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The changing face of Japanese retailing: The co-op strikes back

January 27th, 2011 | No Comments

Small grocery stores use Tesco tactics to beat the supermarkets

YASUNAGA KOJIMA’S grocery shop, near Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market, has been in business since his grandfather started it almost 100 years ago. He lives above it with his wife. Outside he sells YEN99 ($1.20) bunches of bananas and other fruit, undercutting even the discount convenience store across the street, which sells everything at YEN105.

His customers, many of them pensioners, cherish such bargains. They come in, on average, twice every three days, and buy just enough to put together a few meals. Some economists consider such stores an anachronism, and blame small retailers for the meagre productivity of Japan’s service sector. But Mr Kojima’s store is no culprit. It is part of a 1,800-strong community of local co-operative stores harnessing the latest technology to win a retail war against the supermarkets. …

Retailing : The beast goes on safari

September 30th, 2010 | No Comments

Can Wal-Mart make it in Africa?

FOUR billion dollars doesn’t count as an “every day low price”, but Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, hopes it has found a bargain. That is how much ($4.1 billion to be precise) the Arkansas-based “Beast of Bentonville” has offered to acquire Massmart, a retailer with 288 stores in 14 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. On September 27th Massmart’s management confirmed it is in exclusive negotiations to sell the South African-based firm to Wal-Mart. The deal is being overseen by Andy Bond (pictured right), who ran Wal-Mart’s British arm, Asda. As Massmart’s shares initially traded above the offer price, it suggests some investors think there may be other bidders, and that Mr Bond might have to come up with some more money to clinch the deal.

This is the clearest sign yet that Africa is now near the top of the agenda for the world’s leading businesses. The continent still has its problems, but it is no longer “hopeless”—as this newspaper once described it—especially for anyone wanting to be part of a fast-growing consumer market. Last year, while the global economy struggled with the aftermath of the financial crisis, Africa as a whole continued to advance and is expected to grow by at least 4.3% this year. Some economies, such as Nigeria and Ghana, are racing ahead. As the middle class and urban working class expand rapidly, food consumption is expected to grow strongly, along with sales of other consumer products. …

Retailing in South-East Asia: Exit Carrefour

September 23rd, 2010 | No Comments

Carrefour is quitting South-East Asia. Its rivals are waiting to pounce

TRUE to its French origins, Carrefour’s flagship Bangkok hypermarket has a fine cheese selection. But the raw-milk Camembert and other olfactory treats are tucked away behind rows of rice, fish sauce and other Thai staples. Carrefour’s presence in Thailand is similarly modest. Whereas Britain’s Tesco has become the country’s biggest grocery chain, Carrefour lies in a distant fourth place. Across the border in Malaysia it trails well behind Tesco and two other foreign retailers.

And so, with a Gallic shrug, Carrefour is closing up shop in much of South-East Asia. Its 44 stores in Thailand, 23 in Malaysia and two in Singapore are for sale, with a second round of bidding now under way. Potential buyers are said to include Tesco and Casino, a French firm that already has a Thai joint venture, Big C. Analysts reckon that Carrefour’s stores could fetch up to $1 billion. …

Retailing in Japan: Shopaholics and shopaphobes

September 9th, 2010 | No Comments

A retailer shows Japan how to beat the curse of thriftiness

THE Japanese used to be to conspicuous consumption what the Chinese are to raw materials. When there was a fad in Tokyo for tiramisu in the early 1990s, the world market for mascarpone felt the strain—until a Japanese company invented a synthetic version. But those bubbly days are long gone. Two decades of economic stagnation have produced a generation in their 20s and 30s that Richard May, director of the Japan Consumer Marketing Research Institute, calls kenshohi—people who hate shopping (except on the internet and from thrift stores). But one mainstream firm has defied the trend. It is Yamada Denki, Japan’s largest consumer-electronics retailer.

