Japanese department store sales fell 30% in January, Japan will extend the state of emergency!

Japan's four major department stores announced their total sales of existing stores in January on the 1st . According to the data, sales in January this year fell by about 30% compared with the same period last year .

Among them, J. Front Retailing , which operates Daimaru and Matsuzakaya, saw the biggest drop, down 34.8%. Mitsukoshi Isetan (HD) fell 30.6%, Takashimaya fell 28.4%, and Sogo & Seibu fell 26.3%. And the rate of decline has accelerated since the third wave of the epidemic broke out in December last year .

In addition to this, duty-free sales to foreign tourists in Japan at Isetan Mitsukoshi HD, Takashimaya and Daimaru Matsuzakaya department stores also fell by about 90%.

Due to the spread of the new coronavirus infection, after the Japanese government issued the first state of emergency in December last year , the business hours of physical stores were shortened, resulting in a decrease in the number of customers entering stores. This also dealt a major blow to Japan's strong offline retail, but at the same time it also promoted the development of Japan's online e-commerce.

Take Rakuten , which has 21 million members, for example. Rakuten recently announced that its e-commerce website "Rakuten Market" had a total transaction volume of more than 3 trillion yen ( about 28.57 billion US dollars ) in 2020. In 2018 , the transaction volume was only 2 trillion yen, and this figure increased by 50% in just two years. This data is in sharp contrast to the data of the above-mentioned large department stores.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga (second from left) attended a cabinet meeting in Tokyo on February 2, 2021.

And according to Kyodo News, the Japanese government plans to extend the state of emergency in Tokyo and other regions struggling to contain the new coronavirus for one month ( until March 7 ) starting today due to strained hospitals . Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will formally announce the decision after a meeting of the coronavirus response expert group later today .

It is reported that Tokyo and its neighboring Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama prefectures, as well as Aichi, Gifu, Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo and Fukuoka prefectures are expected to be in a state of emergency. This news is believed to once again widen the gap between offline and online retail in Japan!

Japan

State of emergency

Rakuten