In 2010 Sanrio, the multinational Japanese company behind Hello Kitty, is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Mr. Shintaro Tsuji founded Sanrio in 1960 as Yamanashi Silk Center and renamed Sanrio in 1973. The foundation of the company was built around bringing happiness to people’s lives through greeting cards, stationary and inexpensive fancy goods and gifts. This gave the origin to where Sanrio’s motto and philosophy are coming from: Small Gift Big Smile. Throughout the years Sanrio has created over 400 characters and applied them on all variety of products created around gift giving occasions. The most well known are: My Melody, Kuromi, Badtz Maru, Keroppi, Pocchaco and, of course, the star Hello Kitty. 50th anniversary demonstrates Sanrio’s continued dedication to foster social communication, share happiness, friendship and fun. Today Sanrio is recognized as one of the world’s top licensing companies as well as for its original products – Sanrio Original.

To celebrate the anniversary an exclusive logo and a style guide have been developed to create special celebration aesthetics and series of limited edition products and collaborations will take place between August 2010 and the end of 2011.

This Golden Anniversary will be also an occasion to restyle Sanrio’s Original logo and to reintroduce it into the EMEA market. Historically the Sanrio Original items have spread the success of Sanrio worldwide. Sanrio Original products are recognizable for their quality and inspiring concepts as well as for the always surprising developments and collaborations. The anniversary is an outstanding moment for Sanrio, as Roberto Lanzi, Sanrio’s EMEA President said: “With 50th anniversary we want to transmit happiness, we want to communicate how beautiful it has been working all these years to bring smiles to people. We want to reinforce through our designs, products and, more than all, our charity activities to spread Sanrio’s positive message”.

In the next 50 years Sanrio would like to expand the still new markets in Eastern Europe, Africa and Middle East with a new office in Dubai. Sanrio EMEA has been seeing important respective growths in the last years and would like to continue this positive trend with reintroducing to the market more characters, working closely with local markets and launch new, more adult products. Also as a lifestyle company Sanrio would like to continue spreading the excellence in product, quality and its philosophy of friendship and gift giving culture so important for the modern community.

Happy Birthaday Sanrio!