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CFO's Strategy for Southeast Asia Expansion

The CFO outlined Lawson's global expansion strategy which initially focused on developing markets in India and China after determining that markets like the US and Europe posed greater risks. A key step was acquiring FamilyMart in 2014 which provided an immediate footprint in Southeast Asia through its 16,000 existing stores. Lawson has since maintained both the FamilyMart and Lawson brands independently while rapidly expanding to over 64,000 total stores worldwide, generating annual revenues of $2.1 trillion and profits of $210 billion. This financial success from the Asian expansion strategy has now positioned Lawson to potentially pursue expansion into the US and European markets in the future.

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Srinivas Kannan
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80 views2 pages

CFO's Strategy for Southeast Asia Expansion

The CFO outlined Lawson's global expansion strategy which initially focused on developing markets in India and China after determining that markets like the US and Europe posed greater risks. A key step was acquiring FamilyMart in 2014 which provided an immediate footprint in Southeast Asia through its 16,000 existing stores. Lawson has since maintained both the FamilyMart and Lawson brands independently while rapidly expanding to over 64,000 total stores worldwide, generating annual revenues of $2.1 trillion and profits of $210 billion. This financial success from the Asian expansion strategy has now positioned Lawson to potentially pursue expansion into the US and European markets in the future.

Uploaded by

Srinivas Kannan
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Script for the CFO: When I took over as CFO in 2014, one of the biggest challenges before0 the

e Company was to accelerate our global expansion strategy. Global expansion at that time was defined in Lawson as expanding into all geographies like US, Europe, Asia etc. The senior leadership team performed a detailed exercise of understanding the implications of entering various markets. Markets like US and Europe were well advanced in terms of convenience and posed significant expansion risks. Hence, as a Company we decided to focus on South East Asia and focus on developing markets like India and China. One of the most important steps taken by us towards achieving our goal to expand into Asia and also cement our position as the leading convenience store in Japan was the acquisition of FamilyMart. The acquisition was a challenge and post significant integration risks. Also, the size of the acquisition was something that had never been attempted at Lawson before. I still remember, people in the industry ridiculing the acquisition as a complete failure. But here after 15 years, we are standing before you as the largest retail convenience chain in Japan and one of the largest growing chains in Asia. The acquisition provided us immediate footprint into South East Asia with 16,000 stores in China, Taiwan, South Korea and Indonesia. We focussed on developing markets like India and China. India for example had revised its FDI policy for Retail to 51% and we were one of the first movers into the market in partnership with ITC Ltd. However, Our strategy for China was different. Familymart was a growing brand in Shanghai and we decided to maintain both the brands simultaneously. Lawson focussed on Chongqing and Beijing and FM focussed on Shanghai We have since maintained FM and Lawson as independent brands and have penetrated rapidly into other countries like Taiwan, Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand. For example, we partnered with the South East Asian games which helped us to become a household brand in Indonesia and Thailand. Today, we have close to 64,000 stores worldwide with annual turnover of 2,100 billion Yen and Margins of 210 billion yen. Our global strategy has now provided us with enough financial leverage and independence to actively pursue expansion plans either organically or inorganically to enter markets like USA and Europe.

Points for SU Global Expansion into South East Asia as the approved Strategy.

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