Taking Jusco as sponsor of the reorganisation — survival after the core stores were gone (1997)

The author’s view

Jusco’s support mattered because it bought a dying company under reorganisation the time to hold on to its suppliers, and so kept the core trade alive. But the support came without money: it went no further than assisting a rebuild the company had to carry itself. With a store network stripped of the large earners handed to a competitor, restoring profitability from daily takings that had halved was never going to be easy, and for the side accepting the help this can be seen as the last available choice for keeping the stores open at all.

For the rescuer too, the move looked past immediate profit to an intangible return. Groundwork in Shizuoka, Yaohan’s home territory, and standing within the retail industry can be read as pieces set for the consolidation to come. Given that clearing up after the failure carried the double burden of stores flowing to a competitor and accounting fraud coming to light, accepting the support was not the end point of the rebuilding but the entrance to a long clean-up.