According to a company statement on February 19, Mr. Hirotake Yano passed away in Hiroshima, Japan on February 12.
Close family members have held a private funeral and a memorial service will take place at a later date, the statement said.
After graduating from Chuo University in Tokyo in 1967, Mr. Yano worked a variety of jobs, including running his father-in-law's fishing business until it went bankrupt, and then became a street vendor in 1972.
He founded Daiso, which means “to create something big,” in 1977.
Daiso is a brand that calls itself “the Japanese shopping paradise”. As a pioneer in the country applying the flat-price sales model, Mr. Yano has built a fortune worth 1.9 billion USD - according to Bloomberg statistics.
“Hirotake Yano had perfect timing,” said Pascal Martin, a partner at strategy consultancy IC&C. “He opened his first 100 yen shop in 1991, two years after Japan’s economic bubble burst and a significant shift in Japanese consumer culture began.”
Stagnant wages and a sluggish economy have created fundamental changes in Japanese consumer habits in recent decades.
People are looking for better value for their money, giving birth to Japan's discount retail industry, which has annual sales of about 600 billion yen ($5.4 billion).
Mr. Yano built his success on smart sourcing, which allowed them to offer high-quality products, all for just 100 yen, or about $1. Dealing directly with manufacturers to order quality products at low prices is a strategy similar to that of Walmart, the world’s largest retailer.
While Japan's economy has improved significantly - with five consecutive months of growth - the longest streak in a decade - the desire to buy discounted products seems to be ingrained in consumers' subconscious.
According to Daiso's website, it had sales of 589.1 billion yen as of February 2023. The discount chain had 4,360 stores domestically and 990 overseas locations as of the end of December 2023.
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