I grew up in Asia with a front-row seat to how brands find their way into life. Kid-me collected Hello Kitty and anything Sanrio cared to create, sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor eating Maggi noodles with a side of Heinz tomato ketchup, watching whatever seventies American television was on offer: Hawaii Five-O one afternoon, Fantasy Island and The Muppet Show the next.
I learned early that brands can give people a way into cultures they’re curious about. That same instinct is now playing out at a commercial scale.
Asia’s drink brands once arrived in the West as curiosities: an unusual bottle on a back bar, a novelty in a specialty grocer. That story is over.
Suntory now ships roughly double the Japanese whisky into the US that it did in 2017. South Korea’s Jinro has held the title of the world’s best-selling spirit for 25 consecutive years, with UK sales compounding at 73% annually in 2024. Globally, Asian cuisine now accounts for 32% of total food delivery orders, while the wine aisle is being redesigned to keep up.
These are no longer import curiosities. They are category leaders, built at home and exported with intent. Their shared playbook is worth studying: they do not simply take products into new markets; they create new ways for people to connect with the cultures behind them.
Lower the barrier, let curiosity do the rest
Suntory could have sold Yamazaki and Hibiki as connoisseur’s whisky and left it there. Instead, it built Toki, launched in 2016: younger, lighter, priced and positioned to simplify the ritual and go into a Highball rather than a tasting glass.
Whisky in the West often comes with performance anxiety: neat or rocks, what water, what glass, what proof. A Highball doesn’t. It’s whisky, ice and soda: light, food-friendly and easy. Low ceremony, no intimidation. Western drinkers were already halfway there through cocktail culture; Suntory gave them a more accessible way in.
Instead of asking Western drinkers to start with its flagship expressions, the brand lowered the price and ritual barriers, gave them an easier way in, and let curiosity do the rest.
Price mattered too. Suntory studied New York bars and found bartenders mixing its flagship luxury malts into cocktails, making them prohibitively expensive for consumers. Toki, at around $39, occupied a price tier that barely existed for Japanese whisky. It gave bartenders a tool built for the bar, without asking consumers to jump to a premium bottle.
That single decision opened Japanese whisky to the craft cocktail movement sweeping US bars.
Instead of asking Western drinkers to start with its flagship expressions, the brand lowered the price and ritual barriers, gave them an easier way in, and let curiosity do the rest.
Catching the wave into new markets
Soju is Korea’s most widely consumed spirit: a clear, relatively low-ABV drink traditionally served neat or alongside food. In the West, it arrived riding two currents at once: a generational shift towards lighter, lower-ABV drinking, and the wider pull of K-pop and K-drama.
Familiarity is a significant shorthand to trust. For a generation already immersed in the high-energy world of K-pop and K-drama, soju offered another layer of intrigue: something culturally connected, but still new to explore.
Take Lotte. Its soju business saw a 700% jump in sales following a distribution deal with Gallo, pairing a Korean product with an American partner’s established shelf space, logistics and route to market.
The opportunity was to meet a Western audience already primed by K-pop, K-drama and Korean food, then make soju available and easy to find.
Turn the product into a shared ritual
The strongest brands entering new markets are not always asking consumers to understand a new product. They are giving them a new way to participate in a culture they already find compelling.
Bubble tea’s US growth has less to do with the drink itself than with what it represents: a customisable, visual and shareable ritual built for TikTok and Instagram. Tapioca pearls are now Taiwan’s top food export to America.
The strongest brands entering new markets are not always asking consumers to understand a new product. They are giving them a new way to participate in a culture they already find compelling.
In Australia, Gong Cha and Chatime built their success around a recognisable format: customisable, visual and inherently shareable, giving customers something to participate in as much as consume.
Japanese lemon-lime soda Ramune follows a similar playbook, with its distinctive glass bottle and marble stopper becoming as recognisable as the drink itself. The ritual of opening and drinking it is part of the experience, giving the product a built-in point of difference.
The lesson is the same. When the experience is distinctive enough, the product becomes something people want to participate in, not just consume.
Don’t dilute your culture
We’re seeing this play out across sectors. Uniqlo, Muji and BAPE show the same instincts at work in fashion, adapting to local behaviour without abandoning the cultural codes that made them distinctive in the first place.
Uniqlo rebuilt its US strategy around flagship stores as brand embassies, letting each market teach it what to stock. Muji’s patient approach to expansion treats local knowledge as part of the brand rather than an obstacle to growth.
The lesson is consistent. Global brands don’t have to become culturally neutral to travel. The strongest ones know which distinctive assets made them successful in the first place, and where they can afford to flex. The key is knowing how far you can adapt this without compromising any unique identity.
Culture is the new route to market
What these brands understand is that cultural relevance can arrive first, creating familiarity before the product appears on shelves. But cultural relevance alone is not enough; distribution still matters. The most successful brands recognise that entering a new market rarely happens alone. It requires the right balance of local adaptation and commercial execution to create lasting demand.
The final piece is knowing what to change and what to protect. That may be the biggest lesson for brands looking to travel today. The goal is to understand which parts of their story will resonate, which need translating, and which should remain untouched.
Ellie Hansen is MD Sydney & Global Growth Officer at Global Drinks Specialists at Denomination.
Featured image by Max Fischer.
