JAPAN’S TOP MALL LANDLORD IS ALSO A BIG TENANT 日本顶级摩尔业主也是一个大的租赁商户 AEON OWNS AND OPERATES ABOUT 1,260 STORES AND ALMOST 20 PERCENT OF JAPAN’S MALLS 永旺拥有和经营约1260 个商店,摩尔几乎占日本总数的20%. By
JAPAN’S TOP MALL LANDLORD IS ALSO A BIG TENANT
日本顶级摩尔业主也是一个大的租赁商户
AEON OWNS AND OPERATES ABOUT 1,260 STORES AND ALMOST 20 PERCENT OF JAPAN’S MALLS
永旺拥有和经营约1260 个商店,摩尔几乎占日本总数的20%.
By Joel Groover
乔尔.格路佛
永旺旗下钻石城商业开发公司在日本广岛的Soleil 摩尔-----永旺自有的摩尔和锚店
A hypothetical merger between the likes of Simon Property Group and Wal-Mart, or perhaps Tesco and Westfield, hints at the power Aeon Corp. now wields in Japan. But even these admittedly improbable scenarios fail to convey the true heft of this Tokyo-based conglomerate. To borrow a more homegrown image, then, Aeon towers above the competition like Godzilla. Not only is Aeon the dominant mall developer in Japan, it is also one of the country’s top owners of small-format neighborhood and power centers. As of February, total revenues stood at $40.2 billion. “There are 2,700 shopping centers in Japan,and Aeon operates 518 of them, which makes our share 19.2 percent,” said Akira Inomata, general manager of leasing. “Our share of full-scale regional malls is 75 percent.”
今天永旺公司在日本的扩张能力几近疯狂,它的并购行动可假设为类似于西蒙地产与沃尔玛之间或特易购与西地集团之间的合并。但即使这些固然不大可能的假设不能传达这个总部设在东京联合大企业真实的分量。然后，更多地借助国内形象的永旺塔尖上的竞争像哥斯拉病毒（每到10 月10 日，当电脑启动之后，将显示下面的消息：“Have you danced with the devil in the moonlight? ”你在月光下已与魔鬼共舞了吗？”。）永旺在日本不仅是占支配地位的购物中心开发商，它也是一个乡村小型邻里中心和能力中心的顶级业主。出租总经理Akira Inomata 说：“截至2 月，总收入达402 亿日元。 在日本2700 个购物中心中，永旺经营了518 个，我们占19.2 ％ 。而我们享有全部区域购物中心75 ％的份额"。
In retail, too, Aeon looms. Its Aeon Welcia drugstores, Jusco general merchandise stores, MaxValu supermarkets and Ministop convenience stores blanket the country. Its specialty store business boasts domestic names Tsuruya Shoe Store and Petcity as well as joint ventures with such foreign chains as The Body Shop, Claire’s, Laura Ashley and The Sports Authority.
永旺在零售业。其永旺welcia 药房，吉之岛百货商场，MaxValu 超级市场和覆盖农村的Ministop 迷你便利店。其专卖店业务拥有国内自豪的名为Tsuruya皮鞋店和与国外连锁业如The Body Shop 、Claire’s、Laura Ashley 和The SportsAuthority 合资的如petcity。
“It has 360-plus general merchandise stores, most of which are now anchors within larger shopping centers, and it has just over 900 food-only or predominantly food stores,” said Roy Larke, a business professor at Tokyo’s Rikkyo University and editor of JapanConsuming.com, which provides analyses of Japanese consumer markets. “Aeon is now the dominant player here.”
东京Rikkyo 大学商业教授和提供日本消费市场分析JapanConsuming.com的编辑Roy Larke 说：“它有360 多家百货店，其大多数现在是大购物中心中的锚店。还有超过900 个食品商店和食品兼营商店。目前永旺在那里是占支配地位的角色。“
The reach of its retail and development operations, however, extends well beyond Japan’s shores. Aeon bought Talbots Inc., which operates some 1,400 Talbots Inc. and J. Jill stores worldwide, in 1988. The fast-growing conglomerate also owns 21 Jusco $10 Plaza stores in Hong Kong, where it opened its first store in 1987.
