Right-on shrank from 500+ jeans stores to 230 in a decade and was absorbed by World

Right-on, the jeans specialty chain founded in 1980 with its first store in Koenji, Tokyo, once ran more than 500 stores and posted peak sales of ¥106.6 billion in the fiscal year ending August 2007. In the decade since, the chain shrank to 230 stores as of the end of August 2025 — fewer than half its peak — and closed 110 of them in fiscal 2025 alone.

Sales fell with the store count: fiscal 2025 revenue was ¥28.1 billion, roughly 70% below the 2007 peak, and the company ran final losses for seven consecutive years, with the FY2025 final loss narrowing to ¥449 million from ¥12.1 billion a year earlier.

The decline is a standard story of competitive obsolescence. From the 2010s, SPA retailers led by Uniqlo offered cheap, high-quality, trend-aware jeans, and Right-on's wide-assortment model — many stores, many SKUs, heavy expenses — could not match them on price or freshness. Its attempted fixes, closing unprofitable stores and strengthening national-brand jeans like Levi's and Edwin, did not change the trajectory.

In February 2026 the exit came: Right-on was delisted on 26 February and was made a wholly-owned subsidiary of the World group on 1 March 2026 through a share exchange, with World applying its logistics and production base to a restructuring.