Isetan Mitsukoshi's five Tokyo flagships jump 11% in September sales, Ginza up almost 20%

Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings said combined storefront sales across its five Tokyo-area flagship department stores — Isetan Shinjuku, Mitsukoshi Nihombashi, Mitsukoshi Ginza, Isetan Tachikawa and Isetan Urawa — rose 11.0 per cent year on year in September, according to the company's monthly sales flash dated October 1. Mitsukoshi Ginza led the group with a 19.9 per cent jump, ahead of Isetan Shinjuku's 11.5 per cent and Mitsukoshi Nihombashi's 9.2 per cent.

The gain was not universal across the five stores: Isetan Tachikawa fell 7.2 per cent and Isetan Urawa slipped 1.3 per cent, the two suburban outlets pulling the opposite direction from the three central Tokyo flagships. Including its regional department-store subsidiaries — Sapporo Marui Imai, Sendai Mitsukoshi, Hiroshima Mitsukoshi and others, up a combined 2.5 per cent — group-wide domestic department-store sales rose 8.3 per cent for the month.

Sales to overseas customers at the five flagship stores climbed 35.5 per cent year on year, which the company described as a continuing recovery, with per-customer spending staying high even as the number of buyers also rose above last year. Isetan Mitsukoshi said it aims to deepen that growth further through a purchase-data recommendation app for overseas shoppers and dedicated personal-shopping services for that clientele.

The company attributed the broader September gain to its flagship VIP sales events, Tanseikai and Ippinkai, which it said grew sharply versus a year earlier, alongside what it called deepening relationships with its "identified", card- and app-tracked repeat customers — sales to that group rose 9.6 per cent across the five flagship stores. Isetan Mitsukoshi framed the combination of personal sales staff and customer data as insulating its growth from the wider retail environment; by category, jewellery and art rose 14.5 per cent and womenswear 17.3 per cent at the flagship stores.

The split underlines how concentrated Isetan Mitsukoshi's growth still is: momentum runs almost entirely through three central Tokyo addresses and a recovering flow of overseas spending, while its two suburban stores and most regional subsidiaries are flat or losing ground — an uneven pattern even as the marquee floors post some of the sector's strongest numbers.