The first overseas store in California, and the transplant of the domestic mall format (2010)

A format that grew outside its home country

Read as a straightforward tale of successful overseas expansion, this opening loses the substance of the decision. What President Sugino Kimihiko chose was to carry the all-in-one complex standardised at home, unaltered, into declining suburban malls that local capital was in the process of writing off. The knack of the transplant appears to lie in not breaking the domestic pattern of committing large capital to a single site while using vacant, ready-fitted units to hold down the initial outlay. The motive of spreading the risk of concentration on the Japanese market and the aim of seeking growth outside a maturing home country met in the single move that was the Puente Hills store.

That said, the United States can be called a pillar standing alongside Japan only because we know how the following decade or so turned out. The first several years after opening ran at a loss, and under the pandemic Sugino himself spoke at times of regretting the expansion. Even so, opening store after store without breaking the single-site, whole-package investment left a network able to catch the rebound in demand when it came. The sequel to this decision shows in the fact that a format matured at home grew larger still in a country other than the market that produced it.