Item-Level Tracking

On 15 May 1974, a converted liquor store of about eighty square metres opened in Toyosu, Tokyo. The best seller on day one was sunglasses. At first the shop was tied to designated wholesalers, which meant seventy delivery trucks a day at a shop that size — an impossible state of affairs, out of which joint distribution was born. With POS installed in 1982 came item-level tracking: what sold, when, where, for every single product. Form a hypothesis from what sold, order on it, and test it again the next day — a small shop began to run on information. Then in 1990 the American parent of the whole arrangement, Southland, went bankrupt. In 1991 the Japanese side took seventy per cent of the shares to rescue it, and in 2005 made it a wholly owned subsidiary. The apprentice bought the master's company. (Note: this model is often called «information wholesaling», but the term does not appear in any primary source. This map used that name once, caught it in verification, and corrected it.)