How a Bankrupt Fishmonger Became a Dollar-Store Billionaire
- Market for ‘100-yen’ stores thrives as shoppers seek bargains
- Country’s top discounter mints billionaire as rival closes in
100 yen products are stacked in a customer's basket at the Daiso store, operated by Daiso Industries Co., in the Harajuku area of Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, June 30, 2017.
Photographer: Tomohiro Ohsumi/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Selling everyday items to bargain hunters has made the founder of Japan’s biggest discount store a billionaire.
Hirotake Yano, founder and president of closely held Daiso Sangyo Corp., the self-described “Japanese shopping wonderland,” was one of the country’s first vendors to adopt a single-price model and used that strategy to build a net worth that the Bloomberg Billionaires Index values at $1.9 billion.