He was known as the 100 Yen millionaire: Who is Yano Hirotake?

Yano Hirotake, the founder of the famous Daiso store chain, known as "100 Yen" in Japan, passed away.

According to Daiso Industries Co.'s statement, Yano, the company's founder and former chairman, died of heart failure at the age of 80.

After graduating from Chuo University in Tokyo in 1967, Yano started selling his pickup truck as "Yano Shoten" in 1972.

Yano changed the name of his business to "Daiso" (A great beginning) in 1977 and turned it into a grocery chain by selling his products for "100 yen".

The company, which won the appreciation of customers during Japan's "deflation period" of 1991-2001, opened its first overseas store in Taiwan in 2001.

Hirotake Yano (April 19, 1943 – February 12, 2024) was a Japanese businessman who was the founder of the Daiso discount retail chain. Hirotake Yano was born Koro Kurihara in Beijing, China in 1943. He came from a family of five brothers and three sisters. His father and two brothers were doctors.

The retail chain company, headquartered in Hiroshima in the southwest, has nearly 4,400 domestic stores and nearly 1,000 overseas stores, including the United States.

Yano, who left the chairmanship of the company to his son Seiji in 2018, served for a term as a visiting professor at Chuo University.

The sales revenue of Daiso, which currently sells products with the "100-yen" ($0.67) label, has increased to 550 billion yen ($3.6 billion) as of February 2022.

Daiso, which has more than 70 thousand different products in stock, describes itself as "Japan's No. 1 supplier of living goods."

It is recorded that Yano's net worth is 1.9 billion dollars.