Taking full control of Daiei: a changing of the guard in retail (2014)

This is how the lead role in retail changed hands

The heart of this acquisition lies in the fact that Daiei — which had led postwar Japanese retail under the banner of a “distribution revolution” (流通革命) — was absorbed by Aeon in both capital and name. The Jusco-Aeon that had set out in 1969 as an alliance of Okadaya, Futagi and Shiro, and grown by merging mid-sized regional supermarkets, took in the Daiei that had once run at the front of the industry. The relationship of two companies that had competed for the national-chain crown was settled by one taking the other wholly under its wing. Few events show as plainly that the lead role in retail had passed from Daiei to Aeon.

Yet what Aeon inherited was not only the store network and the banner. It also took on, intact, the very malaise of the general-merchandise-store format. Narrowing Daiei toward food supermarkets and parcelling its Hokkaido and Kyushu stores out to regional companies was also the work of a retailer that had chased scale now facing the question of how to remake the format. Having taken in a former giant of retail, Aeon has gone on wrestling with the redefinition of the general-merchandise store. The rescue of Daiei was a decision set at the seam where one era of retail ended and the next task began.