Absorbing Uny whole and renaming to PPIH (2018)

Dropping the name to widen the vessel

What stands out in this decision is that Don Quijote advanced two things at once: expanding its scale and redrawing how it defined itself. The method learned at Nagasakiya in 2007 — remaking a general-merchandise store into the MEGA format — was repeated on the far larger Uny. Against Nagasakiya’s 200 stores, taking in Uny pushed the group’s store count at a stroke to 600. Don Quijote’s M&A template — filling its own weaknesses by embracing a counterpart together with all its assets — was established with the Uny acquisition. And the decision to strip “Don Quijote” from the corporate name carried the weight of a declaration: to widen a face known as a domestic discounter into a Pan-Pacific retailer.

That said, reviving a general-merchandise store depends on operating skill after the conversion, and an increase in scale does not translate straight into profit. Even after consolidated revenue passed $13.2B (¥2tn), the work of rebuilding the Uny stores and nurturing the overseas business goes on. Whether reality can catch up to the Pan-Pacific banner it raised — going so far as to remove “Donki” from the corporate name — rests on the business results under the holding company thereafter, and the group now faces a new problem: how to control all of these businesses at once.