| Date of birth: | May 22, 1962 | |
|---|---|---|
| Career summary: | March 1985 | Graduated from Waseda University School of Political Science and Economics |
| April 1985 | Joined Hakuhodo, Inc. | |
| June 1990 | Joined Chiyoda Co., Ltd. | |
| May 1993 | Graduated from Indiana University Graduate School of Business with an MBA | |
| May 1999 | Director of Chiyoda (present position) | |
| March 2001 | Joined Mac-House Co., Ltd. as General Manager of the Sales Department | |
| May 2001 | Managing Director and General Manager of the Sales Department at Mac-House | |
| May 2003 | Senior Managing Director and General Manager of the Sales Division at Mac-House | |
| May 2007 | Senior Managing Director and General Manager of the Administrative Division at Mac-House | |
| May 2009 | President of Mac-House (present position) | |
Dear Customers
Thank you for visiting Mac-House’s corporate website.
My name is Koji Funahashi, and I am President and CEO of Mac-House Co., Ltd.
As a community-based company with stores in areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, Mac-House will continue to provide support for the recovery of these areas under the theme, “What we can do now?” We have established the “LOVE PROJECT,” a customer-participation support project and donated part of our proceeds to local municipalities in need of support as they rebuild from disaster.
We would like to take this opportunity to express our heartfelt sympathies to all those affected by the disaster and wish for the earliest recovery of the afflicted areas.
Mac-House Co., Ltd. vigorously works to create stores and products that meet customers’ needs. We hope that we have been delivering services and products that are satisfactory to you all.
Amid stagnant personal spending combined with the oversaturated casual chain market, the current operating environment is increasingly difficult.
I have worked to enhance strategies to overhaul the company’s management and help change the business environment. As a result, I now realize that our way of business is gradually becoming accepted by customers.
For details of our efforts, please refer to the following reports.
As always, we appreciate your understanding and continued support.
Mac-House places importance on taking a community-based approach. While we have developed community-based shops mainly in the suburbs, we have closed underperforming stores over the past three years as part of structural reforms in accordance with the change in customers’ needs. From now on, we will go back to basics and strive to make our stores more accessible to local customers as well as proactively develop new stores. Specifically, we will renew our store image and correct the course of business flexibly and swiftly to reflect the characteristics of each location. We will also propose total fashion coordinates with a broad product lineup including not only casual jeans but also lifestyle-themed clothing and goods. We are also focusing on interior and exterior decoration and equipment to make our stores a more comfortable shopping space for customers.
To improve the values of both PBs and NBs, we will focus on proposing total fashion coordinates and standardizing visual merchandizing (VMD).
Regarding PBs, we have vigorously developed “quality products with a competitive advantage” to create and distribute functional items that can be appreciated by a wide range of ages. We will also promote collaborative projects of PBs with various companies.
Meanwhile, we have been working to incorporate trends in national private brands (NPBs) such as "CEDAR CREST", "MOSSIMO", "Dickies", etc. with the aim of differentiating them clearly from basic items. In particular, we will nurture Lee Cooper, a new brand that will be launched in full scale in autumn 2012, to become a brand accepted by a wide range of customers in Japan while maintaining its original brand image.
To improve the quality of our service at each store, we are focusing on development of human resources. In addition to systems to empower and train staff members of local stores, we established the “Jeans Advisor (JA)” qualification system in 2001 in an industry first. Those qualified as JAs are capable of advising customers of new trend in casual fashion and can also offer suggestions on fashion and color coordination. This qualification system is in collaboration with the “Best Jeanist” certification of the JAPAN JEANS ASSOCIATION (J.J.A). Over 1,100 employees have the JA qualification in our company. Under this system, we aim to develop human resources sensitive to customers’ needs in order to improve the quality of our service and products. We will also continue to hold the “JA Award,” an event including a sales competition, aiming at the improvement of JAs’ skills.
