Japan’s Department Store Sales Down 1.5% in March

April 21, 2007
By Ken Worsley

The Japan Department Stores Association released its March nationwide sales results on Thursday, but we were just too busy to post on it.

After February’s sales had shown a 1.7% rise against the same month last year, March showed a 1.5% decline. Once again, we see that “unseasonable weather” is given as the primary reason for the decline in sales. The survey covers sales figures from 95 companies operating 278 department stores that have been open for at least a year. Sales at the 28 department stores surveyed in Tokyo showed a decline of 2.2% year-on-year.

Broken down by categories:

Clothing: -3.1%, at 39.8% of total sales
Food: +1.7%, at 21.5% of total sales
Furniture and home appliances: -0.8%, at 14.7% of total sales
Household products: -1.8%, at 3.2% of total sales
Services: +2.5%, at 1% of total sales

Also interesting is that in Tokyo, the number of employees at department stores stood at 18,352, up 6.0% from a year ago. Nationwide, the number of employees stood at 91,080, up 3.3% from March 2006.

Broken down by large cities, only Kyoto (+2.9%) and Fukuoka (+5.6%) showed increases in year-on-year sales. Sapporo saw the largest fall, at -3.1%.

Filed Under Business, Department Stores