December

The apparel market for the month was generally sluggish, especially in the high-end market, due to a decline in inbound consumption as Chinese visitors refrained from traveling to Japan, and consumers' increasing tendency to economize as the year-end approached.

In our company, although membership customer sales exceeded the previous year due to strengthened promotional measures for memberships, we were unable to compensate for the decrease in casual customers, resulting in a trend below the previous year's performance.

By sales channel, department stores and directly managed stores, which are the main sales channels for full-priced items, fell below the previous year, while e-commerce (EC) and outlets, which are the main sales channels for sale items, performed steadily.

As a consequence of the above, brick-and-mortar stores such as department stores, directly managed stores, and outlets were at 93% of the previous year, EC sales were at 113%, and total company sales were at 95% of the previous year's level.

Year-on-year Change in Retail Sales

• Corporate brands include SANYOCOAT, S.ESSENTIALS, Sanyo Yamacho and ECOALF.
• Womenswear includes AMACA, EVEX by KRIZIA, TO BE CHIC and TRANS WORK.

Number of Stores

• Number of shop-in-shops for department stores. Directly managed stores incude shops in department stores based on lease agreement and Marui.