Sogo shosha

The sogo shosha (Japanese総 合 商社, dt, general trading company ') are major Japanese trading houses that operate internationally. As generalists, these companies act with everything: raw materials, intermediate products, finished products and services, be it chemicals, textiles, power plants and other large-scale systems and electronics. The distribution structure includes outdoor locations such as branch offices, subsidiaries and affiliates. The Japanese trading houses fulfill an essential for the Japanese economy function: they support the sales of Japanese products and services around the world. Historically renounced Japanese manufacturers in order to focus on its core competence in manufacturing often to build up their distribution channels, leaving this role to a trading house.

Within Japan, the large trading houses their goods to the large store chains, who then resell them to smaller retail chains. Furthermore, the Sogo Shosha often act only as an intermediary great deal.

Originally, ie with the beginning of industrialization the end of the 19th century to the end of the Second World War, the trading houses were an integral part of the Zaibatsu. These were large industrial conglomerates, consisting of various production companies, a bank and a trading company. With the destruction of these structures by the Allied occupation government trading houses were nominally independent but actually they remained through cross-holdings continue with the other companies of the conglomerate closely linked ( keiretsu ). Had your big time Sogo Shosha the of the 1960s to the 1980s, so from the beginning of high growth to the bursting of the bubble economy.

Due to globalization from the 1990s, the importance of the big trading houses took off. Japanese companies increasingly sought direct contact with their foreign partners and bypassed the internal market discounters increasingly the traditional distribution channels.

The seven major trading houses

  • Mitsubishi Shoji
  • Mitsui Bussan
  • Itochu Shoji
  • Sumitomo Shoji
  • Marubeni
  • Toyota Tsusho
  • Sōjitsu
Mitsui & Co.
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