Daiso (ダイソー)

Hirotake Yano first sold goods from travelling stalls and set a flat hundred-yen price to avoid having to label anything. The constraint became a model: Daiso opened its first fixed shop in 1991 and now runs over four thousand outlets in Japan and as many abroad.

What sets the chain apart from the ordinary bargain bazaar is the number of references — nearly seventy thousand, a thousand of them renewed every month — and the seriousness of the design. Many Daiso objects, storage boxes, utensils, stationery, are elegant solutions to a precise problem, sold at the price of a coffee.