Yamada Denki’s consolidated sales in the fiscal year ended in March reached YEN2 trillion ($24 billion), double their level of five years ago. It has been growing quickly (see chart). Pre-tax profits doubled over the same period to a record YEN102 billion. The firm’s market share is more than 25%, which makes it, as one analyst puts it, the Wal-Mart of home appliances in Japan. Some of its success last year was thanks to a temporary government stimulus programme, which gives people who buy low-energy appliances discounts on future purchases. Yet the firm’s growth since it was founded in 1973 is largely self-made. Yamada Denki has rewritten the rules of retailing in Japan. It has done so with a loyal following of foreign investors who have helped it more than Japan’s risk-averse banks. “We’ve always been evaluated better abroad than in Japan,” says Tadao Ichimiya, its president. …

Online retailing in China: Clicks trump bricks

April 22nd, 2010 | No Comments

After a slow start, internet shopping explodes in China

A WOMAN living in Shanghai takes a long time to list all the items she has bought online in recent months: an iPod, a blender, a lamp, a rice cooker, a mobile phone, credit for it, a coffee-maker, coffee to put in it, Levi’s jeans (both real and counterfeit), underwear, paper, milk, snacks, toilet paper, butter, shampoo, DVDs and even some pretty orange fish for her aquarium. She also bought a few electric bicycles online and resold them at a profit to Americans via eBay, but has had to scrap this sideline thanks to stiff competition from other online entrepreneurs. Consumers in some places (notably America) have been slow to use the internet to make everyday purchases such as groceries. But in China the low cost of delivery and the high cost of property are feeding an e-tailing frenzy.

Online retailing had lagged in China, thanks both to a relative scarcity of internet access and the lack of a trusted payment system for e-commerce. Financial regulators had no intention of allowing non-Chinese systems like PayPal to enter the market until strong domestic companies had established themselves. But both of these issues have now been resolved. Computers, internet cafes and web-browsing mobile phones have become ubiquitous. A local firm, Alibaba, has come up both with a popular electronic trading platform, Taobao, and an electronic payment system, Alipay (in addition to its business-to-business exchange, which is listed in Hong Kong). …

Point Of Sales System: Panacea of Retailing Woes Posted By : cathrine fernandes

March 12th, 2010 | No Comments

Wireless POS systems make use of wireless radio frequency scanner called the magic wand which is capable of detecting the waves generated by the tags on each product in the inventory.

Signs of life in American retailing: Simon buys

February 18th, 2010 | No Comments

Big takeover bids suggest the worst is over for America’s retailers

TWO judges will have a big impact on the fortune of David Simon, the boss of his family’s American shopping-mall firm. The first must decide a bitter dispute over the will of Mr Simon’s late billionaire father, which was controversially revised only months before his death to exclude Mr Simon and two siblings in favour of a second wife. One of Mr Simon’s sisters, ostensibly acting alone, launched a legal challenge to the will in January. But he stands to inherit a nine-figure sum if the judge accepts her claim that Melvin Simon, the co-founder of the firm, was coerced into signing the new will.

The second judge, in a bankruptcy rather than a probate court, may play a crucial role in determining the fate of the Simon Property Group’s $10 billion offer, made public on February 16th, to buy its biggest rival in the shopping-mall business, General Growth Properties, which entered Chapter 11 protection last April. This may be the less emotionally charged of the two decisions, but not by much. General Growth’s board had declined to make the offer public, apparently because it was divided over whether to accept it—either in the hope that Mr Simon would return with more money or because it preferred an alternative suitor, Brookfield Asset Management, a Canadian investment firm. …

The spread of pop-up retailing: Gone tomorrow

July 23rd, 2009 | No Comments

A surprising shopping experience is becoming mainstream

“NOW you see it, now you don’t” could be the slogan for American retailing these days. Even some of the most mainstream brands, like Circuit City and Linens ’n Things, have shut their doors. But a trend called pop-up stores makes sudden disappearance part of the appeal. Pop-ups arrive unannounced in empty storefronts or public spaces and leave just as quickly. Their aim, says Eduardo Braniff of Imagination USA, which does “experiential” marketing, is to “intervene in a consumer’s life” and take people by surprise.

Given that eliciting shock is a prime goal of pop-ups, the more unpredictable the location, the better. Target, a national retailer, launched a pop-up “bazaar” in May in an abandoned museum, selling cheap items from its spring and summer collections. It lasted only three days. Boats, crates, buses and churches have been used for pop-ups too. …