100-yen shop
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100 Yen Shops (Japanese:百円ショップ hyaku-en shoppu, or One Coin Shops) have steadily gained in popularity over the last several years. 100 Yen shops are everywhere in Japan, and they stock a variety of items from clothing to stationery, housewares to food, with each item priced at 100 yen. Such shops are analogous to dollar stores in the United States. A recent variation of the 100 Yen Shops are 99 Yen Shops, analogous to the 99 cent stores in the United States. Daiei also operates 88 Yen stores. The current Japanese sales tax of 5% is also added, making a 100 Yen purchase actually cost 105 Yen.
One major player in 100 Yen Shops is Hirotake Yano, the founder of Daiso Industries Co. Ltd., which runs "The Daiso" chain. The first store opened in 1991, and there are now around 1,300 stores in Japan. This number is increasing by around 40 stores per month.
The key to the success of the 100 yen stores is to buy in large volumes, mostly from mainland China as well as other countries like Brazil, allowing the companies to negotiate large discounts. This way products that might cost five times more in other stores can be sold for 100 yen, still for a profit. In some cases, however, products may be found cheaper at department or grocery stores, particularly in the case of food products.
Similar shops have opened around other parts of Asia as well, some of them operated by Japanese companies such as Daiso. In Hong Kong, department stores have opened their own 10-dollar-shop (around USD1.28, JPY140) to compete in the market, and thus there are now "8-dollar-shop" (around USD1.024, JPY110) in Hong Kong, in order to compete with a lower price. Note that there is no sales tax in Hong Kong, but the relative price is higher than in Japan or the US.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
Prominent 100 yen stores:
100 Yen Wholesaler
