Society

Engage in fair transactions
based on mutual faith and trust

The Shimamura Group constantly strives to safely and stably provide valuable products to our customers at low prices.
Therefore, after ensuring that suppliers understand our philosophy and management policy, we engage in fair transactions with our suppliers. This leads to prosperity for both the Shimamura Group and our suppliers.

Quality maintenance and improvement

Our suppliers and the Shimamura Group shall look to maintain and improve quality in accordance with the Shimamura Quality Regulations so that customers can purchase products with peace of mind and then use them with satisfaction.
Our suppliers and the Shimamura Group shall periodically hold meetings to improve quality. We shall then take quality improvement measures by sharing information on defective products and on complaints and inquiries from customers.
Moreover, as countermeasures against problems, we have developed a structure in which it is possible to share information with all suppliers in addition to the supplier which caused a problem by publishing information monthly on the Internet.

Respect human rights and comply with supplier CoC

• The Shimamura Group purchases almost all of the products it sells from its suppliers and does not own our own factories or manufacture products, but we recognize that respect for human rights throughout our supply chain is an important ESG issue. Therefore, in 2019, we enacted the Shimamura Supplier Code of Conduct (CoC), and we are working to respect human rights in our supply chain in cooperation with our suppliers based on that.
  Shimamura Supplier CoC PDF
• We engage in transactions with all our suppliers upon explaining the Shimamura Supplier CoC to them and receiving a declaration of compliance with the Shimamura Supplier CoC from them.
  We use at timely these briefing sessions to explain our basic approach to consideration for human rights and the environment, the specific factory check methods to be conducted by suppliers to comply with the CoC, and other matters.
• Staff from our Merchandise Management Department have been confirming the working environment of employees in actual factories while implementing a system to certify PB factories. We are now creating a structure in which our suppliers can also take appropriate initiatives for respecting human rights in our supply chain with our company and our suppliers sharing the various pieces of expertise we have accumulated in briefing sessions and at other opportunities.

  See details of a CoC compliance structure

A system to certify PB factories

• The Shimamura Group sells products with selected materials, functions and quality as private brand (PB) products. Approximately 20% of the products we handle in the business of Shimamura are PB products.
  We outsource the production of our PB products to overseas factories through our suppliers and the Import Department. In order to ensure quality, we have adopted a Factory Certification System in which our employees review and evaluate those factories in advance. We currently produce PB products in approximately 450 certified factories mainly in China and Southeast Asia.
• The staff from our Merchandise Management Department responsible for quality control visit factories in order to certify PB product production factories to confirm the production control of those factories. In addition, they confirm the status of compliance with action guidelines such as the working environment and human rights of our employees.
• PDCA cycle of the system to certify PB factories
  
• PB factory review results (new certification + certification continuation)
  

  Evaluation		Contents
  Pass	S	An excellent factory that has established an organized control structure
  	A	A factory with overall proper control despite some findings
  	B	A standard factory which performs basic control despite findings
  Need re-examination	C	A factory that has room for improvement with guidance despite the fact its control structure is insufficient
  Fail	D	A factory with an insufficient control structure and which is considered difficult to make improvements with guidance

  ※During the period when on-site audits could not be conducted due to the Corona earthquake, remote audits were conducted to check the status of the plant and appropriate improvements were made.
  ※We resumed local factory inspections from FY2023.
  

Shimamura Sustainability Award

• The Shimamura Sustainability Award is an award program aiming to recognize suppliers who make a high level of contribution to our sustainability activities. This award program is an important initiative as it aims to improve the motivation of suppliers with respect to our sustainability activities by sharing outstanding efforts across the entire Shimamura Group and all our suppliers. This will also lead to the future development of Shimamura's sustainability activities.
• The Shimamura Sustainability Award consists of three categories: Sustainability Procurement, Environmentally-friendly Resources, and Environmentally-friendly Facilities and Logistics. We recognized five companies with this award in FY2023.