AEON Fantasy

AEON Fantasy

トップメッセージTOP MESSAGE

サステナビリティ方針

 

Thoughts embedded in our Purpose

 

Continually asking ourselves, “What can we do for children’s smiles?”

 

My first encounter with AEON Fantasy was in 1995, when I started working part-time at a game arcade, Mollyfantasy, in the AEON (formerly Jusco) Iga-Ueno store.

On one occasion I saw a small child trying very hard to pick up a medal (arcade token) they had dropped, but which had slid under a game machine. The child stretched out their arm and picked up the medal, blew the dust off it, and put it in the game machine. They won a single medal, so they basically just got back the medal they had put in. The game this kid was playing had different multipliers for different characters, and if you hit a character with a high one, you would get five or ten medals back in return for the one medal you put in. From an adult’s point of view, it would be normal to aim for the character with the highest multiplier, but the child continued to repeat the “put one medal in, get one medal back” routine endlessly, and looked like he was really enjoying himself.

It was an unremarkable event in the store, but I still remember it vividly. I thought to myself that this job, which can create smiles in this way, might be a very meaningful job, and after that, as I did my job, I would be asking myself, “What should I do to bring smiles to children’s faces?” This is how I got my start as a Fantasy employee, and it is connected with the thoughts I had as we drew up our Purpose immediately after becoming President in 2021.

Since its establishment in 1997, the Company has achieved rapid growth and development under the corporate motto of “Serving the community by offering dreams, joy, and human contact through play.” However, as the years passed, there gradually emerged a sense within the Company that the company’s founding principles might have been forgotten.

As the Company grew and moved up through the ranks of JASDAQ in 2002, the TSE’s Second Section in 2003, and the First Section in 2005, we began to attract attention in society, and found ourselves under immense pressure to achieve short-term numerical targets for sales and profits. As long as you are company, it is natural to pursue profit. However, I came to the conclusion that to achieve sustainable growth in the future, we needed to reassess and redefine what Aeon Fantasy offers to society and what its raison d’etre is.

In formulating the Purpose, I first reconfirmed our founder’s philosophy and principles, and then spent a year engaging in dialogue with numerous Fantasy employee.

Based on the comments I received, numerous discussions between the young employees who will lead us in the future and the current management team were held, and these resulted in the positioning of children’s smiles at the center of our raison d’etre. “Facing tomorrow’s adults; this means that we determine the shape of our future.” This is our responsibility to the society of the future, and we incorporated it into our Purpose.

Going forward, we will position the Purpose as the top-level concept for the Group, and all the business activities we pursue will be aimed at accomplishing it.

 

Achieving our Purpose

 

Establishment of an employee-oriented code of conduct and creation of a liberal organizational culture that allows everyone to take on challenges

 

To propagate the Purpose internally and encourage changes in the attitudes and behaviors of Fantasy employee, it is vital to have a code of conduct that sets out clear standards for how employees should conduct themselves as they go about their daily work. So at about the same time that we formulated the Purpose, we set up a project team comprising mainly young people, who will lead us in the next era, and the team got to work on putting together a code of conduct.

In drawing up the code, we placed particular emphasis on topics that come up naturally in day-to-day conversations among employees, and avoided a directive, commanding tone, instead we went with a questioning style, asking things like, “Is this something that will lead to children’s smiles?” At the same time, we included lots of concrete examples of behaviors that we often tend to forget day to day. The goal was to create a code of conduct that could be instantly applied to make improvements in the manner of suddenly realizing during an everyday conversation that you had forgotten something, and then quickly getting yourself back on the right path. By continually asking themselves and their colleagues questions on a daily basis, employees can translate the Purpose into something that they can implement on their own.

