Retail group Seven-Eleven Japan, which owns US chain 7-Eleven, is to spend JPY300bn (US$2.4bn) over the next four years to open 1,000 convenience stores in the US.
Go deeper with GlobalData
The investment will also see the company renew over 6,000 existing stores in the US.
A unit of Seven & I Holdings, Seven-Eleven Japan is the leading convenience store chain, where stores are known collectively as conbini. The company is jointly-owned with Japanese retailer Itoyokado.
Seven-Eleven Japan puts its success down to a practice, called tanpin kanri or “management by single product”, an approach to merchandising that considers demand on a store-by-store and product-by-product basis. The concept was introduced to the company’s US stores in 2001, boosting profits by 40%.
“Japan has a highly competitive conbini culture. To compete well, 7-11 and Itoyokado have carried out a distribution revolution and built up our own practices – tanpin kanri,” a Tokyo-based spokesman for Seven-Eleven Japan told just-food. “After successful trials of this in Japan and the US we now want to expand our market, which we will now do in the US.”
