Takashimaya's October sales rise 2.1%, about the pace of inflation, as tax-free sales slip from last year's Expo-boosted base

Takashimaya Co., Ltd. (株式会社髙島屋) said combined sales at its domestic department stores rose 2.1% year on year in October, or 3.8% once the two stores it has closed this year -- Sakai, shut in January, and the Rakusai annex of its Kyoto store, shut in August -- are stripped out of the comparison, according to the company's November 2 monthly sales flash.

Tax-free sales fell 0.5% from a year earlier, even as sales once duty is stripped out rose 2.6% (4.6% on the same existing-store basis), the company said. Takashimaya attributed the softer inbound figure mainly to a high comparison: October 2025 still carried the crowds the Osaka-Kansai Expo drew before it closed that month, a lift this October lacks. Within the tax-free total, the number of inbound shoppers fell 3.2% from a year earlier while average spend per shopper rose 2.8%; cosmetics, children's goods and hobby items, and living-related products were the categories that grew.

Store performance split along familiar lines. Nihombashi, the group's Tokyo flagship, led with sales up 11.2%, followed by Senboku (+10.3%) and the EC channel (+10.5%), with Shinjuku, Yokohama, Omiya, Tamagawa, Kashiwa, Okayama and Takasaki all posting gains. Osaka was essentially flat, down less than 0.1%, and Kyoto's headline fell 2.3% -- though that figure still carries the shuttered Rakusai annex in its year-earlier base; stripped of Rakusai, the core Kyoto store alone rose 1.4%. Domestic shoppers turned out for autumn jackets, stoles and other cold-weather items as temperatures finally dropped, Takashimaya said.

Held up against Japan's own prices, Takashimaya's headline growth reads as closer to flat than its 2.1% suggests. The Statistics Bureau's consumer price index rose 2.1% year on year in September, the most recent month published -- almost identical to Takashimaya's October figure, which implies the headline number is mostly keeping pace with inflation rather than reflecting more goods sold. The existing-store figure of 3.8%, which also benefits from excluding two closed stores, is the one that clears that bar comfortably. Nationwide, METI's Current Survey of Commerce put September department-store sales up 3.4% year on year -- ahead of Takashimaya's own October pace, though that compares a different month and the whole industry against one chain.

The inbound slowdown lines up with the wider picture too. The Japan National Tourism Organization recorded visitor arrivals down about 5% year on year in September, the most recent month published, as the market compares itself to the final weeks of the Osaka-Kansai Expo a year earlier -- the same base effect Takashimaya cites for its own tax-free dip. That the yen was trading roughly 4% weaker against the dollar in October than a year earlier, according to the U.S. Federal Reserve's exchange-rate data, would ordinarily help pull in tax-free spending, which makes Takashimaya's shortfall look more about fewer visitors through its doors than about currency or price: visitor count fell 3.2% while the average ticket, helped in part by that weaker yen, still rose 2.8%.

Set against the other department-store chains that have reported October, Takashimaya's 2.1% gain sits at the low end of the group. Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings' nationwide department stores rose 10.9%, with overseas-customer sales up 38.9%; H2O Retailing's (Hankyu Hanshin) combined stores rose 13.2%, though that figure was flattered by a week-long sale marking the Hanshin Tigers' pennant win; and J. Front Retailing's department-store business rose 1.9%, held back by the floor space its Daimaru Umeda store has lost to an ongoing renovation (excluding Umeda, it rose 5.2%). The sharper contrast is in tax-free sales: Takashimaya's slipped 0.5% while Daimaru Matsuzakaya's rose 15.8% and Isetan Mitsukoshi's overseas-customer sales rose 38.9%. On that measure, Takashimaya looks like the chain most exposed to the Expo hangover, its overseas spending flat while rivals with a stronger pull in central Tokyo and Osaka kept growing theirs.

Whether that gap narrows once the Expo comparison rolls off the books next year, or whether Takashimaya's overseas mix has simply fallen further behind rivals that lean harder on central Tokyo and Osaka's inbound crowds, is the question its coming months will start to answer.