Chapter 1263: Chapter 1263: Ito Yokado fights back
On the fourth day of business, the 24-hour sales of the 100 stores reached 66.5 million yen, with an average daily sales of 665,000 yen per store. The highest sales of any store was 984,000 yen.
Although the decline in various data was more than 20% compared to the previous three days, and even the daily average turnover of a single store was about 90,000 yen lower than that during the Ito-Yokado Group period,
this result had already far exceeded Fu Kai's psychological expectations.
After all, there was the competition from the Ito-Yokado convenience store recently, and there was also the competition from other convenience stores nearby. Under such high-intensity competitive pressure, it was absolutely impossible to achieve the daily average turnover of 757,000 yen per store during the Ito-Yokado period.
In the company's original analysis, the forecast was for an average daily turnover of 400,000 to 500,000 yen per store.
Now, on the fourth day, without the boost of promotional activities, but still achieving this result is beyond imagination. Even if it will drop later, there is a high probability that it will remain above 500,000 yen per store.
It seems that customers still have a high degree of brand recognition for 7-Eleven convenience stores!
Fu Kai felt an urge to immediately report the good news to the chairman, but considering it was already the early hours of the morning, he could only celebrate with the company staff.
...
Compared to the jubilant scene with Fu Kai and the others, the atmosphere at Ito-Yokado Convenience Store Co., Ltd. in Tokyo was unusually dull.
The average daily turnover of convenience stores across the island nation was 573,000 yen.
The highest turnover of a single store was 872,000 yen.
This daily turnover per store is almost 180,000 yen lower than it was during the 7-Eleven brand era.
That's not so bad, but the most shocking thing is the statistics for the 100 stores in and around Tokyo.
The daily turnover per store is 398,000 yen!
The highest turnover is 592,000 yen!
Compared to before the change of brand, the daily turnover per store has been cut in half!
This turnover figure is lower than that of Lawson Convenience Store, FamilyMart and other brands!
Seeing this series of data, executives such as Suzuki Toshifumi and Kimura Sawano in the meeting room were all shocked, and their expressions were extremely unpleasant.
Suzuki Toshifumi, sitting at the head of the table, said in a stern voice:
'Everyone can see the revenue data. We are in the greatest crisis. Customers' recognition of the 7-Eleven brand is even higher than we expected!'
'Our customer store traffic has also dropped by more than half!'
'According to the observations of some company employees, the customer traffic of 7-Eleven convenience stores is a long way higher than ours. Consumers just look at the brand and take sides directly...'
As Suzuki Toshifumi continued to tell the story, everyone in the meeting room felt bad, and many of them clenched their fists and gritted their teeth, feeling so frustrated and resentful.
Most of the people in the meeting room were veterans who had joined the company in its early years. They had worked hard to build up the 7-Eleven brand.
How many activities had the company planned to build up the 7-Eleven brand? How much human, financial and material resources had been spent? How many difficulties and crises had been dealt with?
Many of them had always wanted to know the true level of consumer recognition of the 7-Eleven brand, but there was no effective way to determine this through surveys and statistics.
Now they finally understood.
If the 7-Eleven convenience store brand had remained theirs, they would have been absolutely ecstatic and proud and unable to sleep.
But now this 'child' they and others had raised had been taken away and turned into the most powerful weapon against them. How cruel!
No matter how proud and arrogant they had been before, they now felt heartbroken and suffocated!
How shameless!
'Damn American devils!'
Finally, one executive couldn't help but angrily curse out loud.
'Baka, bandit...'
'...'
Once one person started, the others seemed to have found an outlet for their emotions and they all started to swear.
Toshifumi Suzuki, who was sitting at the head of the table, was normally the one to enforce order in the meeting room, but this time, unusually, he let the agitated meeting go its own way and just let the room fall into chaos.
If he wasn't in this position, he would have lost his temper just like everyone else.
Five minutes later.
The noisy voices gradually subsided.
'Bang bang!'
Feeling that everyone's emotions had eased a little, Toshifumi Suzuki tapped his finger on the table to remind everyone.
Everyone subconsciously sat up straight, their expressions returning to normal, and they looked at Toshifumi Suzuki without averting their eyes.
'Everyone's emotions have been vented a little, but our company's crisis has not been resolved. If this crisis is not resolved quickly, and 7-Eleven establishes a foothold and continues to receive brand wealth, then our crisis will continue to increase.'
'Now we have to come up with a solution immediately!'
As soon as Suzuki Toshifumi finished speaking, Kimura Sawano, who was sitting next to him, stood up and said, 'President Suzuki, everyone, from the comparison between the Tokyo area and other areas, we can intuitively see the difference.'
'In places where there are no 7-Eleven convenience stores, although we have changed the brand, the decline in various data is about 25%. This data is actually the most loyal customers of the 7-Eleven brand, because without the 7-Eleven brand, they will no longer enter the store!'
'For this group of customers, no matter how well we do internally, they won't even enter the store, they simply won't see it. For this group, we must do a good job of publicity, letting them know that we are the original 7-Eleven convenience store. As long as they come to our Ito Yokado convenience store, they can enjoy the same service as before and buy the same products as before.'
