, based in

Kobe Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, whi ...

, is one of the largest

supermarket A supermarket is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food, beverages and household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earlier grocery stores, but is smaller and more limit ...

chains in Japan. In 1957,

Isao Nakauchi was the founder of Daiei. Life and career Isao Nakauchi served in the Philippines as an infantryman during World War II. His business empire started in Osaka 1957 and it led to the creation of "American-style" supermarkets in Japan. In 1972 he ...

founded the chain in

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of ...

near

Sembayashi Station is a train station on the Keihan Electric Railway Keihan Main Line located in Asahi-ku, Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan. Opened in 1910, the station is famous for its long covered shopping street known as the Sembayashi Shōtengai. The shopping ...

on the Keihan train line. Daiei is now under a restructuring process supported by

Marubeni Corporation (, OSE: 8002, NSE: 8002) is a ''sōgō shōsha'' (general trading company) headquartered in Nihonbashi, Chuo, Tokyo, Japan. It is one of the largest ''sogo shosha'' and has leading market shares in cereal and paper pulp trading as well as a st ...

and ÆON Co., Ltd., another Japanese supermarket chain. Daiei Inc. runs more than 3,000 stores under the Daiei name as well as through its subsidiaries. In addition to

groceries A grocery store ( AE), grocery shop ( BE) or simply grocery is a store that primarily retails a general range of food products, which may be fresh or packaged. In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is a synonym for supermarket, a ...

, Daiei is also a department store, selling electronics, home furnishings, and clothes. In terms of net sales, Daiei was formerly the largest retailer in Japan. However, total sales declined by nearly a quarter in the five years leading up to 2003.

History

The retail chain expanded rapidly in the 1970s and 1980s. Also, stronger sales from competitors such as

Ito-Yokado is a Japanese general merchandise and department store, originally founded in 1920. In 2005, it was reorganized, as part of a corporate restructuring, as a subsidiary of the Seven & I Holdings Co. As of March 2013, there are 178 Ito-Yokado ...

, ÆON, and other regional supermarket chains have hurt Daiei's sales record in recent years. As a part of the series of bootstrap restructuring efforts to avoid filing for IRCJ ( Industrial Revitalization Corporation of Japan) support, the company sold its baseball team, the

Fukuoka Daiei Hawks The are a Japanese professional baseball team based in Fukuoka, Fukuoka Prefecture. They compete in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) as a member of the Pacific League. The team was formerly known as the Nankai Hawks and was based in Osaka. ...

, which it purchased from

Nankai Railway is a private railway in Japan, founded in 1884. The name ''Nankai'' (which means "South Sea") comes from the company's routes along the Nankaidō, the old highway that ran south from the old capital, Kyoto, along the sea coast. Nankai predates a ...

in 1988 to

SoftBank is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The Group primarily invests in companies operating in technology, energy, and financial sectors. It also runs the Vi ...

, on January 27, 2005 and the company's

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; haw, Hawaii or ) is a state in the Western United States, located in the Pacific Ocean about from the U.S. mainland. It is the only U.S. state outside North America, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only stat ...

stores in 2006 to Don Quijote Co., Ltd.Daiei Stores Officially Don Quijote
/ref> Through the process of

debt restructuring Debt restructuring is a process that allows a private or public company or a sovereign entity facing cash flow problems and financial distress to reduce and renegotiate its delinquent debts to improve or restore liquidity so that it can continu ...

and support given by financial institutions in coordination with IRCJ, the company has been acquired by IRCJ, Marubeni Corporation (a trading company) and Advantage Partners (a private equity house) in 2005. Daiei's current President and CEO is Toru Nishimi, formerly an operating officer of Marubeni Corporation.

Private Brand

Daiei carries multiple private label brands, and the biggest one they carry is Topvalu (トップバリュ) which started in 2007. Topvalu products are sold by ÆON Co., Ltd. and Daiei.
TOPVALU logo

References

External links

Daiei Official site

''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' * {{cite web, url=http://www.nccjapan.net/shashiwiki/index.php?title=Daiei_Kabushiki_Kaisha, title=Company history books (Shashi), publisher=Shashi Interest Group, date=April 2016 Wiki collection of bibliographic works on Daiei Retail companies established in 1957 Department stores of Japan Japanese supermarkets Supermarkets of Japan Japanese brands Companies based in Kobe Companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange 1957 establishments in Japan

History

Private Brand

See also

References

External links