http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872...34436.html
http://newsonjapan.com/html/newsdesk/article/98592.php

Quote:Wal-Mart Stores Inc. WMT -0.28% is expanding in Japan for the first time since 2008, sensing an opening as increases in the ranks of the working poor and pensioners on fixed incomes propel a trend toward thrift there.

The retailer is planning 22 new stores in Japan in the next two years, as well as scouting for acquisitions to enlarge its 368-store presence in the world's second-largest consumer market, where it got off to a rocky start about 10 years ago.

"I expect single-person households will continue to grow and people will have less money and all of that plays to our strengths," said Steve Dacus, president and chief executive of Seiyu and Walmart Japan Holdings.

Japan hasn't been an easy country for the Bentonville, Ark., retailer, which arrived a decade ago through a partnership with Seiyu Ltd., a national grocery chain that wasn't thriving. The market is highly fragmented, and finicky Japanese shoppers, who traditionally equated discounts with poor quality, were slow to embrace the retailer's modus operandi of low prices and broad merchandise selection.

Wal-Mart acquired Seiyu in full four years ago, and continues to use that name, rather than operate under the Wal-Mart banner. Its fortunes began turning several years ago as demographic and economic shifts began altering Japanese consumer spending habits.

Quote:"I expect single-person households will continue to grow and people will have less money and all of that plays to our strengths,"

This sounds kind of mean spirited, really...

Wal-Mart has been in Japan for over ten years.

The only new thing here is that Seiyu (Wal-Mart) is actually starting to turn a profit and so they are deciding to expand their business.

It is.

Though I'm a bit curious to see the statistics on single person households in Japan though. Part of the reason why Japan has faired better in a recession is due to the fact that its socially acceptable for people to continue living with their parents up till they are 30-40 years old. Income for people is/was more readily usable in that way then. The US has never had that luxury.

Whether this is changing or not I don't know, but its a statistic I've been curious about. I have many friends that have moved out on their own and live by themselves as temporary/dispatch workers.

kitakitsune Wrote:Wal-Mart has been in Japan for over ten years.

The only new thing here is that Seiyu (Wal-Mart) is actually starting to turn a profit and so they are deciding to expand their business.

Ah I see. I wonder if they'll ever change the name.

What's really interesting from a business standpoint was that Wal-Mart was willing to take a loss of well over $3 billion between 2002 and now just to gain access to the Japanese market (through purchasing Seiyu). They knew very well from the get go that their store concepts may not go so well in Japan but were still willing bet a lot of money on the idea that eventually the Japanese public will turn on to the idea...I thought they were insane.

Looks like it might work out though.

Honestly the idea horrifies me. One of the things that is most interesting about Japan is the sheer number of small mom and pop style stores that exist. That's really all that exists in the rural areas. I doubt they'll ever be "Super Wal-Marts" in every rural area, but smaller stores might start to creep out.

Wal-Mart killed most of the mom and pop shops in the US, but its kind of a double edged sword. People like the cheap food and goods, but hate that Wal-mart is often the only option.

EDIT: Lol and I just spotted this in my feeder.
Wal-Mart Applys for Permission to open in India
I don't have access to WSJ though to read it.

dizmox Wrote:

Quote:"I expect single-person households will continue to grow and people will have less money and all of that plays to our strengths,"

This sounds kind of mean spirited, really...

Welcome to capitalism.

Despite the fact that Wal-Mart solely destroyed thousands upon thousands of independent small grocery stores basically everywhere they've set up business, the fact that they have enabled tons of communities have easy access to so many goods is a great success of innovation and cultural enhancement. To see foods from all over the world in a single store where I live 50 years ago would have been an impossibility.

I do have some initial concerns of Wal-Mart wanting to seriously open the same kind of huge stores in Japan. The way Wal-Mart stores are built, or at least where I live, are probably the easiest buildings to fall down in a quake. Despite only fueling their monopoly, I do think that monopolies are inevitable as mankind reaches stage 1 civilization. Eventually there will have to be a global lingua frinca, which might as well be in English now.

What I wish they would do, though, from a humanitarian standpoint, is to instead go to underdeveloped countries and use their huge profits to allow these peoples to buy things at prices that conform to a $1 per day capita. Will Wal-Mart ever do something like this? No.

