Daiso turns a street stall into the ¥100 shop — everything priced the same

Daiso began as Yano Shoten, a traveling street stall Hirotake Yano ran from 1972 without a storefront, setting up his goods in front of agricultural co-ops. On one day the weather cleared unexpectedly and customers were already waiting; they opened his boxes themselves and asked 'how much is this?' for item after item. Unable to find prices among hundreds of products, Yano answered '100 yen is fine', then repeated it for everything else — the moment his company's official history records as the birth of the 100-yen uniform-price format.

The one-price rule removed price tags and haggling, but the real trick was on the supply side. According to Daiso, the strategy was to make wholesale prices work in inverse proportion to quantity: keep increasing an order until the cost per item drops below ¥100, then sell goods that normally cost ¥500–1,000 for a flat ¥100. The stores also carried a huge and constantly changing assortment, which made shopping feel like hunting for bargains.

Yano incorporated the business as Daiso Industries in 1977 and opened the first directly managed store in Takamatsu in 1991. Sales grew from ¥23.3 billion in 1995 to ¥200 billion in 2000 — an increase of more than 850% in six years — while the chain was adding stores at an average of 40 a month.

By fiscal 2023 Daiso operated 4,360 stores in Japan and about 990 across 25 countries and regions, with total sales of ¥589.1 billion, and the model had spawned Japanese imitators such as Seria and Can Do. Yano stepped down as president in 2018 and died in February 2024.