可是，永旺扩张经营零售业的的范围已远远超出了日本本土。1988 年永旺收购了Talbots Inc.，它在全球经营着1400 余家Talbots Inc.和J. Jill 商店。这个快速成长的企业集团在香港还拥有21 个吉之岛十元广场店，1987 年在那里开设了第一家店。
Today Aeon is laying the groundwork to bring 100 new stores to China’s burgeoning markets over the next five years, according to spokeswoman Mariko Sasaki. It will do so through yet another subsidiary, Beijing Aeon Co.Aeon also plans to ramp up its shopping center development program in China. Its first Chinese mall, a 1.6 million-square- foot, Jusco-anchored property in Beijing, opens in the summer of 2008.
按女发发言人Mariko Sasaki 说：今天，永旺瞄准萌发中的中国市场，在未来的5 年中将给它带来 100 家新开商店。它将通过另一家子公司，北京永旺公司来执行。永旺还计划加大其在中国购物中心的开发计划。其第一家中国摩尔是在北京,有160 万平方英呎，吉之岛为锚店,将在2008 年夏天开业。
Though Aeon traces its roots back over a century, the company’s modern history began just after World War II, with the supermarket operation founded by Takuya Okada, who remains honorary chairman and who has a reputation for skill at strategic business relationships. Through a series of acquisitions over a 20-year period, Okada built the regional supermarket chain into the nucleus of today’s conglomerate, says Larke. “By the early 1990s, the group, which at the time was just called Jusco, was about the fourth- or fifth-largest retailer in Japan,” he said. “Then, with the economic downturn of the 1990s, they began to be more strategic and to have clearer aims and goals for the company.”
永旺的发展轨迹可溯源到一个多世纪前。该公司的近代史开始于第二次世界大战后，超市经营由冈田（Takuya Okada）创立，他仍然保持名誉主席，在商业战略关系方面享有声誉。通过过去20 年一系列的收购，冈田建成区域性连锁超市成为今天集团的核心。Larke 说：“90 年代初，集团在当时只是叫吉之岛，在日本大约是第 4 或第5 大零售商。”他说。 “然后，在90 年代经济不景气的年代，公司开始以更具战略性，并有明确的宗旨和目标。”
That strategic focus sharpened further in 1997 when Okada’s son, Motoya, took the reins as president. The younger Okada, educated at Babson College, in Babson Park, Mass., no doubt immersed himself in American approaches to the retail business in general, and to Wal-Mart’s meteoric rise in particular, says Larke. Indeed, Aeon’s strategic direction since 1997 reads like a chapter out of a Sam Walton biography. Using economies of scale and operating efficiencies to drive down costs, for example, is a central focus at Aeon. So is standing up to those who stand in the way of that strategy — namely entrenched Japanese manufacturers who insist upon supplying stores themselves (and in some cases,even stocking shelves themselves), rather than allowing retailers to control their own supply chains.
1997 年当冈田的儿子Motoya 代为执掌担任总裁时这一战略重点进一步加强。年轻冈田在马萨诸塞州巴布森公园的巴布森学院受过教育，无疑使自己通常以美国的方法进入零售业务，尤其沃尔玛的飞速崛起，Larke 说，事实上，1997年以来，永旺的战略方向，像读一章山姆沃尔顿的传记。如永旺的一个重点是利用规模经济和经营效率，以降低成本。所以抵制影响这一战略的障碍——即根深蒂固的日本制造商坚持自己供应商店（以及在某些情况下，甚至屯积自己的货架），而不是让零售商控制自己的供应链。
“Aeon is trying to move away from that so that they’ll have control of everything within their own business,” Larke said. “They’ve spent billions and built hundreds of thousands of square meters of logistics platforms. … This has been going on for 10 years now, and it has probably been the most difficult part of their whole project.”
“永旺正试图摆脱在自己的业务中控制一切”Larke 说。“他们已经花费了数十亿日元兴建了数十万平方米的物流平台……至今，这已经持续了10 年，它可能一直是整个项目中最困难的一部分。”
And that may be one reason Aeon has started to buck a longstanding tradition in Japanese retail. Not long after it gobbled up rival retail conglomerate Daiei,last December, Aeon began overtly trumpeting its market share. It was an unheard-of thing to do in a business climate where being demure about such matters is the norm, says Larke. “They consider it almost ‘game over,’ if you like,” he said. “The message they are now strongly putting across is, ‘We are now so big that it is advantageous for manufacturers to deal with Aeon in the way Aeon wants to be dealt with.” Forcing manufacturers to play ball is, of course, Wal-Mart 101.
