Over the past year, events such the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and the massive flooding in Thailand have, once again, made us realize the importance of the supply-chain in maintaining business operations in the face of opposing forces. Considering electricity, gas, water, communications, and transport as the five major levels of societal infrastructure, we take pride in considering retail-distribution as the sixth level of that infrastructure and bear this idea in mind during all our business undertakings. Even at the time of the 2011 earthquake, Ito-Yokado resumed operations at all of its stores the very next day, including those in the earthquake-stricken area.

However, the destruction caused by the earthquake extended into a wide area of production and distribution centers, and we were required to utilize every ounce of our wit in order to ensure item procurement and transportation. Our response to this emergency situation included methods such as shipping merchandise from the Kanto and Koshinetsu (Yamanashi, Nagano, and Niigata) regions to the affected areas in the Tohoku region, and using merchandise procured from the Kansai region to supply the Kanto and Koshinetsu areas. Fortunately, through the close relationships established over the years between our group companies and with our business partners, we were able to conjoin nationwide production and distribution capabilities, and carry out an emergency response within a very short amount of time. These experiences reminded us that even our most mundane, everyday operations are supported by the added-value created by many various enterprises. Particularly, we were reminded of the importance of connecting production, distribution, and sales capacities. The idea of "bonds," which have come to be mentioned so often since the earthquake, seems to be strongly hinting at a shift in viewpoint toward the entirety of an "added-value chain."

Japanese society is currently being faced with issues such as population decline and population aging at a rate faster than that of other developed nations. In order to use these issues as an opportunity for social development, it is necessary to advance hub capabilities that will create new added-value. In this sense, we are looking toward increasing the weight of our role in retail-distribution. By advancing the connections between information & communications technology and physical stores, we will be able to more closely fit together the needs of individual producers and customers. The creation of this sort of added-value supporting retail-distribution supply-chain will help to invigorate Japanese society and increase Japan's competitiveness on the international market.