Message from the CEO

In 2021, we launched our long-term vision, CCC 2030, with 2030 as the end year. Facing a highly uncertain future, we wanted to be an organization that would always create value. To that end, we envisaged an ideal future scenario and then backcasted from that scenario to our present circumstances to understand the gap between the two. We then set out on a new challenge to close this gap.Central to this vision is the idea of a self-directed, collaborative society.

This is a society in which diversity is respected and in which everyone acts autonomously, thinks creatively, and works together to build a brighter future. It is a future in which people with diverse perspectives reach out to each other across barriers and inspire each other to be more creative.Through this positive cycle, we can address the huge array of social and economic problems in the world and create better wellbeing for the planet, for communities, and for individuals.

In 2025, our organization reached its 120th anniversary. We used this milestone as an opportunity to unveil a new corporate message: Curiosity is life.Time and again throughout our long history, we have been there with customers in the moment when they feel they want to go further in something.This feeling comes from wellspring of curiosity. It encourages not rivalry but a spirit of mutual respect and collaboration. In these times of division, it gives people the power to come together again.We want to channel people’s curiosity, believing that it is the engine by which we can build the self-directed, collaborative society.

Over the years, we have taken a thoroughly customer-oriented approach to marketing whereby we offer something exciting (“a future you can’t wait for) that is one step ahead. We have also used live offices, directly run retail stores, and an online community to convey new experience value in what we call a wow-factor creation cycle.We are currently on our fourth medium-term plan, Unite for Growth 2027, in our path toward the 2030 goal in our long-term vision.As part of this plan, we are combining the knowledge in each business division, much of which was accumulated through sustainability initiatives, in order to generate greater inter-business synergy.

Through our business activities, we will address material issues create the positive social impact we were destined to create, namely, making the self-directed, collaborative society a reality. That is our overarching mission.United in this aspiration, all employees will engage in value creation, expediting a cycle of social value and economic value that will increase the overall value of our organization.

With the world’s social and environmental issues growing increasingly complex, we can generate the power to forge a brighter tomorrow by helping people develop positive and smart solutions in their work life and in their study life and home life.As an organization committed to creating abundance in work life, study life, and home life, we believe in the power of people’s curiosity and want to share in people’s journey toward a sustainable future.

Hidekuni Kuroda Director, Representative Corporate Officer, President & CEO