Sales to Expand 20-Fold from Current Levels Over the Next Five Years
TOKYO, JAPAN, Jan. 25, 2011 - Seiyu GK plans to sequentially expand the areas in which it offers online supermarket service beginning March 1, 2011 by expanding to 125 stores by the end of 2011, and to 350 stores by the end of 2013. The company aims to increase its number of online supermarket members 10-fold and their sales 20-fold from current levels over the next five years.
Seiyu is currently offering online supermarket service over an area covered by 47 stores centered mainly in the Kanto region. Hereafter, it will sequentially begin new online supermarket services in the Kanto, Hokkaido, Tohoku, Nagano, Tokai, Kansai, and Kyushu areas. By the end of 2011, Seiyu will have created an environment where customers can use online supermarkets over a nationwide area in which Seiyu operates stores. Furthermore, in addition to its conventional line-up of food and daily necessity products, it will also enhance its clothing and home supply categories. The aim is to realize “one-stop shopping” capable of gathering daily shopping together in a single place at online supermarkets.
In terms of the specific expansion plan, Seiyu will begin service through 31 stores in the Kanto area, March 1. The plan is to gradually begin service in the Kyushu and Hokkaido areas from March 1, for which this will be the first time that online supermarket service has been initiated. Similarly, it will start services through a number of stores in the Tohoku, Nagano, Tokai, and Kansai areas. Seiyu will have provided customers with online supermarket service over a nationwide area in which Seiyu operates stores by the end of 2011.
Seiyu began its online supermarket services in May 2000, and to date it has steadily increased the number of stores offering this service and the number of members. Based on a downward trajectory in prices that revolves around EDLP (Every Day Low Price), the online supermarkets offer products for the same prices as its real shops, and aspire toward management from the “customers’ point of view.”
For the future, Seiyu is planning to utilize Walmart’s global network in order to further enhance its system, strengthen its product line-up, in addition to the know-how that it has cultivated over the 10-year period since it started this service, and aims to deliver Seiyu’s “overwhelmingly low prices” to customers all over Japan through its online supermarket business.
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