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The story
In Aeon’s earnings report, overall operating profit hit a record high, while the supermarket (grocery) business fell into the red — it was reported that 30% of its roughly 760 affiliated stores are unprofitable, and the company plans to close about 100 stores going forward. On the forum thread, this was seen as a continuation of the slump at Ito-Yokado, with many commenters pointing to structural factors: customers being siphoned off by discount supermarkets like OK Store, drugstores, and specialty chains such as Uniqlo and Nitori. At the same time, many posts drew on concrete personal experience — concerns about rural areas becoming “shopping deserts,” the reality of closing-down sales, and opinions on private-label products — broadening the discussion beyond a simple “recession” narrative.
After Ito-Yokado, Now Aeon… Operating Profit Hits Record High, but Supermarket Business in the Red — 30% of 760 Affiliated Stores Struggling, About 100 to Close
10/19 (Mon) 11:30 JST
J-CAST News
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Leave it unmanned and shoplifting runs wild; bring back a cashier and you get a huge line of old folks waiting; the baby-boomer generation just goes for the free stuff. It's checkmate at this point.
Of course — OK Store is cheaper
The OK Store near me is pretty empty — the local supermarket chain totally dominates around here
York Foods (a Yokado-affiliated chain) is actually expanding. That one's decent.
Feels like we've shifted into "pass the old maid" mode, where everyone's just trying to dump the losing card on someone else (reference to the card game Old Maid/Babanuki)
The "Japanese people should all have a storehouse" theory (joking that everyone should just stockpile goods at home)
Feels like the time-of-day battle is heating up too — how stores time their markdown-start hours, staggering closing times. Stores that close early tend to lose out on grabbing customers, but they make up for it in cost-cutting.
Those places have already started turning from towns into sparse little settlements. Funnily enough, the ground itself is often decent there — meanwhile some shiny new ✨ condo building turns out to be smack in the middle of a flood zone.
AI: "Door-to-door ordering should become a core public service" (goyokiki, the old tradition of shopkeepers taking orders house to house)
I think people's mindset has shifted to valuing cheap prices over that ✨ fancy feel — inflation's gotten too persistent to just shrug off as a short-term blip
Closing-down sales these days aren't actually that great — the good stuff sells out instantly, and the junk you don't want is still junk even at half price
Eh, we'll just be going back to something like the Taisho era (roughly 1912–1926)
In cities too, land's expensive and there's no space, so it's turning into nothing but My Basket everywhere (My Basket, Aeon's small-format convenience-style stores)
Right. Both Ito-Yokado and Aeon got wrecked on clothing by Uniqlo and Shimamura, and on non-clothing daily goods by Nitori. The stuff that used to subsidize the food section's chronic losses kept getting eaten away by Uniqlo, Shimamura, and Nitori until the business model stopped working. On top of that, even the food division at Aeon, which had been holding on through discount goods and private-label products, has become unsustainable. Even Seiyu, which Walmart used to run, couldn't even manage to hold onto its discount-food strategy.
And if that's good enough, there's always the 100-yen store too
The TSUTAYA Books and Seibunkan Books stores that used to be attached to TSUTAYA outlets (which carried stationery and school supplies) have all disappeared one after another, and Ito-Yokado dropped its stationery/school-supplies section too. Schools don't have a supply shop either, so when you suddenly need that kind of stationery or school stuff, it's a real pain. Convenience stores still carry some stationery, at least…
Spending is down overall, so profits are shrinking
Wages are low, so people can't afford to buy — it's the worst kind of vicious cycle. At this point it's a political problem.
Buying rice, pasta, and other staple foods that can be stored in bulk all at once saves money for shoppers, but it naturally hurts stores since it means more days with no customers coming in
The retort-pouch large-portion curry is seriously awful — it's basically just curry roux. It's made by a subcontractor (in Ehime) for Osaka's Hachi Shokuhin, but the taste is completely different.
Are there any private-label items that are actually hits, though?
TopValu (Aeon's private brand) does have some hidden gems
Yaoko's kaki-pi (a rice cracker and peanut snack mix) was good back when Natori was the one making it
Seriously, Aeon's fish just doesn't make you want to buy it. I wonder why. Same with the meat, honestly — compared to competitors, maybe since they don't rotate the stock little by little, the prices end up a bit cheaper?
Wonder why that is. Maybe it's because they only stock a small amount relative to the shelf space, so it ends up looking unappetizing?
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
General merchandise supermarkets originally relied on profits from their clothing and daily-goods divisions to subsidize the low-margin fresh food division, but they’re said to have lost that revenue source as specialty chains like Uniqlo, Shimamura, and Nitori rose to prominence. On top of that, the core structural factor pointed out in the thread is that drugstores have been rolling out daily-delivery items and frozen foods as loss-leading draws, siphoning customers away from general supermarkets’ food sections as well. Opinions in the thread were split between those worried about declining purchasing power among the elderly and the hollowing-out of rural retail, and those who saw the culling of unprofitable stores as simply a reasonable business decision. It’s also worth noting that “Aeon’s overall operating profit hit a record high” and “the supermarket business alone is in the red” refer to different business segments — easy to misread as contradictory from the headline alone — but it actually reflects a structural challenge facing Aeon: strong performance in other divisions like mall operations and financial services is propping up overall profit, even as the core food-supermarket business keeps losing earning power.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (News Express+) thread “[Ordinary Supermarkets] After Ito-Yokado, Now Aeon… Operating Profit Hits Record High, but Supermarket Business in the Red — 30% of 760 Affiliated Stores Struggling, About 100 to Close.”
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