Wal-Mart Can’t Hack it in Japan

The retail giant has met its match in the Japanese consumer: Seiyu, Wal-Mart’s Japanese division, has posted $465 million in losses for the first half of 2006. It’s not looking good overseas for the shopping mecca—German and South Korean divisions were shut down earlier this year after poor performance.

BBC News:

Japan has proven to be a difficult market for foreign retailers.

French giant Carrefour, the world’s second largest retailer to Wal-Mart’s number one, pulled out of the Japanese marketplace last year.

Earlier this month Wal-Mart announced its first drop in profits for 10 years, blaming the cost of pulling out of Germany.

Its global second-quarter profits dropped to $2.08bn (£1.1bn) from $2.8bn a year earlier.

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Illustration by Peter Scheer