Through this project, it was possible, through dialogue with young leaders, to match the ideas and thoughts of the management team, including myself, and the employees. At first, I was concerned that I might come across as self-righteous, but my ideas and those of the employees were often on the same page, and I feel that this resulted in a code of conduct exactly like the one I had initially envisioned. Furthermore, we recognize that it is an important role of management to provide an environment in which each employee can think independently and comfortably take on challenges to achieve our Purpose. One way is to create an environment in which it is easy to speak up, and another is to introduce a system for fairly assessing those who have taken on challenges.

I myself have always enjoyed my job when I have felt that I am contributing to the Company through my work. Therefore, at Aeon Fantasy we want all employees, regardless of job title or position, to feel that they are creating value and contributing to the Company and society, and we are pursuing various initiatives to this end.

In 2020, when I took charge of our domestic Japanese operations, I expanded what we call the Challenge Proposal System. With this system, proposals are sought from the frontline, and great ideas are implemented immediately, before being rolled out to our stores nationwide. Improvements have been made, and the system has been expanded and maintained. Store staff draw motivation from the fact that their proposals have been accepted and implemented throughout the country, which makes them feel that they are contributing to the Company.

In addition, in 2022 we introduced an assessment system for project team members. This system is designed to give employees extra marks for being selected as a member of a project team. With the introduction of this new assessment system, I expect that many employees will actively participate in projects, and that even more of them will volunteer for projects and take on new challenges.

 

Progress with execution of medium-term management plan (FY2021-2023)

 

Aiming to be a unique edutainment company offering both play and learning

 

Under the three-year medium-term management plan we began implementing in FY2021, we are taking on the challenge of completing to two management tasks, expanding our business domains for the new-normal era and restructuring our operations through IT, with the aim of realizing our medium- to long-term vision of “becoming a unique edutainment company offering both play and learning throughout the world to bring smiles to the faces of children and their families.”

Edutainment is a term coined to describe the fusion of entertainment and education. Essentially, children learn and grow through play, and while our SKIDS GARDEN and Kidzooona businesses already include edutainment elements, we would like to go even further and expand the scope of our edutainment business to encompass a wider range of activities, based on the concept of play equals learning.

For example, we will not be entering traditional education businesses such as tutoring schools and correspondence courses. However, if we can develop an edutainment business that transcends the boundaries of these businesses and results in smiles, and provide a wide range of indoor, outdoor, and online activities, we can create new value by leveraging Aeon Fantasy’s strengths. Because we have been providing entertainment not only in Japan but around the world, we are able to create new value by expanding our business domains through the utilization of our accumulated customer base, development capabilities, and expert talent. Our new online business, which has already gotten underway, is performing well, and we plan to launch an outdoor business in FY2023. Furthermore, we are considering various ideas for expanding our business domains, including a GMS-integrated edutainment floor model concept that will provide multiple stores related to play, education, learning, and food to AEON MALLS and other commercial facilities.

In FY2021, the first year of the medium-term management plan, sales and profits fell short of our targets due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic, but we are steadily moving forward with initiatives for future growth while continuing to implement infection-prevention measures.

In Japan, we have been working to revitalize the Mollyfantasy format, and in December 2021 we completely remodeled the Mollyfantasy Musashi Murayama (Tokyo) store. We have since been refurbishing other stores in a similar style, and as of September 2022 the renovations have already been completed at four stores. Our chains of strategic small stores such as TOYS SPOT PALO, a capsule toy specialty store, and PRIZE SPOT PALO, a prize specialty store, are also expanding and growing into large businesses.

In China, amid the heavy impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we worked to expand our floor area in shopping centers to secure new sources of revenue. Regarding new businesses, we opened a new type of facility based on the theme of exercise and health, where customers are provided with feedback on the results of exercise through play.

In the ASEAN zone, we mainly operate indoor playgrounds such as Kidzooona, and we are also opening more Tiny Kidzooona and Kid’s Box stores. These are smaller outlets designed to match the size of the local economy and the floor area available. In this region, recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating, and a Japanese-themed indoor playground called EDOKKO, which launched Indonesia in January 2022 and constitutes a new business model, is also performing well.

