Consolidating Kojima — a city-and-suburb alliance (2012)

Buying a stalled competitor instead of opening the stores itself

The core of this decision was obtaining, in one share subscription, a suburban and provincial store network that would have been very hard to build alone. For a chain that had grown in front of city stations, accumulating roadside openings from scratch would have cost both time and capital. So it put ¥14.1 billion into Kojima — once the industry’s revenue leader, beaten by Yamada Denki and in need of funds — handing over control and the money for store reform in the same motion. Absorb a competitor sinking in the price war, build scale, and improve bargaining power with manufacturers: this was an acquisition aimed squarely at scale through consolidation.

The integration benefits were called an unknown at the time, but what the decision left behind was not only a store network. Kimura Kazuyoshi, entrusted with Kojima’s rebuild, was invited eight years later to become president of the parent. That the acquired company’s manager ends up leading the buyer shows this was never simply a purchase of stores but an intake of people and management method. How do you connect two different trading areas, city and suburb, through scale and purchasing? As electronics retail entered its competition with online sellers, this was a choice that pulled that question close to hand early.