Sampo Yoshi for Sustainability

Sampo Yoshi is a 150 years old business sustainability.

• Good for the Buyer
• Good for the Seller
• Good for Society

Chubei Itoh strongly believed that responding to the expectation of society through business activities keeps businesses sustainable and further growth.

He also believed that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is to think about how corporations can play a role, in order to achieve sustainable society through business activities. This concept ties into management philosophy Sampo Yoshi. The mission is to understand diverse values as a global enterprise, meet the expectations of the society, and continue to be a corporation that is needed by the society.

The base of Chubei Itoh’s business was the spirit of Sampo Yoshi which was a management philosophy of merchants in Ohmi, a province where he was born. The philosophy started in the shogunate era. Due to the merchants’ contributions to the society, they were permitted to promote business activities in the region. Since then, not only good for the seller and the buyer, but also for the society became the management philosophy. This can be said to be the roots of today’s idea of sustainability, which requires corporations to balance their business activities with the interests of a variety of stakeholders. That spirit is evident in Chubei Itoh’s personal motto, “Trade is a compassionate business. It is noble when it accords with the spirit of Buddha by profiting those who sell and those who buy and supplying the needs of the society.”

Chubei Itoh established a “store law” in 1872, and adopted a meeting system. The store law was a set of house rules covering what in modern parlance called management philosophy, a human resources system and employment regulations, which subsequently became the foundation of management philosophy. Emphasizing communication with employees, Chubei Itoh chaired meetings himself. Moreover, he incorporated a series of what were at the time groundbreaking management systems, including the codification of “sharing of profit by three parties”(*) and western bookkeeping methods. Those initiatives built the foundations of mutual trust between the store owner and the employees. Since that era, we have based our corporate management on sustainability.

Sharing of profit by three parties: In a predominately feudal era, this was an extremely progressive philosophy of sharing profits with employees. The store’s net profit was divided among three parties: the store owner, the store’s reserve fund, and store employees.

The practice the spirit of Sampo Yoshi for over 150 years, which is the root of sustainability. At the same time, as the business environment has changed with the times, we have established a corporate culture that anticipates changes and turns it into opportunities.

Businesses consistently thrived despite the turmoil faced in different eras, including two world wars and economic volatility Sampo Yoshi sustainable philosophy has fulfilled the role of a business model that has responsively changed according to the demands of each generation.

Sampo Yoshi has survived more than 150 years upheld while remaining an essential component of society by responding to changes, in its expectations in different eras.