Corporate Information

Management Strategy

Convenience Store Market Awareness

In the convenience store industry, larger companies are expected to rapidly outdistance medium-sized and smaller ones and capture dominant market shares. Furthermore, as Japan’s aging population and declining birthrate lead to a smaller population and changing social structure, the main customer base of convenience stores is shifting from younger customers to middle-aged and elderly customers. This means that Circle K Sunkus will need to satisfy new types of customer needs going forward. Merchandise lineups and store formats as they stand now have limited growth potential. Circle K Sunkus, therefore, sees an urgent need to create new types of convenience stores in order to break free of a market logjam.

Circle K Sunkus’s Directions

  • Circle K Sunkus aims to develop convenience stores that accommodate older customers (middle-aged and elderly customers). From this standpoint, Circle K Sunkus will make inroads in the online shopping business and will expand services whereby it takes custody of courier deliveries for customers. This should enable Circle K Sunkus to provide nursing care products and other merchandise that has until now been unavailable in convenience stores. Additionally, Circle K Sunkus is eyeing provision of a meals-on-wheels service that takes advantage of the Internet.
  • The graying society is expected to see increasing demands for supermarket-type convenience stores. Circle K Sunkus will expand store formats emphasizing fresh produce and daily delivered foods, as well as develop hybrid stores in partnership with drugstores, restaurants and other types of businesses.
  • Circle K Sunkus believes there is considerable potential for opening stores in captive retail areas such as train station concourses, hospitals and factories. Circle K Sunkus will step up opening mini-stores with minimal capital investment and operating costs in these tight spaces, which it passed up previously as they were not suited to conventional convenience store formats and franchise packages.
  • In an effort to expand its store network, Circle K Sunkus will promote equity-based business alliances with other companies within Japan, as well as consider opening stores overseas, mainly in fast-growing emerging markets.

Main Business Strategies

  • ●Circle K Sunkus plans to Rethink and Reform all aspects of its operations to position itself for the future, in recognition that the keystones to a franchise business are effective contracts, systems and education.
  • ●Circle K Sunkus plans to invest significantly in bolstering sales capabilities and assisting franchisees while maintaining a sound financial position (offensive management).
  • ●Circle K Sunkus plans to enhance profitability and capital efficiency through rigorous implementation of low-cost operations and the pursuit of greater cost benefits (defensive management).
  • ●Circle K Sunkus plans to build a relationship of co-dependence and co-prosperity with franchisees. This is in recognition that the success of a Head Office in a franchise business depends on franchisees, and ultimately on customers. Circle K Sunkus will enhance the level of customer service and optimize product lineups of the franchise to become the consumer’s convenience store of choice. At the same time, Circle K Sunkus will emphasize direct communication between franchisees and management, and promptly translate franchisee views into business reforms.
  • ●Circle K Sunkus aims to improve the profitability of unprofitable stores and regions by stepping up relocations, while investing more in new stores in profitable regions, to raise the quality of the chain as a whole in terms of average daily sales.
  • ●Circle K Sunkus plans to meet new market demands by developing new business models and store formats, including formats emphasizing fresh produce and daily delivered foods, or fast foods.
  • ●Circle K Sunkus will conduct management focused on compliance by refining its internal control system and corporate governance structure.
  • ●Circle K Sunkus aims to develop private label products that tap into the UNY Group's collective product development and procurement capabilities. To which in addition it also aims to strengthen its lineup of original products and locally produced, locally consumed foods to help distinguish the Circle K Sunkus chain, and offer merchandise lineups on a store-by-store basis that cater to location and customer characteristics.
  • ●Circle K Sunkus plans to upgrade environmental and social contribution activities such as conserving energy, reducing plastic shopping bag usage, and recycling food.
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