Retailer Miniso to ditch Japanese styling after Chinese outcry
The Guangzhou-based company has long promoted itself as Japanese-influenced, with a Japanese chief designer and Japanese characters on its shopping bags and marketing language.
Can unlikely friendships kickstart fashion’s lackluster recovery?
Breaking down brand barriers may be the only way forward for Tokyo's couturiers
Fashion’s retail revolution: What’s old is new again
As pandemic precautions appear to ease, retail fashion grapples with a return to business as usual.
Major makers switching their targets from restaurants to people who drink at home as demand for drinking parties and holiday outings remains sluggish.
What we’ll miss when bookstores disappear
Nothing can fully replace holding a real book in your hands.
'War' on food waste can save money and boost profits, Israeli tech firm says
Wasteless, an Israeli firm seeking to reduce food waste and save consumers money, won $2 million in funding on Tuesday, as more businesses seek to cut food losses amid rising global hunger. The two-year-old firm sells software to supermarkets so that they can manage their ...
Bargain-hunting Chinese make Japanese retail king Bic Camera a billionaire
Japanese retail tycoon Ryuji Arai can thank a growing flock of Chinese spenders for his swelling fortune. Bic Camera Inc., the Tokyo-based consumer electronics retailer that sells everything from cosmetics to liquor at discounted prices, has become a sought-after destination for tourists shopping in Japan. ...
Broken baby food jar leads Swedish man to create 24/7 unstaffed store
Parenthood may be hard but those challenges can also lead to new ideas. Ask Robert Ilijason, for whom a broken baby food jar eventually led to the opening of Sweden's first around-the-clock unstaffed convenience store. The store is located in Viken, where Ilijason lives, a village ...
Kumamon product sales top ¥100 billion in 2015 for first time
Sales of products featuring Kumamoto Prefecture's popular Kumamon black bear mascot surpassed ¥100 billion in 2015 for the first time, the prefectural government has said. The figure, released Wednesday, represented the fifth straight year of record sales for such products since the local government began ...
FamilyMart Co. has agreed to buy Uny Group Holdings Co., the operator of the Circle K and Sunkus chains, creating the nation's second-largest convenience store operator. It will be an all stock transaction valuing the company at about ¥171 billion. FamilyMart will pay 0.138 of a ...
Retail sales rose less than forecast in April, signaling a weak start to the second quarter for an economy that is still weighed down by last year's sales-tax increase. Sales climbed 0.4 percent from March, when they dropped 1.8 percent, government data released Thursday showed. ...
