One of the great joys of coming to Japan is visiting those wonderful convenience stores that stock everything we could want, from toilet paper to steaming hot meat buns to beer and 72 varieties of bottled Asian teas, 24 hours a day. They’re more than just places to get the stuff you need: they’re bright islands that connect you with society, and if you’re lonely at 3 a.m., head to your local conbini and you’ll feel better. (Even the Dalai Lama agrees). Today I’ll talk about Lawson, Japan’s second most famous convenience store chain.
The modern Japanese convenience store was created when an executive from supermarket chain Ito Yokado took a few months off to drive across the U.S. to look for the “next big thing” for his company. He was taken with the Seven-Eleven concept and convinced his company to approach the chain for a franchise license for Japan. It was slow going at first, but in the end, the model of efficiently selling uniform products in a uniform way was such a success that Seven & i Holdings eventually bought out its American parent, which is why you sometimes see strange Japanese things like Domo-kun or unagi-pai (a weird cookie that’s shaped like an eel) in American Seven-Eleven stores.
The main competitor to Seven-Eleven is Lawson, which was started by Ito Yokado’s rival supermarket chain Daiei. Taking a page from Mister Donut, a Japanese doughnut shop that licensed its brand from a venerable American company, Daiei contracted for the Lawson name from a chain of dairy stores started by James “J.J.” Lawson in Ohio in 1939, allowing them to buy a bit of history. Today they operate 14,000 stores worldwide, including stores in Thailand, China, and Indonesia.
I’m constantly floored by the endless innovations Japanese convenience stores seem capable of, including doing tie-up marketing campaigns with anime studios to sell limited products, which is why you see so much fan-art of anime characters wearing Lawson uniforms. You can pay your electric bill and taxes in Japanese convenience stores, get copies of official documents, and even do your banking, with the new Lawson Bank.
While there are still many convenience store brands in Japan, including FamilyMart, Ministop, Daily Store and Circle K Sunkus, the “conbini wars” might be winding down. A local chain called Save-on in J-List’s home prefecture of Gunma recently gave up the fight, selling its stores to Lawson. Mrs. J-List is less than pleased because the new Lawson stores are a bit too uniform, and she can’t find the high-quality brand of local tofu they used to stock in some of the old stores.
Would you like to visit a Lawson? What would you like to buy? Tell us on Twitter!
Want to enjoy a toasty warm winter? Then get a Japanse kotatsu heater table from J-List, which we posted to the site today! There are two models this year, and both are great for keeping warm economically in the winter. How it works is, there’s a heater under the table. Put a blanket (called a futon) in between the table and the tabletop, and you’ll have a toasty space for your legs! Just like in your favorite anime!
