Toshifumi Suzuki, the honorary adviser of Seven & i Holdings (former chairman of Seven-Eleven Japan) who brought the U.S. convenience store brand 7-Eleven to Japan and built the "Japanese-style convenience store" model, died on the 18th. He was 94.
Seven & i Holdings said on the 25th that Suzuki died of heart failure at his home in Tokyo, Japan.
Born in December 1932 in Nagano Prefecture, Japan, he joined the retailer Ito-Yokado in 1963. Despite internal opposition, in 1973 he signed a franchise agreement with Southland Corporation, the U.S. operator of 7-Eleven, and founded Seven-Eleven Japan.
He opened the first store in Tokyo in 1974, and in 1978 became CEO of Seven-Eleven Japan, leading the expansion of the convenience store business. Many services that are now standard at Japanese convenience stores, such as 24-hour operations and payment of utility bills, are considered to have started from his ideas.
In the early 1990s, he acquired a majority of the equity in parent company Southland, which had fallen into management difficulties, and in 2005 made the U.S. unit a wholly owned subsidiary. The same year, he launched Seven & i Holdings and became CEO. He later stepped down as chairman in 2016 and served as honorary adviser.
Under Suzuki's leadership, 7-Eleven expanded its business to the United States, Asia, and Europe, growing into a global convenience store chain with more than 80,000 locations worldwide. In Korea, Korea Seven, founded in 1988, partnered with the U.S. headquarters and opened the country's first store in 1989.