Boycott woes for Japan beauty stocks

Japanese cosmetics firms including Shiseido Co are getting hit by a double whammy in their China business. — Bloomberg

TOKYO: As companies battle to grab a bigger share of Asia’s growing cosmetics market, they’re receiving an unhappy reminder that relying too much on sales in China can come back to hurt them.

Japanese cosmetics firms including Shiseido Co are getting hit by a double whammy in their China business: a slowdown in the world’s second-biggest economy and calls by online users for a boycott of Japanese products to protest the release of treated waste-water from the Fukushima nuclear power plant.