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 | |
 Marui headquarters,Nakano, Tokyo | |
| Company type | PublicKK |
|---|---|
| TYO:8252 | |
| Industry | Department stores |
| Founded | October 1, 2007; 17 years ago (2007-10-01) |
| Founder | Chūji Aoi (青井忠治) |
| Headquarters | , Japan |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Products | Women's fashion and accessories |
| Owner | The Master Trust Bank of Japan (13.1%) Japan Trustee Services Bank (7.5%) Goldman Sachs (2.7%) Toho (1.68%) Toda Construction (0.81%) |
| Website | Marui |
Marui Co., Ltd. (株式会社丸井,Kabushiki-gaisha Marui) is a Japanese multinationalretail company which operates a chain ofdepartment stores inTokyo as well in other major Japanese cities. They are best known for their women's fashion and accessories, which are aimed at the 25–35 age range.
In 2003–4 the company generatedUS$2.75 billion in revenues. Its president is Hiroshi Aoi.[1]
The company's name (丸井) is a combination of the name of its predecessor's parent company "Maru-ni" (丸二) and the name of its president "Ao-i" (青井). The name of the department store is customarily written in Japanese as "マルイ", inkatakana.
The department store's famously ambiguous present-day logo is a symbol resembling "○I○I", and read "marui". The Japanese symbol "○" (not to be confused with theLatin letter "O" or "o") is read "maru", meaning "circle" or "zero". The symbol "I" ostensibly represents the numeral "1", which can be read "i" in Japanese (note that the Latin letter "I" is also theromanized representation of the Japanese hiragana "い", a third visual pun).
Despite being read as numerals, the symbol is written "OIOI" in Latin letters on the company's website, though the address of the website itself is "www.0101.co.jp". The "○I" in the logo is repeated, partly for aesthetics and also as an inference to the "0101" ending of the phone number of all Marui department stores.[2]
In December 2007, Marui Co., Ltd. launched an international shopping and information website, maruione.jp. The site operates inJapanese,simplified andtraditional Chinese,Korean, English, and French. The shopping site offersJapanese street fashion and traditional goods while their LiveJ information site provides information on fashion, culture andvisual kei music.
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