J. Front's September sales fall 1.9% as Daimaru Umeda's shrinking floor drags, even as duty-free jumps 17.7%

J. Front Retailing's Daimaru Matsuzakaya department stores posted group-wide sales down 1.9% year on year in September, the operator said in its monthly sales flash dated October 1, while sales excluding the Daimaru Umeda main store rose 1.5%.

The widening gap traces to one store. Daimaru Umeda's sales fell 38.2% year on year, J. Front said, as the main store's selling space continues to shrink under a long-running renovation and last September's figures were inflated by sales tied to Osaka's Expo 2025, which closed the following month. Strip Umeda out and the picture turns positive almost everywhere else: Daimaru Tokyo rose 10.1%, Daimaru Sapporo 17.3%, Daimaru Ashiya 10.8% and Hakata Daimaru 16.3% — four of the group's fifteen department stores posting double-digit gains, among ten stores that grew overall.

Inbound spending did the heavy lifting on the stores that grew. Group duty-free sales rose 17.7% year on year (22.6% excluding Umeda), J. Front said, even as the number of tax-free shoppers fell 6.2% (and rose 2.8% excluding Umeda) — meaning the gain came almost entirely from shoppers spending more per visit, up 25.5% group-wide (19.3% excluding Umeda). Domestic sales net of duty-free, by contrast, fell 4.7% group-wide and 1.6% excluding Umeda.

The split is the clearest first-hand read yet of how uneven Japan's inbound recovery is, even within a single department-store group's own estate: stores with intact floor space and a strong duty-free draw are growing at a double-digit clip, while a flagship mid-renovation drags the headline number into negative territory almost on its own. For J. Front, the bet is that today's Umeda drag is temporary — tied to construction and a high year-ago comparison — and that the underlying strength at Tokyo, Sapporo, Ashiya and Hakata carries through once the main store's selling space stabilises.