So, Wal-Mart, 日本へようこそ。Just don't put your stores anywhere near heritage sites or waste the precious land and resources of Japan. Otherwise, you would need to get the hell out of there. But, since you probably will anyways, don't really bother. If Japanese people wanted Wal-Mart, I think it would have already had much more success than it has now.

Louis CK explains capitalism...

vix86 Wrote:Honestly the idea horrifies me. One of the things that is most interesting about Japan is the sheer number of small mom and pop style stores that exist. That's really all that exists in the rural areas. I doubt they'll ever be "Super Wal-Marts" in every rural area, but smaller stores might start to creep out.

Wal-Mart killed most of the mom and pop shops in the US, but its kind of a double edged sword. People like the cheap food and goods, but hate that Wal-mart is often the only option.

Just thought you'd be interested to know that the number of small businesses in Japan and the US is essentially the same.


US businesses with less than 10 employees, percentage of all US businesses = 75.83%
Japanese businesses with less than 10 employees, percentage of all Japanese businesses = 78.12%

imabi Wrote:What I wish they would do, though, from a humanitarian standpoint, is to instead go to underdeveloped countries and use their huge profits to allow these peoples to buy things at prices that conform to a $1 per day capita. Will Wal-Mart ever do something like this? No.

They started doing that last year.
http://www.massmart.co.za/default.asp

kitakitsune Wrote:Just thought you'd be interested to know that the number of small businesses in Japan and the US is essentially the same.


US businesses with less than 10 employees, percentage of all US businesses = 75.83%
Japanese businesses with less than 10 employees, percentage of all Japanese businesses = 78.12%

That is quite interesting. Comparing the current rural town I live in to my hometown in the US, the difference is stark. Even if I drive to the closet populated center about an 30-60 minutes away, I still don't see anything quite on the scale that I always see in the states. It could easily be that the small businesses get corralled in the US and you don't see them as much as you do in some towns in Japan.

What percentage of all grocery store businesses, in US/Japan, have less than 10 employees though? Statistics on ALL businesses aren't very easy to translate to what the statistics are for specific types of business.

Surreal Wrote:What percentage of all grocery store businesses, in US/Japan, have less than 10 employees though? Statistics on ALL businesses aren't very easy to translate to what the statistics are for specific types of business.

Ok

For the US - data is from 2009

% of "Grocery Store" establishments with fewer than 10 employees = 54%
Fewer than 20 employees = 62%

For Japan - data is from 2007

% of "Grocery Store" establishments with fewer than 10 employees = 54%
Fewer than 20 employees = 63%

sources:
http://www.meti.go.jp/english/statistic … index.html
http://www.census.gov/econ/susb/


edit: did the math wrong, counted firms instead of establishments on the US side.

It's actually quite spooky how similar the US and Japanese economies are - at least looking at the number of mom and pop grocery stores. And remember that there is no large presence of Wal-Mart in Japan.

US

Fewer than 20: 62.0514%
Fewer than 10: 54.9020%

Japan

Fewer than 20: 63.5562%
Fewer than 10: 54.9875%

Alright, so that clears that up, thanks

This discussion made me think of the food waste issue in Japan and the related overreliance on convenience store bentous, I found this article that reports findings of a steady decrease in consumption of them so that's positive! http://www.garbagenews.net/archives/823906.html (in Japanese)
The survey that the article mainly talks about leaves some things to be desired regarding their sampling method. But the survey together with the other trends in the bentou market described I think makes a good case for that an actual decrease has happened. This article is slightly more recent and presents some more certain numbers, although they're for a shorter term
http://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/4817749/ (Japanese again)

For those who aren't in the know, convenience store bentous lead to a lot of food waste because ready-made lunch boxes (everywhere really, it's just that they've been popular for a longer time in Japan than in other countries) don't stay fresh for very long. This is especially the case when they aren't kept in refrigerators, and from what I understand it's not uncommon for them to not be in Japan, actually that goes for Sweden too from what I've seen. This means that the number of lunch boxes that are sold per "expiration cycle" varies widely. And since the stores don't want miss any sales they are, for every cycle, buying in lunch box shipments that are a hefty amount of % above the average to make sure that they seldom run out of stock. The financial losses from increased food waste are compensated by extra sales. This is slightly simplifying things but it's basically how it works. So that's why convenience store lunch boxes lead to food waste! It's better for your health and the environment to bring your own home-made lunch box or eat at a proper restaurant.

