Toward a New AUTOBACS

Offer New Products and Services with Maintenance as a Fundamental Model

The store earnings platform consists of consumables, such as tires, oil, and batteries; automotive goods, including car-washing products and interior accessories; and various pit services led by statutory safety inspections and maintenance. The AUTOBACS chain is now working to supplement these goods and services with retail space devoted to lifestyle and safety goods, and is moving to implement sales approaches for goods and services that customers will want for the convenience they offer. As the management headquarters for store operations, we are endeavoring to strengthen store physical and human resources to achieve these aims. We are doing so for all 600 stores, based on the characteristics of individual geographic areas. Our overall mission is to have customers feel that AUTOBACS is a convenient place to shop and that they are glad they came - every time they visit one of our stores. We aim to build customer relationships in which we present customers with professional, friendly stores and staff, and customers come back to us time and time again.

Initiatives to Improve Store Earnings Power

Moving to Improve Customer Satisfaction and Store Operational Efficiency

Revamping store operations is critical for fundamentally improving retail spaces and human resource allocations, as well as offering new goods and services. At present, we are working to improve existing-store operations in ways that increase customer contact points. More specifically, this means placing the customer service counter in an area clearly visible from the store entrance, properly responding to the desires of customers, having service counter personnel adjust the allocation of sales floor staff and limit the amount of time spent on administrative and other work that does not involve serving customers directly. In service pits, which install products and perform maintenance work, we are striving to reduce customer waiting times by increasing work efficiency. This is being accomplished by managing time more precisely through measures such as revising staff allocations and moving cars into and out of the service pits more efficiently. These changes are being implemented to ensure that store operations treat customers as their top priority to further enhance customer satisfaction.

Increasing Earnings Power by Strengthening the Statutory Safety Inspections and Maintenance, and Automobile Purchase and Sales, Operations and Strictly Managing Inventory

To turn ourselves into an organization that can steadily generate earnings, we will focus on increasing the profitability of the statutory safety inspection and maintenance, and automobile purchase and sales, operations and on improving gross profit by strictly managing inventory. Regarding the statutory safety inspection and maintenance operations, we are already seeing positive results from stores that have implemented 15-minute inspections. These are intended to enhance customer convenience and increase the number of inspections performed, and we plan to introduce them at more stores going forward. Regarding the automobile purchase and sales operations, the key to increasing profitability lies in the purchase of vehicles from individual customers. In addition to efforts to attract more customers and provide support for appraisal staff training, therefore, we will also proceed with steps such as the introduction of a new system that simplifies the management of transaction negotiations. As for inventory management, we plan to have all franchisee stores adopt the inventory optimization measures that store subsidiaries have successfully implemented. In addition to the above, efforts to improve earnings power will also include thorough cost-cutting through sales promotion efficiency, expense cutting, and other initiatives.