Message from the President

Driving the Growth of the Reuse Industry as a Leader in the New Stage of Expansion

We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to all shareholders for your continued understanding and support of the BOOKOFF Group’s business activities.

In the fiscal year ended May 2024, we announced a new Medium-term Management Policy that outlines the Group’s strategic vision for the next five years. As the first year of this new phase, we actively expanded our core businesses—BOOKOFF operations in Japan, premium services business, and overseas business—by opening new stores. We also focused on strengthening our IT infrastructure and securing human resources to support future business growth.

"In our mainstay BOOKOFF operations in Japan, we worked to deliver on our Medium-term Policy commitment to “offer the best possible reuse experience.” With this in mind, we promoted initiatives under two key themes: expanding merchandise centered on books to meet local needs, and making BOOKOFF more convenient and more engaging.
We continued to renovate existing stores to broaden merchandise offerings and enhance store appeal. At the same time, we promoted digital services centered around our official smartphone app, which reached 7.55 million members as of the end of May 2024. This contributed to greater synergy between our e-commerce platform and physical stores.
We also expanded customer engagement beyond store locations by organizing events and initiatives that promote and celebrate reuse, such as Trade Card Festivals (Toreka Fes), Reuse Festivals, and the Reclothes Cup, a fashion upcycling contest. These efforts helped increase customer traffic across the entire chain."

We are also making steady progress in strengthening human capital within the BOOKOFF operations in Japan, while promoting the strategic development and internal transfer of talent to the premium services business and overseas business, both of which are expected to drive future business expansion. These efforts include active recruitment of new graduates, as well as the conversion of part-time and temporary staff into full-time employees. Talent development and mobility within the Group are progressing as planned.

In the premium services business, we are steadily expanding our presence in Tokyo’s 23 wards, centered on our BOOKOFF Purchasing Consultation Desks, with the goal of extending reuse services to customer segments unfamiliar with selling pre-owned items. This strategy is successfully helping us reach new audiences.

The overseas business has also grown steadily through new store openings. In the United States, we entered the state of Arizona for the first time in 23 years by opening a new BOOKOFF store. In Malaysia, our Jalan Jalan Japan operations continued to expand, and we established a joint venture with a local partner in Kazakhstan, laying the groundwork for directly operated stores in that market.

During this time, we identified potential misconduct at several stores operated by one of our subsidiaries, involving fictitious purchases by employees, improper inventory accounting, and possible misappropriation of cash. As a result, we postponed our earnings announcement and established a Special Investigation Committee to thoroughly examine the matter. We sincerely apologize to our shareholders and other stakeholders for the concern and inconvenience this has caused. We will disclose the results of the investigation as soon as it is completed and will take appropriate actions across the Group in response.

Despite this situation, the BOOKOFF Group continues to position this period as a “new stage of growth.” Grounded in our mission to be a source of an enjoyable and prosperous life for as many people as possible, we remain committed to delivering value not only to our customers, but also to our employees, investors, and the communities we serve. Through the continued expansion of our reuse-focused business portfolio and promotion of reuse as a foundation of a circular economy, we aim to realize sustainability for both our company and society at large.

We sincerely ask for your continued understanding and support as we move forward.

Yasutaka Horiuchi

President and CEO