@Surreal: I never really think about the food on the shelves at conbinis all that much, but the fresh food bentos defiantly cause waste. I also like to just add to the discussion that this stuff is equally true at grocers too. Many supermarkets have fresh food out and it has to go by the end of the day.

That said, I still find the waste that goes on at restaurants and izakayas in particular, to be absolutely insane.

Japanese convenience stores are well known for going all out to eliminate waste and carefully monitoring sales in order to stock the right amount of bentos (as well as everything else).

I really don't believe there is much waste. There's no waste because there is -never- any overstocking.

What are realistic strategies to eliminate supermarket food waste anyway?

You can't give them away because it just means that everybody will not buy anything and expect it to be given away at the end of the day, and finally, the supermarket will simply not stock fresh food.

Even if you could give them away, eventually, someone will get sick or in the worst case scenario, die, and then blame it on the free food from the supermarket. They will sue and the supermarket will go bankrupt (or at least, just that store).

Surreal Wrote:

dizmox Wrote:

Quote:"I expect single-person households will continue to grow and people will have less money and all of that plays to our strengths,"

This sounds kind of mean spirited, really...

Welcome to capitalism.

This should be in the Mitt Romney thread but this just stresses how capitalism is neither moral nor immoral. It is amoral, and no amount of pro-capitalists can change this. Capitalism is simply about making money, nothing more.

@vix86: Yeah, as I hinted at later in the post it's not only about convenience stores, all pre-made lunch boxes (that are not refrigerated and have a expire quickly at least) are as a rule best avoided, it seems to me. And I'm not trying to get on a moral high horse here, I'm not the kind of person that goes crazy whenever they see someone buying these lunch boxes, I just think it's good if people rely on them as little as possible.

kitakitsune Wrote:Japanese convenience stores are well known for going all out to eliminate waste and carefully monitoring sales in order to stock the right amount of bentos (as well as everything else).

I really don't believe there is much waste. There's no waste because there is -never- any overstocking.

Well alright, do you have a source on that? I've heard before that bentous being thrown away is big problem. I couldn't find a super good source on that but here's one article about how at least Seven-Eleven has been throwing excessive amounts of food away http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fd20090301pb.html and here's a probably less dependable source saying http://www.just-food.com/analysis/what-a...94259.aspx "The worst offenders are perhaps Japan's legion of convenience stores, where many youngsters and singles do their food shopping. Around ¥10,000 to ¥15,000 worth of lunch boxes are thrown away daily from each shop, that is if the managers can't find homeless people to give them away to. Multiplied by 40,823 konbini in Japan, that brings the waste, in retail terms, to a staggering ¥220bn per year." Moreover, as a rule, companies don't care about environmental costs unless they are through governmental intervention or something else converted into corresponding financial costs. So if they can make a little bit extra money on taking in larger shipments and suffering some extra waste, so long as the net effect is increased $$$ they don't really give a shit. Unless the public does and so their public image is tarnished, leading to long-term decreases in $$$. It's always about the $$$. $$$!

Besides the food waste, there is also waste in the form of plastic packaging and (often) one-time plastic or wooden eating utensils. And though there seems to have been a change recently in Japan as people have become more aware of additives, often a lot of additives are put into lunch box food to push the expiration date a bit later. So in other words, even assuming the food waste from lunch boxes isn't that high in the area you live, avoiding them for health reasons and for diminishing plastic(/wooden) waste is still a pretty good choice.

@qwerty: From what I understand the general rule is to try giving the food to specific groups, especially those who are unlikely to be in the target consumer group. So, mostly, poor people or livestock. Or they can do it to as a kind of support thing, giving food to youth sports groups for example. Of course, the food can't be TOO old. I don't know if there's some kind of "informed consent" about it being near-to or just expired and that the responsibilities on the donater can therefore be relaxed.

It should be possible to make it somehow regulated so that a certain proportion of the food waste generated MUST be donated or given away for free directly at the store. That would probably give some added incitement for stores to keep their waste down, too. I read somewhere recently (maybe in one of the articles I linked in the earlier post? I'll check later if I have the time and feel like it) that at least parts of Japan has something like this, where a certain rate of food waste must be used to feed livestock. I know some institutions, like school restaurants, in Sweden also send their food waste off for livestock feeding but I don't know if there are any formal regulations and I'm too sleepy atm to look it up. Maybe tomorrow! Maybe not!

Surreal Wrote:It should be possible to make it somehow regulated so that a certain proportion of the food waste generated MUST be donated or given away for free directly at the store.

