Kenichi Kuroyanagi

Kenichi Kuroyanagi is a Japanese national living in Tokyo. He is the founder and president of Unives Consulting, Inc., which provides consultancy services in the fashion, media & entertainment, food and real estate fields and produces entertainment and corporate events. Unives Consulting, Inc.’s facilitates the entry and establishment of foreign business in Japan.

Until the end of December 2008, Kuroyanagi served as COO and Director of Business Development, Fashion TV Japan, which began broadcasting its fashion and lifestyle channel on the SkyPerfect satellite platform from April 2008. His primary responsibilities included marketing & PR and producing various events with fashion label partners, model agencies, beverage distributors, etc. The FTV party with DJ Stephane Pompougnac from Hotel Costes drew 750 people and was filmed and broadcast worldwide. Under Kuroyanagi’s leadership, the number of subscribers to the channel increased by 40% between April and December, 2008.

From 2000 to 2005, Kuroyanagi worked as Director of Store Development for Starbucks Coffee Japan and managed over 80 people in that role. In addition to opening 500 new stores throughout Japan during his 5 years with Starbucks, he developed and introduced new types of stores, such as drive-thrus and kiosks, in a continuous effort to innovate and expand business opportunities. He also created and managed Starbuck’s Asset Management Department to manage the rapidly-increasing number of existing stores and optimize the company’s financial return on them.

Kuroyanagi graduated from Kyoto University in 1984 and joined Wacoal Inc., Japan’s largest women’s lingerie company.  Wacoal sponsored his MBA program which Kuroyanagi completed at Columbia University in 1988.

Kuroyanagi lived in New York City for 6 years and in Kuala Lumpur for 1 year and is fluent in English.