Bioré

The most famous product Bioré ever made is, at heart, a strip of tape, and in its first year on Japanese shelves in 1996, that strip earned the equivalent of about ten billion yen. The Pore Pack, better known abroad as the pore strip, turned an oddly satisfying ritual (peel, inspect, recoil) into a global phenomenon and became the thing most Westerners picture when they hear the name Bioré.

The brand is Japanese to the core, owned by Kao Corporation, a Tokyo company founded all the way back in 1887 by Tomiro Nagase to make affordable, high-quality facial soap; he named it 'Kao,' a play on the Japanese word for face. Bioré launched as a Kao skincare line in 1980 and built its reputation on cleansers and makeup removers before the pore strips made it a household name. When the strips reached the United States in 1997, Kao routed them through its American subsidiary but deliberately kept that connection quiet, judging the Bioré name hipper and better suited to a young audience than its older sister brand.

Today Bioré spans cleansers, makeup removers, blemish patches, and, especially in its Japanese range, beloved lightweight sunscreens, all leaning on Kao's deep research in surfactants and skin science.

The honest read: Bioré is affordable, widely available, and backed by a serious R&D operation, which is more than many drugstore brands can say. Its Japanese sunscreens in particular are genuinely well-regarded for their elegant, weightless textures. The pore strips, though? They physically yank out the tops of clogged pores and sebaceous filaments, which is satisfying and temporary; they don't shrink pores or stop them refilling, and aggressive use can irritate. Treat the strips as a guilty pleasure rather than skincare, lean on the cleansers and sun care for the real work, and Bioré is a smart, low-cost pick.

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