Top Message
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your continued support.
My name is TAKUYA YOSHIDA, President and Representative Director.
We have always aimed to “create people’s rich and comfortable daily lives”, and we have fulfilled our role by providing essential products such as cosmetics, daily necessities, and over-the-counter drugs to consumers throughout Japan in a stable manner.
Today, society is undergoing major changes due to factors such as population decline, labor shortages, diversification of values, accelerating digitalization, and climate change. As a result, consumers' values are becoming more diverse, and the products we handle are becoming more specialized. In addition, even as the population continues to decline, the number of retail stores such as drugstores is expected to increase, leading to a further shift in distribution towards “high-mix, low-volume production and sales.”
In this environment, it is essential to enhance the entire supply chain in order to realize people’s rich and comfortable daily lives. I believe that in order to achieve future growth, we must evolve into a company that creates new value by innovating distribution through our extensive distribution information, connections with business partners, and our strength in logistics, all of which we have cultivated over the years, going beyond the boundaries of the wholesale industry. With this determination, in May 2024, we formulated a long-term vision for the next 10 years of growth, “Creating the future of people and society through the power of connections” and as the first step toward realizing this vision, we are working on a medium-term management plan, “PALTAC VISION 2027,” which aims to construct the foundation for transformation.
In the first year of the medium-term management plan, the fiscal year ended March 2025, we faced a challenging external environment, including rising prices and increased logistics costs. However, through initiatives such as strengthening the handling of new products and improving delivery efficiency in collaboration with our business partners, we were able to achieve record-high sales, operating profit, and ordinary profit.
In terms of taking on the challenge of creating new value, we will leverage our local subsidiaries established in Vietnam and Indonesia to respond to diversifying consumer needs, develop a procurement network for overseas brand products, and begin supplying them to the market. In addition, we will utilize not only our overseas subsidiaries but also our corporate website, which has been redesigned to enhance two-way communication, as a platform for connecting with others, and increase the number of new partners both in Japan and overseas. Through these efforts, we aim to deliver attractive products from around the world to consumers everywhere.
Regarding logistics, we launched integrated logistics for non-food and food products in October 2024, expanding our strength in logistics to the food industry. Currently, we are operating stably and working to increase shipping volumes and gain expertise in food logistics. We are seeing steady results in terms of reducing the number of trucks and loading and unloading work at stores, and I feel that our integrated logistics system is strengthening our supply chain.
We have also seen changes in our organizational culture. In line with our materiality of "Cultivating a corporate culture that emphasizes autonomy and spontaneity and realizing a state where individual employees’ growth leads to the growth of our company and society" to achieve our long-term vision, we are focusing on fostering a mindset and promoting behavioral change so that each and every employee can think for themselves, communicate their ideas and become a driving force for the company. We believe that the first step in encouraging proactive engagement is to change the way we work, so we have started to review various systems and processes. As we move forward with these reviews, we are increasing opportunities for employees to consider what they need to do to be more effective. For example, most of our logistics department employees are male, but in recent years, the percentage of female employees has been gradually increasing. These female employees have met to discuss their working styles, and this has led to suggestions for improvements that had not previously been considered. In addition, through the liberalization of dress codes and the introduction of flexible working systems, employees now have more opportunities to proactively consider how they can work better, and as a result, the atmosphere within the company has gradually changed since the initiative was first launched.
Organizational and human capital transformation does not yield immediate results. It requires a long-term perspective of ten years. However, I believe that each small change that occurs during this period will serve as a cornerstone for innovation in distribution. Going forward, we will continue to focus on enhancing the value of the human capital that drives transformation, fostering beyond industry collaboration, and further leveraging digital data to create new value in distribution and realize sustainable growth in corporate value.
We sincerely ask for the continued support and encouragement of our shareholders and other stakeholders.
TAKUYA YOSHIDA, President and Representative Director
