Pang Dong Lai, the Henan supermarket chain known for vetting what goes on its shelves, is litigating over a shampoo. On November 7 a viral video claimed that CABELO, an anti-hair-loss shampoo the chain sells under an “imported from Japan” label, was actually produced in China and passed off as an import. The retailer's November 8 statement answers with a factory visit: its investigators went to Japan and cross-checked business qualifications, the import customs declaration, the certificate of origin and product inspection records [3], and concluded the shampoo's origin is Japan, with no sign of production in China dressed up as an import [1]. On November 10, the group behind Japan's top drugstore chains confirmed it has never sold CABELO, past or present [2].
Both statements hold up against the public record assembled so far. That is the uncomfortable part for anyone who pays a premium for “made in Japan”. A Japan-made label certifies a factory; it says nothing about who filed the brand's trademark or whether Japanese shoppers have ever seen the product on a shelf. Four public-record checks separate the two stories — the trademark registry, marketplace listing dates, retail presence at named chains, and the import paperwork — and in this dispute each one returns a concrete result.
The Japan trademark was filed in 2019 by the Guangzhou distributor
The registry entry is the hardest fact in this dispute, and it points to China. Records from the Japan Patent Office gazette, as transcribed by the database Patent-i, show the CABELO trademark was applied for on January 29, 2019 and registered on March 12, 2020 under number 6235208, in Class 3, covering cleansing and cosmetic goods. The applicant is recorded under the katakana rendering of “Guangzhou Pingchen Trading Company Limited”, the shampoo's China distributor [3]. Through the Brand Terrace search platform, the outlet Xin Huang He found the same company filed a Chinese-character mark for the brand name the same day, also registered on March 12, 2020 [4].
That timeline sits far from the brand story printed on the product pages. E-commerce listings carry “SINCE 1992”, “founded in Japan” and “30-plus years of anti-hair-loss research”, while the brand's November 8 statement, published on Xiaohongshu with the trading company's official seal, said the shampoo is made by a Japanese company with complete customs and quarantine paperwork, and left the founding year unaddressed [4]. The registry entry also carries its own limit: Jiemian News reports that how ownership of the brand was arranged before 2019 remains unclear [3]. The official place to run this check is J-PlatPat, the Japan Patent Office's own trademark and patent search platform [5].
Amazon Japan's listing date postdates the first doubts by eight months
Marketplace dates are the cheapest check, because the evidence sits on the product page. Jiemian found a 350 ml CABELO Kosuka Scalp shampoo on Amazon.co.jp whose page marks the origin as Japan and shows a listing date of September 25, 2026 — eight months after the first wave of identity doubts about the brand appeared online in January 2026 [3]. A listing date records when the page went up; it is a recency signal, and by itself it establishes nothing improper [3].
The distributor's own site belongs to the same record. HEMAIHEDA, the group behind the trading company, titles CABELO “a Japanese professional anti-hair-loss brand” on its product-news pages [6]. The brand's official account posted factory-floor video from Kobe on November 9; the manufacturer Cosmo Beauty does list a Kobe plant on its site, though Jiemian could not independently tie that footage to CABELO's own production batches [3].
Japan's top drugstore chain says it never stocked CABELO
Retail presence is the check that turned a rumor into a story. Jiemian asked the Matsumotokiyoshi and Cocokara group whether CABELO had ever been sold in its physical stores or online mall. The group confirmed on November 10 that it has never sold the shampoo, past or present [2][4]. The same move is open to any shopper: look the product up in the chain's own online mall, or put the question to its customer service. That answer comes from an operator with 3,618 stores in Japan as of the end of March 2026 [2].
The rest of the Japan-market record is thinner. The brand's April 30 post announced that its shampoo was spreading through Japanese offline drugstore channels and showed shelf photos, but named no stores [3]. A Japan-based daigou, or personal shopper, told Jiemian they had not found specific sales information for the brand in Japanese drugstores; a Chinese student living in Japan said they had never heard of it [3]. The brand has not published sales figures for the Japanese market [3]. The group's denial covers the chains that were asked; the April post remains a claim without store names attached to it [3].
The paperwork behind “imported” — and where the courts come in
The import documents in this case support the “made in Japan” half of the story, and none of them speak to the brand-story half. Pang Dong Lai's January 2026 task force visited the trading company in Guangzhou [7], then Cosmo Beauty's headquarters in Japan, entering the R&D center and the production workshops [3]. Its November 8 statement lists what was checked: business qualifications, the import customs declaration, the certificate of origin and product inspection records [3]. The commentary account Manfu Biji recounts the fuller list — the entry quarantine certificate, batch test records, the special-cosmetics registration that anti-hair-loss products need before sale in China, and the retailer's own inbound-inspection and sales records [7].
Each paper certifies one specific thing, and this check starts with the seller: ask for the import customs declaration and the certificate of origin, then read each document against what it can certify. The customs declaration shows the goods entered China lawfully; the quarantine certificate corresponds to their condition at entry; the certificate of origin points to the production place; the special-cosmetics registration shows the pre-market procedure was completed [7]. The brand's own statement, sealed with the trading company's seal, describes the customs and quarantine paperwork as complete and valid [4]. Nothing in this set certifies who owns the brand or where it sells.
The courts are now involved, and the distinction matters when reading the headlines. Pang Dong Lai's civil suit was accepted by the Weidu District People's Court in Xuchang on November 6, 2026; the trading company's suit at the Guangzhou Internet Court is set to open on December 10, 2026 [1]. Those cases decide liability for the “false information” claims; a market-regulator conclusion on the label itself has not been made public [7]. As Lei Tech put it, Pang Dong Lai has proven through its actions that it did not deliberately sell fakes — and between “not selling fakes” and “consumers not being misled”, there is still a distance [8].
What the premium buys: RMB 24 per 100 ml against an RMB 17.9 comparator
The price is where the brand story becomes money. On CABELO's Tmall flagship store, the 350 ml anti-hair-loss shampoo lists at RMB 104 and the 690 ml size at RMB 166 — about RMB 24 per 100 ml on the larger bottle [3]. The video that triggered the November statement described the same product at RMB 79 on Pang Dong Lai's shelf [7]; the two figures come from different channels, so they do not line up directly. As a benchmark, Sam's Club's global-buy program sells a Japanese-import Shiseido scalp-care shampoo at RMB 179 per 1,000 ml, about RMB 17.9 per 100 ml — Jiemian notes the two products differ in positioning and efficacy, and CABELO's per-100-ml price still comes out higher [3].
The closest precedent shows what a broken brand story looks like once it is fully exposed. On April 1, 2026, CCTV News reported that Youthit, a lutein brand marketed as Australian, was in fact produced entirely in Chinese factories; its overseas registered address was a car-repair station; its product line had sold more than 4 million bottles; and the marketing behind it, an invented brand story planned by a Hangzhou agency, was exposed alongside the production record. Related reports carried by the same outlet described platforms pulling the products and the brand's Douyin and Tmall overseas flagship stores suspending operations [9]. CABELO is a different case: its Japanese origin is the part that held up under the retailer's checks. The parallel runs on the brand-story side, and the sensitivity shoppers now bring to the word “imported” is warranted [8].
Assembled check by check, the record in this dispute reads like this: a trademark filed in 2019 by the China distributor and registered in 2020; an Amazon Japan listing dated September 25, 2026; a 3,618-store drugstore group that never stocked it; and import paperwork pointing to Japanese origin. The origin claim held on the retailer's own verification. The brand story around it is the part to verify before paying the premium.