Thirty-three years in northern Tohoku food retail

Mandate

Set out how the store network should change over ten years as the population of our towns falls and ages.

Outcomes

• Closed two loss-making inland stores and replaced them with nine van routes
• Formed a joint purchasing company and shared private brand with two neighbouring chains
• Chose a mixed checkout design that moved 180,000 hours into prepared foods

Decisions in context

I lead the office that proposes how our network of stores, vans and pick-up points should change. The work is mostly about timing: deciding which stores to renew, reduce or close before their equipment forces the question. I prepare investment proposals for the president and the board, run the alliance work with our two neighbouring chains and oversee the separate accounts of the mobile sales programme. My team of eleven includes network planners, a data analyst and two colleagues seconded from store operations, who keep our forecasts honest about what happens inside a store. I am not a director of Sawanagi, but I attend board meetings to present proposals and answer questions on them. The decisions described on this site were made in this role, each with the agreement of colleagues who had good reasons to argue for something else.

Reason for the move

Current role; seeking one outside-director appointment alongside it.

Concurrent appointment

Since April 2023 I have also been a company-nominated non-executive director of Mitsurane Procurement, the joint purchasing company in which Sawanagi holds one-third; it is part of my executive role, not a separate employment.

Mandate

Give the board a medium-term plan that dealt honestly with population decline in our trading area.

Outcomes

• Built the first store-by-store equipment renewal register
• Prepared the business case for the Kitakami process centre
• Ran a three-van mobile sales trial from 2018

Decisions in context

Corporate planning was where I first had to write down what everyone in the company knew but rarely said: that several of our towns would not support a supermarket in fifteen years. My team built a register of every store's renewal dates and catchment forecast, which became the basis for the network plan I lead today. I also prepared the business case for our process centre in Kitakami, arguing that central preparation of meat and prepared food would let smaller stores offer a fuller range without full kitchen teams. In 2018 we ran a trial with three vans in districts where we had already closed stores. The trial lost money, as expected, but it showed that older customers would use a van regularly, and it gave us the route data on which the later expansion was based.

Reason for the move

Appointed executive officer for strategy when the board created the role in 2021.

Mandate

Restore trading in coastal stores after the March 2011 tsunami and stabilise the district's inland stores.

Outcomes

• Moved one destroyed store from a prefabricated building to a permanent site on higher ground in 2014
• Rehired or redeployed about 120 colleagues across the coastal stores
• Returned the district to operating profit by the year ended February 2015

Decisions in context

I took over the district four months after the tsunami. One coastal store had been destroyed and was trading from a prefabricated building; two others had been damaged and reopened with reduced ranges. For several years my work was practical: rebuilding stores, rehiring colleagues, adjusting ranges to construction workers living in temporary housing, and then readjusting as they left. The hardest question was where to put permanent stores while towns were being rebuilt on higher ground and residents were deciding whether to return. We chose sites with local officials and our own managers, knowing some choices would look wrong later. The role changed my sense of time. A store decision made in the district would outlast many of the conditions on which it was based, and it needed to be judged against the town that would exist years later.

Reason for the move

Asked to join corporate planning to apply what the district had taught us about long-term location decisions.

Mandate

Improve grocery margins and build the own-label range.

Outcomes

• Grew the own label from about 420 to 900 items
• Created a regional-makers section for local miso, tofu and pickles
• Negotiated grocery terms with about 160 suppliers

Decisions in context

Buying taught me the economics of our suppliers as well as our own. I negotiated with national manufacturers whose terms we could rarely move and with small regional makers whose products our customers would cross town to buy. I built our own label from about 420 to 900 items and learnt both its strengths and its limits. Customers trusted it on basic staples, but the volumes were too small for manufacturers to give us the prices that larger chains received. I also created a section for regional makers, which protected their place on our shelves and gave customers a reason to choose us over chains selling the same branded goods. When I later recommended giving up most of our label to join a shared range, it was with a clear memory of what it had cost to build.

Reason for the move

Moved to district management to gain operating responsibility for stores.

Mandate

Learn store operations, then run two suburban stores in succession.

Outcomes

• Managed a suburban store from 2001 and a larger store from 2003
• Reduced fresh-food waste in the larger store by about a fifth
• Rearranged staff schedules around the hours when older customers shopped

Decisions in context

I joined Sawanagi from the wholesale side, so I knew how goods reached a shop but not how a shop worked. Two years as assistant manager taught me ordering, shift planning and the routines of a fresh-food department. As a store manager, I learnt how much of a store's result depends on the labour schedule. In my second store I noticed that older customers arrived in a few predictable windows, often on the community bus, and that our staffing peaked at different times. Moving hours to match their visits reduced waiting at the checkouts and gave fresh-food staff more time to replenish before the busiest periods. It was a small change, but it taught me to look at the customer's timetable before the company's, a habit that shaped my later work on checkouts and van routes.

Reason for the move

Moved into merchandising to work on the range rather than a single store.

Mandate

Sell dried goods, seasonings and canned foods to independent grocers and village shops.

Outcomes

• Kept the territory's sales broadly stable while eleven accounts closed
• Set up credit plans for small shops in difficulty
• Added three supermarket accounts to replace lost village business

Decisions in context

My first job was selling to about 140 independent grocers and village shops across Iwate. I learnt the arithmetic of a small shop: its margins, its credit and how heavily it depended on the health of its owner. Eleven of my customers closed in six years, most of them because the owner retired with no successor. I could offer credit plans and smaller minimum orders, but I could not solve the underlying problem, which was that a village of a few hundred older residents could no longer support a full-time shop. I replaced the lost business with supermarket accounts, which is how I came to know Sawanagi. When I joined the chain, I took with me a clear picture of what happens to a town when its last shop closes and nobody has planned for it.

Reason for the move

Joined a supermarket chain to work inside retail rather than supply it.