'Of course, we can't be complacent about the 75% of customers who stayed. We have to understand that one of the main reasons why 75% of customers stayed is because 7-Eleven convenience stores did not open near our stores, and consumers entered our stores without a choice.'
'For this group of consumers, once they realise that our Ito Yokado convenience stores are the original 7-Eleven convenience stores, there is a high probability that they will remain with us.'
'If we look at the 100 stores in Tokyo and the surrounding area, there is direct competition from 7-Eleven convenience stores nearby, and we have lost more than half of our customers.'
'The remaining less than half of our customers must also include random customers and customers we have poached from Lawson convenience stores, FamilyMart convenience stores, etc.'
'If we did not have the opening promotions over the past three days, then there would be even fewer customers who know us from the past, and our revenue figures would definitely be even lower than they are now!'
'What we need most now is time, enough time to convert all our original loyal customers into customers loyal to the Ito-Yokado brand!'
'We have to let our original customers know that even though we are no longer 7-Eleven, we have become Ito-Yokado, but we are still the taste of their mothers after work or after school, the harbour of respite by the roadside when they return home late at night, and we are still the pillar of their emotions!'
'It is not the superficial 7-Eleven brand that gives them memories and happiness, but our meticulous service and consistent enthusiasm!'
At the end of his speech, Kimura Sawano burst into tears, raised his fists and let out a hysterical cry.
'Papatap...'
There was a moment of silence in the conference room, followed by a round of warm applause led by Suzuki Toshifumi.
Kimura Sawano's eyes were red, and he blinked a few times before sitting back down in silence.
Fearing that some colleagues had not understood, Suzuki Toshifumi summarised Kimura Sawano's words: 'Kimura-kun's point is very correct. 7-Eleven convenience stores are a very serious threat to us, but they have a fatal weakness: there are still relatively few stores, and they have not yet gained a firm foothold. It will take a long time for them to take over the brand value that we have spent ten years cultivating.'
'And we don't have enough time to get our original customers back under the Ito-Yokado brand.'
As soon as Suzuki Toshifumi had finished speaking, an executive stood up and expressed his own opinion: 'President, everyone, I have visited more than ten 7-Eleven convenience stores to observe them in person. Although they are doing their best to provide good service, the quality of their service is still not stable. This is due to a weak talent system and training system.'
'The president of 7-Eleven in the island country is Fu Kai, a very capable person. I admire him for being able to open 100 convenience stores from scratch in just two months. However, it is an indisputable fact that their talent pool is weak. I have investigated and found that 7-Eleven's current training centre is still operating at a high intensity, speeding up the recruitment of talent and emergency training in order to expand as soon as possible.'
'I suggest starting with this aspect to delay the expansion of 7-Eleven and disrupt their deployment at the same time.
'For example, poaching employees from 7-Eleven and transferring them to our stores.'
'We also have plans to expand our stores, and although the quality of these people may not necessarily meet our standards, even if we poach just 200 people, it will cause major problems for the existing 7-Eleven stores. If we can just disperse these 200 people among the older stores and replace one or two old store employees with them at the newly opened stores, then the impact on our service quality will be minimal.'
'Mr Eguchi, that's a good idea, I agree.'
One executive chimed in.
Then another stood up and expressed his opinion: 'Apart from the weak talent pool, 7-Eleven's product supply system is also unstable. If we can disrupt their product supply system, even just a part of it, and consumers can't buy the products they want even once or twice, then they will definitely be disappointed with 7-Eleven and may switch to our store.'
'Convenience stores have as many as 2,000 to 3,000 types of goods. 7-Eleven convenience stores and our stores both use the same suppliers, so it is definitely not realistic for us to cut off all their supply channels. However, if we choose to do so for some of the goods, it is still possible for our company to do so given its size.'
'We can even ask our parent company to intervene. After all, apart from our convenience stores, our parent company also owns hypermarkets, supermarkets, discount stores, etc. Together, they have a great deal of influence on suppliers, and they can definitely pressure some suppliers into cutting off supplies to 7-Eleven convenience stores.'
'Also, fresh food such as rice balls are in high demand by consumers, and are needed for three meals a day by students and office workers alike. If the supply of some fresh food is cut off, it will deal the biggest blow to 7-Eleven.'
...
Faced with the impending crisis, everyone racked their brains to come up with solutions, but many of them were not practical.
After much discussion, it was agreed that the two weaknesses of the talent supply system and the product supply system would be targeted at 7-Eleven.
At the same time, Ito-Yokado's convenience store brand marketing also needed to be stepped up. The most urgent task was to increase media bombardment to let more consumers know the difference between the current 7-Eleven convenience store and the previous one, which had been renamed Ito-Yokado Convenience Store.
The meeting lasted until 2:30 pm, when Suzuki Toshifumi announced the end of the meeting.
From this moment on, the crisis began to gather and rapidly approach 7-Eleven!
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