Page 50 - Forbes - Asia (April 2019)

Japan’s 50 Richest

THE LIST
YUSAKU MAEZAWA

9. Fickle Fashion
SHIGENOBU NAGAMORI
$4.5 BILLION T
NIDEC PUBLISHING THE MOST RETWEETED
AGE: 74 tweet of all time hasn’t paid off for Yusaku
Maezawa, the billionaire founder and CEO
10. of online fashion retailer Zozo. In January,
HIDEYUKI BUSUJIMA he clinched the distinction of 4.8 million
$4.45 BILLION T retweets when he offered on Twitter to dole
SANKYO out 100 million yen ($900,000) in prize
AGE: 66 money to some lucky winners to celebrate
record New Year’s sales of 10 billion yen on
11. Zozo. Zozo’s stock has tumbled 26% in the
KOBAYASHI past 12 months, which erased $700 million
BROTHERS
$3.9 BILLION T of Maezawa’s $2.7 billion net worth last year.
KOSE His rank dropped as well from No. 18 last
year to No. 22 this year.
Maezawa, who holds a 36% stake in Zozo,
12.
MASATOSHI ITO is a self-made billionaire who got his start sell-
$3.8 BILLION T ing CDs and LPs of his favorite bands by mail
SEVEN & I HOLDINGS from his kitchen table in Tokyo in the 1990s.
AGE: 94 In 1998, he launched Zozo (originally named
Start Today) and found a niche distribut-
13. ing fashion brands previously available only
MASAHIRO MIKI at upmarket department stores. Today, the
$3.79 BILLION T company’s Zozotown is one of Japan’s largest
ABC-MART online fashion retailers, with latest reported
AGE: 63
annual revenue of more than 98 billion yen. stretch fabric. Launched in 2017, customers
Twitter isn’t Maezawa’s only pastime: the could order one for free, put it on, and then
14.
AKIO NITORI 43-year-old made headlines last September connect the Zozosuit to an app that would
$3.4 BILLION T when he paid an undisclosed sum for all send body measurements of the customer
NITORI the seats aboard the first lunar flight of Elon to the site. With the data, the site could au-
AGE: 75 Musk’s SpaceX rocket, scheduled in 2023. tomatically select clothes for customers that
Maezawa is also an avid art collector, spend- “fit them perfectly,” according to a Zozo press

15. ing $110 million in 2017 to buy Jean-Michel release. The Zozosuits were a flop, however,
TAKAO YASUDA Basquiat’s 1982 painting “Untitled.” and Zozo said in October 2018 that it would
$2.7 BILLION S Some analysts say Maezawa’s fondness for discontinue them after sending out roughly
DON QUIJOTE communicating with the public has hurt con- 3 million units. In January, Zozo cut its net
AGE: 69
fidence among investors. “Credibility in the profit forecast by 12% for the full year to
company has steadily declined,” says Dairo March 31 to 17.8 billion yen, which would
16. Murata, executive director at JPMorgan in mark the first annual decline since Zozo went
MINORU &
YUJI OTSUKA Tokyo. In February, Maezawa tweeted that public in 2007.
$2.6 BILLION T that he would stop tweeting for a while so he A new discount program has also been
OTSUKA could focus on running his company. problematic, with some apparel makers
AGES: 96, 65 “He tends to have strong personal views,” threatening to leave the site because they
says Lisa Holden, a Zozo spokesperson. “But were unhappy with the price cuts. Despite
17. opinions of our investors are extremely impor- such challenges, JPMorgan believes Zozo can
CHANG-WOO HAN tant to us, and we will reflect these valuable capitalize on its strong market position to KIM KYUNG-HOON/REUTERS
$2.4 BILLION T opinions in our business moving forward.” bounce back. Zozo still accounts for almost
MARUHAN Zozo’s biggest misstep may have been the 22% of online fashion sales in Japan, accord-
AGE: 88
Zozosuit, a polka-dotted bodysuit made from ing to the brokerage. —Grace Chung

46 | FORBES ASIA APRIL 2019