Merging five operating companies into DCM Co., Ltd. and unifying the store name (2019)

By the day of the merger, nothing was left to change

What Hisada Munehiro offered at the briefing in October 2019 was the confirmation that store operations directors, area managers and store managers could be swapped between the operating companies and everything would "run without any problem at all as things stand." A year and five months before the merger, the store systems, the operating procedures and the personnel schemes had already been brought into line. What took place on 1 March 2021 was closer to a registration formality ratifying that preparation. The substance was changed first, and the legal entity caught up afterwards.

The integration did not, however, bring same-store sales back. The declines of 5.1% in the first half of the year to February 2018 and 2.9% in the first half of the year to February 2020 were not problems that aligning legal entities could solve; what supported profit was the gross-margin improvement from lifting own-brand goods from 16.8% to 22.1% of sales. As for unifying the store name, it was announced a year after the merger, with a further two years allowed for changing the signs. Between becoming one company and looking like one shop, a gap remained.