To Our Shareholders and Investors (2023)
Excerpt from the notice of convocation of the 18th Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders
In April 2023, we opened a small standing bar named “awabar Shinsaibashi,” occupying less than 20㎡ in the Shinsaibashi district of Osaka. By running our own directly managed bar, we aim to familiarize ourselves with the customer’s viewpoint and apply what we learn to improving our products.
I have proactively visited the bar in person on many occasions and was amazed at the large number of foreign tourists in the Shinsaibashi area. People from various regions around the world have also come to our bar, including from Korea, India, Israel, Norway, Italy, and Mexico, giving us a real sense that the waves of inbound tourists are rapidly returning.
Many stores were forced to close indefinitely or permanently shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, stores that bring color and character to a city embody the local culture itself, and as they regain their vitality, we hope that entire cities will follow in their wake and become full of vigor and energy once again. Our company, too, aims to revitalize stores and cities through the provision of Smaregi.
The fiscal year ended successfully for our company in April 2023. We achieved net sales of 5,914 million yen (+42.6% YoY) and operating profit of 893 million yen (+30.9% YoY, with an operating profit margin of 15.1%), marking significant growth from the year before. We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to all shareholders for your continued support.
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Second Medium-term Management Plan
In March 2023, we updated our previous Medium-term Management Plan and moved toward the new Second Medium-term Management Plan.
In the previous Medium-term Management Plan, we focused on the main theme of realizing business growth by increasing investment in sales and marketing expenses (S&M). Specifically, we actively carried out PR activities through TV commercials, owned media, radio programs, hosting food festivals, and other channels. These efforts helped to raise awareness and accelerate the acquisition of new customers. In the Second Medium-term Management Plan, we aim to continue with S&M investment while taking up the additional challenges of a market segmentation strategy and approaching e-commerce (EC) businesses.
Market segmentation strategy
Firstly, under the market segmentation strategy, we aim to provide our services to a wide range of retail and food and beverage businesses, while at the same time breaking down our targets into categories by type of industry/business and providing optimal solutions that are tailored to each specific category. This allows us to allocate our resources in a focused manner and acquire customers efficiently.
Approaching EC businesses
Secondly, under the strategy of approaching EC businesses, we aim to realize a global outlook that is capable of managing both physical stores and EC businesses collectively, for the retail stores that make up about 50% of our customers.
During this fiscal year, we plan to focus actively on investments that will ensure continuous high growth, while also maintaining a robust management policy. Based on the slogan “TO BE THE NEW STANDARD,” we will work to accelerate growth and promote our business to secure the top share of the domestic POS market, and, more specifically, expand to more than 300,000 active stores in Japan.
I ask for the continued support and encouragement of our shareholders in this endeavor.
July 2023
Hiroshi Yamamoto
