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The story
On November 6, Valor — a supermarket chain headquartered in Gifu Prefecture with its stronghold in the Chubu region — opened its first store in Tokyo. The “Hon-Haneda store” in Ota Ward is a large-format location with 2,177.93 square meters of retail space, becoming the chain’s second Kanto-area store after the Yokohama Shimonagaya store opened last November. On 5ch’s Breaking News+ board, the discussion centered on whether Valor can carve out a foothold in the brutally competitive capital-region market, with commenters divided as they compared prices and selection against OK Store and My Basket, debated whether Valor’s low prices stem from the Nagoya metro area’s strength in food shipments, and cited past cases of Chubu-region companies that struggled and withdrew after expanding into Kanto.
On November 6, Valor opened its first Tokyo location, “Supermarket Valor Hon-Haneda store” (Ota Ward, Tokyo).
It takes over the former site of the “Olympic Hon-Haneda store,” emerging as a large-format store with 2,177.93 m² of floor space. It becomes the chain’s second Kanto-area store, following the “Yokohama Shimonagaya store,” which opened last November.
Source: ryutsuu.biz / Original article here
What people said
I wish Seijo Ishii would come instead.
I think their home base is Gifu, if I remember right.
Or Genky, that'd work too
Egg sandwiches and burgers for 98 yen, canned coffee for 39 yen — no way that flies in the capital region.
I think it's going to be rough trying to make it there.
Their fresh food is pure Nagoya-style "Tachiya" trading (a market-direct wholesale method) — fish, meat, vegetables, and fruit picked up at the market that morning, all sold out by the end of the same day.
Tokyo just doesn't have this.
What good is the opinion of someone who only cares about things being cheap?
Gyomu Super has way too much stuff made in China
and their processed foods are loaded with additives…
Gyomu Super is a franchise, so apart from the operator's own original-brand items, the bento boxes and fresh food are totally different store to store.
Neglect your home turf and it'll come back to bite you, Valor.
That's not true at all.
I'm in Owari-Komaki, and nothing's changed here.
Acting like the capital region is something special — sounds like a Showa-era old-timer talking.
Tokyo has cheap stores, sure, but there's no store that sells normal, decent stuff cheap.
That's probably true for areas without an OK Store.
OK Store's biggest strength is that regular name-brand goods are cheap thanks to bulk buying — that's why it's popular.
Even the bread's cheap there.
The quality's different — price-wise, OK is clearly cheaper.
To begin with, the lineup itself is different — what's on OK's shelves isn't the same stuff you'd find at Ito-Yokado or Yaoko.
Basically, Valor sells the same kind of goods you'd find at Ito-Yokado, Yaoko, or Apita — just cheaper.
That's exactly what I'm saying —
at OK Store, the name-brand goods are cheap.
Well, OK declares itself the cheapest in the area,
and it really does end up cheaper than other stores.
the reality is that My Baskets just keep multiplying in the ruins left behind by failed convenience stores,
and beyond that, competing with existing supermarkets on procurement and shipping costs isn't going to be so easy.
Gifu/Nagoya has the second-highest food shipment value in Japan, right after Hokkaido.
The Nagoya metro area is the region that can ship ordinary goods out the cheapest.
They're relentlessly leaning into that strength — a store selling Yaoko/Ito-Yokado-level quality goods on the cheap.
But hauling that all the way to Kanto costs freight charges.
Same goes for rice — after Tohoku, Niigata, and Hokkaido, Kanto is one of Japan's premier rice-growing regions,
so freight costs less than shipping from western Japan, and they can buy in bulk — that's why rice is cheap there too.
Big opening-day hiring drive
And OK Store's got that killer move where if a location's priced higher than a nearby competitor, that store just undercuts them.
The name is just "OK," with no "Store" attached,
but for some reason people keep calling it "OK Store."
The only supermarkets near my place are Life, Seiyu, and Maruetsu, and they're all pricey.
