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Fast Fashion: Forever 21 announces Japan expansion plan

In a press conference earlier today, Forever 21 Chairman Don Chang told reporters that his firm intends to open ten stores a year in Japan until about 100 locations are in business.

Forever 21 opened its first shop in Japan last April in the trendy Harajuku neighborhood. Tomorrow, it will open its second domestic location, inside the Matsuzakaya department store in Ginza. According to Forever 21, the Ginza shop will be almost double the size of the Harajuku location. Read more

Long overdue: Sharp, Panasonic, Fujitsu and NEC to standardize mobile software

With development costs per handset in the range of about 25 billion yen, it seems about time Japan’s mobile phone manufacturers got together and decided on a standardized platform. According to a report in Reuters yesterday, Sharp, Panasonic, Fujitsu and NEC and set to launch a unified core software platform when developing their next generation handsets for NTT DoCoMo. Read more

Japan supermarket sales fall 6.6% in March

According to data released earlier today by the Japan Chain Stores Association, supermarket sales in Japan fell 6.6% to 976.18 billion yen in March. Supermarket sales have now fallen for 16 consecutive months.

Here is a breakdown of March’s adjusted same-store figures (not including stores opened within the past twelve months): Read more

Taxation, immigration changes to lure foreign firms to Japan?

A major Japanese newspaper (which we may not link to) is reporting that the Japanese government is considering tax breaks and simplified immigration procedures in an attempt to boost foreign investment in Japan (By the way, if you would allow us to link to your website, you would have thousands of potential new subscribers).

According to the article (which we cannot link to due to threat of legal action): Read more

GEOS bankrupt

Those following the English language teaching industry in Japan won’t be surprised to learn that language school operator GEOS filed for bankruptcy today (The link is to a Yahoo News writeup. The Nikkei has a story in English as well, but they don’t want traffic coming from blogs).

As usual, more information and coverage can be found at Let’s Japan.

Japan convenience store sales slide 4.9% in March

After the sales boom that followed the introduction of the Taspo card for tobacco purchases, Japan’s convenience stores have had a difficult time keeping sales up. According to data released today by the Japan Franchise Association, convenience store sales fell 4.9% in March, showing a decline for the tenth consecutive month. Read more

Japan’s Consumer confidence up for third consecutive month in March

According to data released today by the Cabinet Office, Japan’s Consumer Confidence Index rose by 1.1 point to 40.9 in March, showing an increase for the third consecutive month¹. The 40.9 score was the highest seen since October 2007, when the index stood at 42.8. The index also crossed the 40 point mark for the first time since October of last year, after this past winter’s dip below 40.

The consumer confidence index itself contains five scores, each of which is considered positive when above 50, and pessimistic when below the 50 mark. Here’s a breakdown for March figures, with the change from the previous month: Read more

Terrie’s Take on the Nikkei banning bloggers from linking to its site

Over the past few years I have frequently linked to articles from both the Japanese and (more frequently) the English version of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun’s website (ie, the Nikkei). I’ve done this because I pay for a subscription and because the Nikkei is by far the best source of economic and businesses news on Japan. I also assumed linking to the Nikkei was sort of a way to ‘give back’ to them, as I knew full well that most people who followed my links would have to sign up and pay for access to the English version of the Nikkei. Have any paying subscribers been introduced to the Nikkei from this site? Of course, I have no idea, but it’s certainly not impossible.

So how does the Nikkei reward the bloggers and writers who are giving them free promotion and advertising? According to last Sunday’s edition of Terrie’s Take, Terrie Lloyd’s newsletter: Read more

Keidanren to call for 10% sales tax in Japan?

The Nikkei is reporting that Keidanren (The Japan Business Federation) is set to call for an increase in Japan’s sales tax from the current 5% to 10%, with increases coming as soon as FY2011.

The Nikkei also tells us that Keidanren is seeking a decrease in corporate taxes: Read more

Uniqlo: March sales down, open for business in Russia

Shares in Fast Retailing, the operator of Uniqlo, fell by 1,770 yen on Monday to 14,920 in reaction to the retail firm announcing on Friday that it had posted a 16.4% drop in same-store sales for March. Uniqlo also saw a 10.7% decline in customer numbers while spending per customer fell 6.4%. Read more

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