That's going to cause a stir to Libertarians who don't want Government intervention/regulation in the market but I think this is an idea that is probably best forced into action by the Government because the free market itself won't go down that path out of its own free will.

In theory, the Government will create this law forcing supermarkets to give perfectly edible albeit past its due date food to authorized charity groups who in turn, can give it to the needy, the poor and the disadvantaged. Theoretically, this shouldn't harm the company's bottom line because the recipients of the "waste" would not have bought it from the store anyway.

All in all, the Government will make sure that the food goes to the people who need it and not to those who don't. The Government will also create a group or subsidize the company so that the Government organization or the company-created group can do the proper quality checks, making sure that the "wasted" food are edible and has no adverse effects on health when consumed. This ensures that nobody can sue the corporation who are the source of the food.

Everyone's happy: the charity groups are happy because they can do a better job with the increase in resources. The poor are happy because their standards of living have increased a bit. The supermarket corporation is happy because now they can give away food without harming profits or getting sued, and since they don't have to throw it away, they can sleep better at night knowing that they are doing something good for the world. The government is also happy because they're doing what they're supposed to be doing: creating a better and more happy society.

There's still one group of people who are not happy though: Anti-government Libertarians living with the knowledge that the Government actually has the capability of doing something good, instead of just bad. And it's not like their beloved corporations are getting hurt by this arrangement either.

Surreal Wrote:I read somewhere recently (maybe in one of the articles I linked in the earlier post? I'll check later if I have the time and feel like it) that at least parts of Japan has something like this, where a certain rate of food waste must be used to feed livestock. I know some institutions, like school restaurants, in Sweden also send their food waste off for livestock feeding but I don't know if there are any formal regulations and I'm too sleepy atm to look it up. Maybe tomorrow! Maybe not!

That's also a good idea and makes logical sense. The food goes full circle: The farm sells products to the supermarkets and the "waste" goes back to the farm in the form of feed for the livestock. This helps to lower production costs for the farm allowing them to lower the prices they charge to supermarkets and in turn, supermarkets can lower the prices they charge to consumers. Theoretically anyway. Or they can just pocket the extra profits like companies usually do.

I can see how their strategy can work out eventually in the countryside in Japan. Good luck with that in major cities though. People don't drive cars or even own one, and don't have those ridiculously huge friges you see in the US either. If you start selling cars and monstrously gigantic fridges at Wal-Mart too, you still need to sell spacey rooms for the fridges for cheap, install roads underground or something beneath cities, and set up free parking lots for local residents both at stores and their homes.

Trust me, there are no konbinis in Japan that are overstocking their bentos by 15 every day. I would believe 5 or 6 at max.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_in_tim...usiness%29

magamo Wrote:I can see how their strategy can work out eventually in the countryside in Japan. Good luck with that in major cities though. People don't drive cars or even own one, and don't have those ridiculously huge friges you see in the US either. If you start selling cars and monstrously gigantic fridges at Wal-Mart too, you still need to sell spacey rooms for the fridges for cheap, install roads underground or something beneath cities, and set up free parking lots for local residents both at stores and their homes.

I assume they'd take a different strategy with stores in major cities. Most likely they would sell products in less bulk and offer a delivery service for any purchases above a certain amount (probably around ¥4-5,000). In terms of competition, they would challenge Daiei and other similar competitors by offering a broader selection and undercutting their prices. Let's not forget that Walmart sells not only food, but also consumer electronics, apparel, home supplies, and so on. The idea doesn't seem so farfetched at all.

To digress, now that your location says Pasadena, I have begun to wonder whether you work at either Caltech or JPL... or both.

vileru Wrote:In terms of competition, they would challenge Daiei and other similar competitors by offering a broader selection and undercutting their prices.

This is basically their strategy. Has nothing to do with bulk or even really what they carry. Their strategy has always been to find a good that many people want and then find a seller who would be willing to sell it at basically rock bottom prices for the benefit of having Walmart by in mass. The catch (as it has been told to me), is that the seller can only really get a 1-5% profit off the sell. Because they go straight to the source, they cut out middlemen and really put the pressure on smaller businesses that may go through 1-2 companies to get their goods. Part of the advantage of selling to Walmart though is that you can guarantee that your product will end up in stores across the country. Not sure how many stores Walmart has of Seiyuu at the moment though.