One 7-Eleven store in Chiba Prefecture, a suburb of Tokyo, isn’t like the 21,000 others across Japan. It’s almost double the size of regular ones with more than twice the number of products and carries baby items, trendy makeup and foods such as frozen bread.
Opened a year ago, Seven & I Holdings conceived it as a prototype to test the synergies between the company’s retail supermarket chain and its more-successful convenience-store business — and find out if shoppers had any appetite for a hybrid of the two.
Initially, monthly floor sales and customer numbers jumped more than 20%, according to the company. Despite the fact that a rival supermarket began operations just in front, revenue maintained a 10% increase until September.
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