100円ショップ　- 100yen shop

24th March – 弥生

Most of items are sold for 100yen+tax (around US1dollar). It is common shops and exists many places in Japan. Very popular type of shop as the quality of the goods is amazing and variety of the goods surprises people.

It is like a common dollar shop in every countries, but it’s different – most of the goods are 100yen but those goods are great quality and even make us think ‘is it really 100yen??!’ – yes, those goods are this much good. They sell from food, snacks to kitchen, bath and gardening equipment. Almost everything can be purchased from those 100yen shop in Japan.

100yen shop is also called as 100均 (Hyakkin). This was from the word 100円均一(100yen Kin itsu), 均一 means equal, so 100均 is the shortened word.

Who would thought 100yen shop sells the lid for wet wipes? Can you guess which shop has tooth paste tube squeezer? Japanese 100yen shops have many things that are not necessary for life but if it exist, it’s useful. That is the concept of the shop, to make the life more convenient and stress-less.

There are many 100yen shop chains, but the most famous shops are:

Daiso Japan – the biggest 100yen shop chain, known for variety of different goods. They make 700 new items per months. Daiso generally takes card payment (not many other shops does). Daiso also has items which are more than 100yen, for instance sometimes 300yen, 500yen. Therefore it is recommended to double check the price.

Seria: the second biggest 100yen shop, known for variety of DIY craft items. As this shop mainly has items that customers make by themselves, Seria does not have many pre-made snacks or food – rather than that, they have decoration kits. Also Seria is famous for fashionable and trendy items, so many young generation like to purchase those cute items.

There are a lot things to learn from how 100yen makes profit, even they only sell super cheap items.

-margin mix strategy: Japanese 100yen mix both cheap items and higher costs items in the same shop. For example, toothbrush costs 1yen and laundry basket costs 150yen, but selling at the same price. By doing so, customers buy different items at once, so after all 100yen shop can gain profit.

-No advertising cost: As it is widely known that 100yen shop sells 100yen items and they have variety range of items which are useful and fun to look at, so they do not need to make ads or paper to get customers.

-smaller human resource cost: As 100yen shop mainly handle 100yen items and it is easy to calculate at register. Plus no need to put the price tag, so they just hire a few part time workers to manage shops.

-buying tons of same items at once: by buying items at once, it can make the cost of each items cheaper.

It is very interesting and exciting to go to 100yen shops in Japan, it’s like a treasure hunt to get the items that are never seen in the other shops, and it’s only 100yen!

If you have a chance to visit Japan, it is a must-thing to do – go and check 100yen shop!