Ending the opening race for larger stores and deeper dispensing (2025)

From growth that widens the plane to growth that deepens it

What stands out in this judgment is that the method of growing scale through the number of new openings, used for more than a decade, was stopped by the manager himself in the middle of a phase where growth was still continuing. Even with openings short of plan, revenue and gross profit were rising. That fact could have been read as evidence that the existing stores still had power in reserve; Hirose instead took it as a sign of the method’s limit — that the larger the stores are made, the harder good new sites become to secure. Giving up the pursuit of numbers and steering toward deepening what is inside the existing stores is a contrarian choice dressed as a conventional one: changing the pattern of growth while results are good.

While Matsumotokiyoshi and Cocokara Fine, and Welcia and Tsuruha, competed on scale through mergers, Create kept its distance from the consolidation. Enlarge the existing stores to raise the return per store, deepen its share of dispensing and its role as a primary pharmacy as ageing raises demand, and make up the missing speed with acquisitions. Answer the competition on scale by combining, or deepen density and profitability alone — at the time of writing, which was right has no answer. Whether the company can switch smoothly from growth that widens the plane to growth that deepens it will decide the next phase on the way to 2030.