Cainz turns all 157 stores into a GREEN×EXPO 2027 sales channel
Japan's largest home-improvement chain is using its entire store network, not just its stores near the Yokohama expo site, to sell Expo merchandise and tickets eight months before the event opens.
Cainz said on 18 September it will expand its official pop-up shops for GREEN×EXPO 2027, the international horticultural exposition opening in Yokohama in March 2027, from six stores to all 157 Cainz locations nationwide. Pre-sale tickets for the Expo, previously available at six Cainz stores, will now be sold at all 157 stores and through Cainz's online shop, the company said.
The rollout follows a pilot that opened 28 August at Cainz Kamakura Kajiwara, the chain's store nearest to the Expo site. Merchandise on sale nationwide includes pin badges of the Expo mascot Toonk Toonk (¥648), Toonk Toonk x Myaku Myaku smartphone pouches (¥1,980) and Toonk Toonk x Sanrio Characters T-shirts (¥3,980). Cainz will also host a Toonk Toonk meet-and-greet at Cainz Hands Shinjuku on 26 September, across three sessions, open to customers who spend at least ¥3,000 that day.
The scale is the story. Most retail tie-ins to a regional expo stay local to the host prefecture; Cainz is instead using its full national footprint — several times the store count of any department-store group — to put Expo tickets and merchandise within reach of shoppers who will never visit Kanagawa before March. For a chain built on discretionary, high-frequency visits for home and garden goods, an expo tied to horticulture is also a natural promotional fit rather than a bolted-on licence deal.
The number worth watching next is how many of those pre-sale tickets actually convert into Expo attendance once it opens — Cainz's own foot traffic will tell that story well before the gate count does.