Maruetsu's pretty average, lol
There's probably at least one around somewhere
Belc is nice, right
I get the impression they put a lot of effort into their prepared foods
though I've never actually bought any
Is there even a case of a Chubu-region retailer succeeding after expanding into Kanto?
Yamanaka, Eidensha, Kato Musen, Uny, Karma — they've all vanished.
Is Geo still around at least?
>Geo
Never heard of it, and out of that whole list the only one I even recognize is Uny.
Geo is the name of a video rental shop chain.
These days it's pivoted and rebranded as the used-goods shop 2nd Street, even changing its company name.
Oh, Geo!
That used to be super famous
Originally 2nd Street was run by For-You,
but For-You ended up becoming a Geo subsidiary.
https://maonline.jp/news/20080514c
Geo Holdings has since renamed itself Second Retailing,
https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUC256KH0V20C25A7000000/
though the actual storefronts still keep the Geo name.
Valor doesn't have that kind of staying power.
It's just novelty driving the buzz for now — once people get bored of it, it'll end up pulling out, same as Sugakiya did last time.
Nah, it's actually more impressive than OK
Specifically, how so?
Take OK's whole bulk-buying, deep-discount thing, for example —
OK's president is a Tokyo University grad who came up through the trading house Sumitomo Corporation,
and with that trading-house network backing him up,
they can push aggressive discounts even on name-brand goods.
That strikes me as a different beast from other private-label operations.
I think it's Mitsubishi Corporation, not Sumitomo Corporation.
OK isn't even that cheap anymore
ever since their forceful discount-buying practices became an issue
https://stores.valor.jp/
and conversely, Osaka's Konomiya has expanded into Aichi and Gifu.
https://www.konomiya.jp/store/
I get relocated a lot for work, but the Konomiya in Kasadera seems to be settling in well — customer traffic looks up and business seems to be going fine.
With Heiwado also having moved into Motoshio, I feel like Feel, which was already in the area, has seemed less lively lately.
I stopped by a Kohnan (a home-improvement chain) in Kansai and was surprised to find the grocery section inside was actually a Valor operating under a disguised name.
Of course a strong regional supermarket moving in here would get a warm welcome from capital-region residents starving for supermarkets.
[Supermarkets per 100,000 people, by prefecture]
1. Shimane (48.92)
2. Kagoshima (40.71)
3. Iwate (40.19)
4. Akita (39.25)
5. Kochi (37.67)
—
41. Chiba (16.90)
44. Saitama (14.91)
45. Tokyo (14.27)
46. Kanagawa (13.41)
47. Aichi (13.31)
Source: Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications Economic Census — Basic Survey, "Various Food Retailers"
That's because there's nowhere left in Tokyo to open a new store.
A bad location kills a store, and plenty do fail.
So often the only option left is to open more small stores like My Basket.
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Valor is a supermarket chain under Valor Holdings, headquartered in Ogaki, Gifu Prefecture, which has built its food-supermarket business around the Chubu region. Its push into Kanto began with the Yokohama Shimonagaya store last November, and the Hon-Haneda store marks its second location there. The thread split into two camps: one pointing to the Nagoya metro area’s top-tier ranking in food shipment value as the geographic basis for Valor’s low prices, and a skeptical camp citing past Chubu-region companies — like Yamanaka, Uny, and Karma — that struggled and ultimately pulled out after expanding into Kanto. One post attributed OK Store’s discounting to the trading house its president came up through, but another reply in the thread corrected this, saying it was Mitsubishi Corporation rather than Sumitomo Corporation — a reminder that readers should verify specific factual claims themselves. There was also a counterargument noting that while Tokyo ranks near the bottom nationally in supermarkets per capita, its high population density means the actual number of options available is still substantial — a sign that a simple store-count comparison doesn’t fully capture the reality on the ground.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary from the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “Supermarket Valor Makes First Foray Into Tokyo.”
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