Until now, our main approach has been to roll out models that have been successful in Japan in overseas markets, but to create smiles in the future, it will be necessary to develop business formats that meet local needs in each geographical area and offer something different in each region. As a company that has been providing fun and being connected to children since its inception, we will leverage our expertise to take on the challenges of localization around the world.

 

Pursuing sustainability management

 

Creating five types of value based on ensuring the Fantasy employee happiness through our business

 

In our medium-term management plan, we have positioned the pursuit of sustainability management at the core of our corporate activities, and based on our Sustainability Policy, which we formulated as a set of guidelines for accomplishing that objective, we are pushing ahead with initiatives aimed at achieving both a sustainable society and business growth.

We aim to realize a society overflowing with smiles by continuously creating and providing the five values of fun, being connected, Fantasy employee happiness, safe & secure and hospitality to the world through our business.

Among these five values, the one I emphasize the most as an executive is the Fantasy employee happiness.

As a company whose raison d’etre is to create smiles, fun and being connected are obviously vital types of value to create but the smiles of our employees are indispensable for this. If the employees appear bored, you will not want to bring your children to the store, and even if you do, they will not experience joy. Only when employees feel happy themselves can they greet customers with smiles, which in turn will lead to smiles on the faces of the children. So the smiles and happiness of employees forms the basis for creating fun and being connected.

In addition, safe & secure and hospitality, which Aeon Fantasy has accumulated as know-how since its establishment and that have been handed down through the years, cannot be ensured unless employees approach their work in a positive manner. So our employees are the ones who create value, and we aim to enhance our value as an enterprise through the Fantasy employee happiness.

In addition, to create the five value types in a sustained fashion, we have identified six material issues that could affect our business. These are addressing climate change, working toward a recycling-oriented society, contributing to children’s futures, creating organizations that enable employees to work energetically, further engaging with local communities, and strengthening corporate governance. To tackle these issues and enhance the effectiveness of sustainability management, we have established the Sustainability Committee, which is chaired by the President. Under this committee, we have set up six “Sustainability Clubs,” one for each material issue, which are crafting and implementing specific initiatives.

At least one-third of the members of the Sustainability Committee are outside experts. In resolving issues, it is first necessary to properly acknowledge the gap between the current situation and the desired situation, and we believe objective, big-picture outside knowledge is essential for that. Members of the clubs, the bulk of whom are young people, also take part in meetings of the Committee so that employees can gain an understanding of the various gaps inside and outside the Company and pick up tips on how to narrow these gaps.

We want the members working on addressing issues in each club to keep presenting ideas they want to try out without being constrained by old internal conventions and practices. Because a company cannot grow with the limited thinking and judgment of the management team alone. It’s that kind of era. I believe that sustainable growth will not be achieved unless we become a company in which conversations alone the lines of, “The President says that, but I think this way,” occur spontaneously. I want us to be a company that grows as a result of the management team and the employees running the company and contributing to society together.

 

To our stakeholders

 

Expanding each individual’s area of expertise and putting the Company on a growth trajectory through management by everyone

 

Since becoming President, I have continually asked myself how I can contribute to the Company as an executive and what my own particular role should be. I now believe that my strength lies in the fact that I have been able to closely observe the frontline since my days as part-time employee, and that my mission is to put the Company on a growth trajectory by making managerial decisions from the twin perspectives of frontline personnel and customers.

And the realization that I cannot accomplish anything on my own is always at the back of my mind. I cannot do it all by myself, so I delegate authority to my subordinates and allow them to make decisions. If my subordinates cannot do it, then there’s probably no way I can do it.

Colleagues are essential to accomplish anything, and I expect our employees to participate in management as colleagues. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, but their colleagues can make up for whatever one is lacking. I would like to expand each person’s area of expertise and make the Company a place in which all of us can grow together.

And I hope that all our stakeholders will continue to support us.

 

 

PAGE TOP

 

(Updated on February 25, 2023)