-1990s. Tomomi Kahara, as well as being a singer, was also a huge Kitty fan. She sported Kitty handbags in public and a variety of other accessories. Before long every high-school girl in Japan, already copying the Kahara “look”, was scrambling for Kitty merchandise — a mass effort to reflect the taste of their idol.

The second boost owed much to Sanrio’s quick thinking. In 1996, just as the Print Club photobooth boom was really taking off, Sanrio bought a large number of the machines and placed them strategically in their shops.

As Emori explains, while groups of girls were waiting for their Print Club snaps to develop, they would walk around the shop and buy a strap for their mobile phone or some other piece of Kitty chic. The leap from kindergarten to mainstream is now almost complete. The Big Echo Karaoke company offers singers Kitty-themed rooms, Daiwa Hotels offer Kitty suites and several taxi firms have sent Kitty cabs out on to the roads of Kyoto and Tokyo.

But Emori paints a picture of a fundamentally nervous company — every action it takes and every variation on the theme it devises seems to ooze with crisis mentality. This is not a company at ease with the future. It has drawn up several new characters to join the existing Sanrio line-up and is even considering, against the express wishes of the founder, a magazine advertising campaign.

With Kitty as its figurehead, Sanrio has become Japan’s shining example of an intellectual property company. Sanrio has stamped its brand on hundreds of “gift-gate” shops around the world, and Kitty has a theme park, Puroland, devoted to her. But that is where the physical ownership ends. Sanrio’s business centres on churning out designs for other companies, from clothes manufacturers to electronics companies, to produce.

For many years Japan’s industrial might has been judged by the world-beating strength of its manufacturers. But while Honda and Sony take all the plaudits, many observers ignore the country’s prodigious talent for selling concepts around the globe. People forget that Nintendo’s Mario is recognised by more American children than Mickey Mouse, and that Pokémon and Power Rangers have been the world’s favourite toys for nearly a decade.

But Sanrio does not rely on luck in keeping Kitty fresh. Its offices are testimony to the company’s strange fusion of childlike innocence and corporate toughness. Kitty herself was the creation of Yuko Shimizu, who came up with the design in her early twenties. She no longer works for Sanrio, but her legacy is a company where the staff are 90 per cent female.

“Girls love Kitty, they grew up with Kitty, so talented designers all want to come and work here,” says Emori. Their workspace is a giant playroom on the 19th floor of a blocky-looking office building in Tokyo.

Every effort has been made to make it a comfortable, friendly environment, but the designers scarcely have a moment to look up from their screens. With 500 new outfits and designs to dream up every month, the cutesy Kitty at 30 has become a very demanding taskmistress.