OREANDA-NEWS. ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Masahiro Okafuji, President & CEO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that it has signed an agreement to secure exclusive import/distribution and master license rights for the Finnish bag brand Golla in the Japanese market. The full-fledged release of the brand will take place in the 2016 fall/winter season.

The Golla brand was established in Kolla, Finland, in 1995. The K?hk?nen brothers who established the brand initially began producing small functional items from rubber and plastic. As soon as these products hit the market under the brand name Golla, they became available to purchase worldwide. Moreover, around 2000, they rode the wave of the digital revolution and introduced fashionability to the world of digital appliance accessories such as mobile phones, marking a new phase in the mobile market. Since then, they have been developing their business. Since then, the business has continued to grow over the years, and the time has come for a new offering of fashion bags, starting from the 2016 fall/winter season.
This time, the direction of Golla, whose aim is to improve the brand's visibility in the fashion bag area within the Japanese market, met with that of ITOCHU, whose aim is to introduce superior brands with a high level of added value to expand its brand portfolio. This facilitated the conclusion of the agreement. ITOCHU is planning to sell imported products as key items while at the same time aiming to increase sales of mobile phone cases, camera bags and PC bags through HAKUBA Photo Industry Co., Ltd. In addition, the new collection, which consists chiefly of fashion bags that were not previously available, is going to be sold via the sales channels of Kitamura Trade Service, K.K.

ITOCHU aims to strengthen the store concept that is based on a modern, Scandinavian design in order to promote the value of the total lifestyle brand Golla. It also aims to reach sales of one billion yen on a retail sales basis in five years through full-fledged operations in the Japanese market, with an eye toward launching in the Asian region in the future.