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Latest twist:
Shirokiya now
up for sale
Parent firm Tokyu says it
From staff and wire reports
will sell the 3 isle stores after
earlier reports said they
would be closedThe Japanese owner of the three Shirokiya department stores in Hawaii will sell them rather than close them, a spokesman for the stores said today.
Tokyu Department Store Co., in a statement translated from Japanese, said Shirokiya has been losing money due to a decline in sales at the main store at Ala Moana Center. It attributed the decline to a drop in tourist traffic.
"We cannot see the prospect of further continuation of the business," the company said.
Walter Watanabe, assistant store manager at Ala Moana and spokesman for the business, said the thrust of that and other communications from headquarters this week is that there is no plan to close the three stores. Tokyu has not said whether it has a buyer in mind or what the price might be.
Watanabe said Tokyu contacted Shirokiya officials in Hawaii Wednesday night and told them that a story circulated by a Japanese newspaper was wrong when it said the isle stores would be closed.
Tokyu Department Store, a publicly traded company within the giant Tokyu Group, began closing its overseas stores two years ago.
The company reported a loss of about $48 million for the six months that ended July 31, compared with a loss of nearly $10 million in the year-earlier six months.
Shirokiya opened its first Hawaii outlet in late 1959, a 23,000-square-foot store near Sears in the first phase of Ala Moana Center. It now occupies about 40,000 square feet across from Liberty House. The retailer also has stores in Pearlridge Center and Kaahumanu Center on Maui.
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
