Yodobashi Camera
 |
|
| Kabushiki kaisha | |
| Founded | April 1960 |
| Headquarters |
3-20-1 Kitashinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo Japan, Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan |
|
Number of locations
|
23 stores |
|
Area served
|
Japan |
| Products | Electronic products |
|
Number of employees
|
5000 (April 2016) |
| Website | www |
3-20-1 Kitashinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo
Yodobashi Camera Co., Ltd. (株式会社ヨドバシカメラ Kabushiki Gaisha Yodobashi Kamera?) is a major Japanese retail chain specializing in electronics, PCs, cameras and photographic equipment.
Yodobashi Camera's sales rank fourth among consumer electronics mass retailers in Japan, after Yamada Denki, Bic Camera and the EDION Group. There are 23 stores operating as of October 2015. In recent years the online shopping platform has been developed to become the second largest in Japan only behind Amazon (though sales of Amazon are over 10 times higher).
Yodobashi Camera headquarters is located in a residential area, north Shinjuku, Tokyo.
Yodobashi Camera was founded by Terukazu Fujisawa in 1960. The original product line up focused on cameras and photographic equipment. Fujisawa adopted a technique of opening up the entrances of his first stores Shinjuku, Ueno and Yokohama to allow a large number of the available products to be seen at a glance facilitating high volume sales at low prices. The stores were in relatively small buildings at prime locations in front of train stations with heavy footfall. Catchy, simple versions of the songs in Yodobashi Camera TV commercials were played in the stores. The store name always included "Shinjuku Station West Entrance" when mentioned to promote as sense of familiarity in potential customers unfamiliar with the location. Cameras at the time tended to be high-end with prices as high as several hundred thousand yen for a single camera, but customers were incentivised to spend the train fare and time going to inspect these cameras costing tens of thousands of yen below market prices. There was also the advantage of being able to compare products, which attracted consumers.
The Yodobashi Camera product range expanded significantly over time to include home electronics, PCs, audio visual (AV) equipment, toys, branded goods and reading material. The Multimedia Pavilion concept was created, starting with the purpose-built Multimedia Sendai on the site of the former JNR Settlement Corporation freight yard in front of the Sendai train station, where the existing stores were combined and relocated at the east entrance (March 1997), significantly increasing shop floor area.
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Wikipedia