Onward's October sales fall 3.5% as mild weather delays Japan's winter-coat season
Onward Holdings' October same-store sales fell 3.5% as unusually mild temperatures kept shoppers out of outerwear -- a seasonal-timing read every department-store menswear and womenswear buyer in Japan will recognise.
Onward Holdings (オンワードホールディングス), the department-store apparel group behind 23-ku (23区), J.PRESS and the Kashiyama made-to-order label, said October existing-store sales fell 3.5% year on year, with all-store sales down 3.4%, according to its monthly sales flash filed November 5.
Shirts, cardigans and jackets "moved steadily" through the month, Onward said, but milder-than-usual temperatures in the back half of October kept outerwear and winter items from getting a full seasonal pickup.
Not every line was down. Onward Personal Style, the group's Kashiyama made-to-order business, "held firm on the results of various marketing initiatives," the company said. At Creative Yoko, sales of merchandise tied to the Shirotan (しろたん) character ran strong, helped by a new terrestrial-television anime tie-in that started this month.
Onward's house brands are among the largest tenants on Japanese department-store clothing floors, which makes its monthly print a direct read on whether those floors are selling -- and this one points to timing more than demand. A warm back half of the month is the kind of thing a single season can undo; it is also exactly what a department-store buyer has to plan allocation against months in advance.
None of the available monthly readings is for October itself, but together they describe a clothing market that was already soft before the mild weather Onward cites. Department-store clothing sales nationwide were down 0.2% year on year in August 2026, the newest month METI's Current Survey of Commerce has published a category breakdown for, even as clothing and footwear prices rose 1.2% year on year in September, according to the Statistics Bureau. Government household-spending data for August 2026 show real clothing outlays down 8.7% from a year earlier -- a volatile, small-sample reading, but directionally consistent.