Ikebukuro Becomes a Quake Zone for Mass Retail Chains of Consumer Electronics Stores! Report on the “YBYK War

A new player is about to enter the overcrowded ″Shin-Electric Town″ as shown in the map below. Yodobashi HD has acquired the real estate of Seibu Ikebukuro and may open a “Yodobashi Camera” store there.

Seven & i Holdings, the parent company of Sogo & Seibu, has been restructuring its department store business, but it has reached an impasse. A plan has been proposed by a U.S. real estate investment fund, in cooperation with Yodobashi HD, to renovate the store. As early as next year, there are plans to open a Yodobashi Camera across seven floors of Seibu Ikebukuro,” said a desk clerk at a national newspaper’s economics department.

If Yodobashi moves into Seibu, there is a possibility that luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton and Hermes, which are on the ground floor of the building, will withdraw from the building. There was also criticism of the plan to “take over” the department store.

Former Toshima Ward Mayor Yukio Takano, 85, who passed away in February of this year, was consistently opposed to Yodobashi going into the lower floors of Seibu. He believed that an electronics retail chain, rather than a brand-name store, in the most prominent location at the east exit could destroy the cityscape,” said Hiroo Ogawa, a journalist familiar with urban planning.

Yodobashi is aware of the criticism and plans to expand into Ikebukuro. What is the reason for opening a store in an area with a high concentration of consumer electronics chains? Keishi Hosodate, editor-in-chief of “BCN+R” and an expert on the consumer electronics market, asks.

I think they are hoping for the overwhelming customer appeal of a terminal station. Seeing the number of customers at the electronics retail stores in Ikebukuro, it can be said that demand has not yet saturated the market. Yodobashi, with its expertise in the railside strategy, may have the math to win even if it has to launch later.

In fact, when Yodobashi, the third largest retailer in the industry, enters the Ikebukuro market, the power structure will change dramatically. Retail and distribution analyst Akihito Nakai says, “Ikebukuro is a major shopping center for Yodobashi.

Yodobashi could win hands down in Ikebukuro. In 2010, Yodobashi bought the Kintetsu Department Store in Kyoto and turned it into a commercial facility. The reason was that Yodobashi’s convenience surpassed that of other stores, with “Nitori” and “Uniqlo” coexisting with the department store. The combination of Seibu, which is directly connected to the station, and Seibu Shibuya, which will be acquired at the same time, is expected to increase sales by hundreds of billions of yen. We can expect sales to reach the 1 trillion yen level.

Yodobashi’s mail-order service offers free shipping from a single light bulb, and with “Yodobashi Extreme,” which is available only in urban areas, items can be delivered as soon as the same day as the order is placed. The convenience of Yodobashi’s mail-order service is superior to that of Amazon’s.