这可能原因之一是永旺不得不开始对抗长期以来日本零售的传统。没多久之后，去年12 月它吞噬了竞争对手零售巨头大荣公司。永旺开始公然鼓吹其市场份额。在这个常态的商业氛围中这样做是空前的，Larke 说：“如果你喜欢，他们认为这几乎是'竞赛'。”他说。“他们正极力接受这信息，我们现在这么大，是有利于厂商与永旺间的交易以永旺希望的发方式进行，迫使厂商按沃尔玛101 培训课程‘玩球’。” 
一个永旺吉之岛百货店
On the development front, Aeon has a robust pipeline. It opened eight regional malls and nine small-format centers last year, Inomata said, and has plans to build a total of 15 centers by year-end. The company aims to open 10 regional malls next year and the year after. Dainichi Shopping Center, which opened last September, typifies Aeon’s approach to regional malls, says Inomata. Located three miles from Osaka’s central business district, the 1.6 million-square-foot,Jusco-anchored mall is projected to rack up $1.1 billion in sales its first year of operation. The property is connected to a monorail and a subway station, but it also contains a 2,300-space parking structure. Its 169 tenants include an eight-screen multiplex and such draws as Cheesecake Forest, a themed eatery that Aeon created in partnership with the Namco amusement company and which sells 200 types of cheesecake.
关于发展方面，永旺拥有强大的管道。去年它经营了8 个区域摩尔和 9 个小型购物中心。Inomata 说:已规划至今年年底建设15 个购区物中心。明年和后年公司目标开10 个区域购物中心。开去年9 月开业的大日(Dainichi)购物中心是永旺区域摩尔的代表作。离大阪中央商务区3 英里160 万平方英呎，以吉之岛为锚店的摩尔预计开业当年销售高达11 亿美元。该物业连接到一个单轨电车和地铁站，它也包含了2300 停车车位。有169 个租赁商户，包括8 个多重屏幕等，还有诸如“乳酪森林”那样的主题餐馆，永旺与Namco 娱乐公司结成伙伴销售200 种乳酪产品。
As of February, Aeon’s portfolio totaled some 20.8 million square feet of gross leasable area, with 11,450 tenants. “Our future challenge is discovering more new tenants and developing new formats with business partners inside and outside of the country,” Inomata said. But though Aeon is sending out invitations to foreign retailers interested in coming to Japan, it is not doing so as a result of any vacancy problems, Larke says.
截至二月，永旺投资组合了总计约2080 万平方英呎（GLA）面积，11450个租赁商户。“我们未来的挑战是发掘更多新的租赁商户，并与国内外发展新的业务合作模式。”Inomata 说。“既然永旺正在对有兴趣的外国零售商发出邀请去日本，它这么做绝非‘竹篮打水’。”Larke 说。
In recent years, Japan’s retail economy, long dominated by large general merchandise operations, has seen an explosion of new specialty stores. “There are a lot of new companies that are very good at what they do — well-branded, well-marketed — that operate small-format stores that fit ideally into these new malls,” Larke said. “It has come together at just the right time for Aeon, which is producing more and more space for these brands even as the brands themselves are getting better and better.”
近年来，日本的零售经济长期由大型的综合性商品经营所主导，呈现出爆炸性增长的新专卖店。“有很多新的公司是非常好的事情，他们以合适的理念经营小型商店进入这些新的摩尔，做好的品牌，好的市场。”Larke 说，“这已经在适当的时机与永旺走到一起，为这些品牌产生越来越多的空间，甚至作为自己的品牌变得越来越好。”
Meanwhile, as noted by Deloitte in its Global Powers in Retailing report for 2007,Japan’s economic recovery is well under way. “Japan is poised to experience consumer-driven growth rather than relying almost solely on exports,” says the report. “Japan’s outlook seems better today than at anytime in the last two decades.”
与此同时，正如德勤在其《2007 年全球零售业能力报告》注意到的，2007 年日本的经济复苏正顺利进行。“日本保持体验消费带动增长，而不是单纯依赖。”报告说。 “日本的前景看起来今天比过去二十年任何时候更好。”
The same might be said of Aeon itself. One knock against the company, often repeated by competitors, is that its stores have shown far less profitability than its development business. But Larke is betting that Aeon’s decade long campaign to bulk up, boost efficiency and be more innovative with its retail brands will eventually bear fruit. “They are seriously big,” he said, “and they’regetting better at what they do.”
同样可以说，永旺本身。一个被竞争对手反复敲打的公司，其商店盈利表现远不如比其业务的发展。但Larke 打赌，永旺经过十年长期战斗将膨胀起来，推进效率，更多的创新，其零售品牌终将开花结果。“他们是大得厉害”他说，“而且他们做得更好。”
（译者：俞稚玉）