The parcel alliance with the postal service, and a shared brand (2000)

The limits of alliance as an idea, and an attempt repeated

At the heart of this scheme was a Nippon Express that could not catch Takkyubin on its own and hoped to erase its disadvantage in one stroke by joining forces with a state postal business that had the greater scale. The ambition ran as far as examining a shared brand — and the size of that ambition is, read the other way, a measure of how deep the company’s disadvantage had become. But a partnership with a state enterprise invites objections on antitrust and fairness grounds, and however carefully the working-level discussions were built up, they remained fragile before a political and institutional wall.

The concept of around 2000 faded away without ever reaching a formal agreement, yet the underlying idea of an alliance with the post office did not die. When it finally took shape as JP Express in 2009, after an integration agreement in 2007, the business ran aground early and Nippon Express was forced to cut its stake. The same idea attempted again in a different form, and failing again each time, shows that the company’s structural disadvantage in the parcel market had not been resolved by nine years of trying.