Masao Hayashi, Manager, Mail Order Trading Team, Retail Business Department

Learning how to make products stand out in catalogs through experience in shelving allocation.

“I wanted to work in a business leading consumption, in a group trading company with a focus on retail.” This led Masao Hayashi to join Daimaru Kogyo. He started his career in insurance, and went on to experience a variety of products, including interior furniture, health appliances, electrical appliances, and food products. After working in a variety of product areas, he is now in charge of food gifts. “The field of food products isn’t as simple as people might think. Customers’ tastes and needs change with different sales channels such as supermarkets, mail-order sales, or gift-giving.” For example, in the case of supermarkets, the assortment of products and the way they are displayed (shelving allocation) become important. “If you put related products near each other, it is easier for people to pick them up together and buy them. In addition, it is important to organize shelves in a way that best suits the product at hand, such as by placing fast-selling products on deep shelves.” By utilizing this know-how on organizing shelves on the pages of mail-order catalogs, he has created his own unique catalogs and brought them to companies.

Creating catalogs that showcase products.

He submittedcatalog plans to local stores and mail order companies, with a product selection based on how best to attract customers’ interest through printed pages. First of all, he examined local characteristics: “I looked for products that are loved by the local community and put them together in a catalog. I interacted with local buyers and received a number of hints. Then, I also interacted with the local wholesalers. There is a strong sense of camaraderie here, and we have deepened our relationships by exchanging information on mail-order and supermarket sales trends.” In terms of how to present the catalogs, he was very conscious of how to catch the eye of customers. The catalogs used to contain simple photos, with products photographed from above, but now he arranged them at an angle to give a three-dimensional effect to the products, and frequently used cutaway photos of images, eye-catching point of purchase displays, and sales copy. New products and special features were made to stand out in the catalog.

Product development from the customer’s point of view.

“I’m currently interested in developing unique products.” After working on catalogs independently, he is now interested in product development. “Where shall we channel our strengths next? It’s not enough to just buy and sell wholesale. I believe that we need to develop unique products to survive in an age where diversity in product assortment is required.”

Masao Hayashi, Manager, Mail Order Trading Team, Retail Business Department