CRE, Inc. - Interview

With the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic still very much affecting supply chain and exacerbating labor shortage issues in many nations, few companies are as prepared to step up and provide tailored solutions as CRE, Inc. GK met with the company's president, Mr. Tadahide Kameyama, on behalf of FORTUNE magazine, to discuss the unique role a corporate group specialized in logistics real estate plays in such a turbulent business environment.

You provide DX solutions with products such as LogiSquare and HAPILOGI. How are you trying to expand this business to overseas???

Our company is focused on developing one-stop services for logistics real estate overseas. Specifically, the company plans to manage, construct, and lease warehouses, as well as manage a warehouse real estate fund. However, due to the wide scope of its business, the company intends to do so sequentially, starting with those areas where overseas expansion is possible.?

Our subsidiary, HAPILOGI, provides value-added services for warehouses, and our first goal is to make it a success in Japan. In Japan, HAPILOGI offers DX solutions as an added value to warehouses under the concept of the HAPILOGI. Infrastructure Platform to differentiate itself from its competitors for Japanese customers. We contribute to the development of our customers' businesses by pursuing greater efficiency and optimization of logistics.?

What trends do you anticipate in this field within the next few years? How is your company creating innovation within the logistics industry?

As a real estate company, we cannot provide direct solutions. However, we believe that our role as a logistics real estate company is to help logistics companies improve their logistics efficiency by providing them with locations where they can efficiently develop their logistics operations in order to address the 2024 problem. We believe that by providing more user-friendly warehouses, logistics companies can develop more efficient logistics based on their own strategies.?

Where is the logistics industry heading? As E-commerce is growing with momentum, how will the logistics industry evolve in the future?

Home delivery and business-to-business logistics are both types of logistics, but their targets and purposes are different.?The logistics domain of e-commerce companies such as Rakuten and Amazon belongs to the home delivery domain. The e-commerce market using home delivery is expected to continue to grow.?

The e-commerce rate in Japan has been increasing in recent years, but it remains low compared to Western countries. We speculate that one reason for this is that the living environment in Japan has become too convenient. However, as Japan's EC rate is expected to catch up with that of Western countries in the future, the demand for home delivery services is expected to grow further. As a result, demand for warehouse groups to handle home delivery and business-to-business logistics is expected to increase. Warehouses are required to follow a series of logistics flows, including small-scale warehouses that handle the last mile of home delivery, medium-scale warehouses that perform relay functions, and even large-scale warehouses.?

However, it is clear that home delivery services account for a very small percentage of overall logistics. Much of logistics is business-to-business distribution, and we believe that what kind of solutions we can provide there is a great business opportunity for our company. By developing and providing the right warehouses in the right locations, we hope to contribute to the further development of the logistics industry.?