Japan's 100-Yen Shops Built an Oshi-Katsu Aisle: Daiso, Seria and Can Do's Strategy

Walk into a Japanese 100-yen shop and you will find protective covers for can badges, stands for trading cards and pouches for plushies. These shops sell more than the goods themselves. They also serve what comes after the purchase: storing, displaying and carrying the things fans collect.

Illustration of oshi-katsu meeting 100-yen shops and general goods

For 100-yen shops, oshi-katsu, the practice of actively supporting a favorite person or character (an oshi), is no longer a string of one-off character collabs. It has become a source of demand that changes how the sales floor is laid out. Drawing on industry figures and collab cases since August 2025, this article looks at how the 100-yen and general-goods business is responding.

A ¥1 Trillion Market and 9,400 Stores of Shelves

According to Teikoku Databank’s 100-yen shop industry survey (fiscal 2025 outlook) (in Japanese), released April 2, 2026, the fiscal 2025 market was about ¥1.11 trillion (roughly $7.4 billion) for the big four chains, up 2.7% from the previous year. That is 1.5 times the ¥736.9 billion of fiscal 2016, ten years earlier. As of the end of March 2026, the big four were expected to run about 9,400 stores between them, more than 200 above the previous year and about 3,000 above ten years ago. The four are Daiso (operated by Daiso Industries), Seria, Can Do and Watts.

The 100-yen shop industryA trillion-yen market with 9,400 stores

¥1.11T: Fiscal 2025 market, big four
+2.7%: Growth from the previous year
1.5x: Compared with fiscal 2016
~9,400: Stores at end of March 2026

Four chains, one trillion yen, about 9,400 stores.

Source: Teikoku Databank (in Japanese)

Oshi-katsu alone cannot explain that ¥1 trillion, though. The survey points to several growth factors working together.

Among individual companies, Daiso Industries posted non-consolidated sales of ¥676.5 billion in the fiscal year ended February 2025, 14 consecutive years of record sales (Daiso Industries announcement, Nikkei report, both in Japanese). The company has stayed unlisted for years, so it reached this scale without pressure from the stock market, which is also a distinctive feature of the industry.

On the demand side, CDG’s second oshi-katsu survey (in Japanese) counts 13.84 million people doing oshi-katsu, up about 2.5 million from 11.36 million the year before. It puts the market at about ¥3.5 trillion (roughly $23 billion), with average annual spending of about ¥255,035 per person. Those 13.84 million people walk past the shelves of 9,400 stores in their daily lives.

Three Layers of Oshi-Katsu at 100-Yen Shops

So how do the chains receive the people walking past those shelves? Their moves fall into three layers.

Three layersHow 100-yen shops serve oshi-katsu

Always on the shelf

Generic fixtures

Card cases and badge covers
Not tied to any IP

Weeks to months

Licensed collabs

Characters on a fast cycle
Go now or it's gone

Beyond goods

New categories

Drinks and food
More frequent visits

The first layer is the one that survives when booms end.

Layer 1: Permanent Oshi-Katsu Fixtures Not Tied to Any IP

Seria and the other chains have set up permanent corners of generic items that belong to no particular work: storage cases for trading cards and can badges, pouches for plushies, and supplies for uchiwa fans (the hand-held fans concertgoers decorate for their oshi) and acrylic stands. Prices start at ¥110, tax included.

This is where the 100-yen shop holds a position of its own. An anime shop’s products sell only to fans of that IP, but trading card cases and hard cases sell whoever your oshi is. In our view, 100-yen shops got there first with an oshi-katsu market that isn’t exposed to the rise and fall of any one IP. When the boom moves on, fans of the next one come to the same shelf.

Layer 2: Licensed Collabs on a Cycle of Weeks to Months

On top of that, the chains rotate character collab products at a high frequency. This layer limits inventory risk while creating the feeling that if you don’t go now, it will be gone.

Layer 3: Moving Beyond General Goods

Some chains are extending collabs into categories bought more often, such as drinks and food. On the general-goods shelf alone, visits plateau at a few times a month.

How the Collabs Are Designed

Layer 2’s licensed collabs and layer 3’s crossover both sit at ¥110, but they aim at different things.

Daiso x Chiikawa: 28 Items in All

From April 14, 2026, Daiso rolled out 28 items in Daiso-exclusive designs, including stickers, key holders, drawstring bags and pouches, all based on the hugely popular character brand Chiikawa. The range was restocked nationwide from mid-June (eeo Media report, Anime Hack release information, both in Japanese).

The aim is to scale up an already popular collab. Twenty-eight items is a substantial volume for ¥110 products. In our view, the key is the total: a few thousand yen even if you buy everything. Buying every item is unrealistic when each piece of goods costs several thousand yen, but at ¥110 it is within reach. Fans get the thrill of completing the set at a low unit price.

The complete-the-set mathWhy 28 items can still feel affordable

28: Items in the Daiso x Chiikawa range
¥110: Price of each item
A few thousand yen: Total for the whole set

Twenty-eight items at ¥110 to ¥220 each add up to a few thousand yen.

Source: eeo Media (in Japanese)

The multiple restocks matter too. A 100-yen shop’s strength is its store count and its ability to keep supplying, so it can spread products out over time instead of turning the launch into a scramble.

Can Do and Watts x Chiikawa: Round 8

From April 16, 2026, Can Do and Watts, the other two of the big four, put new items on sale, including an A5 two-page-spread file, petit charms, a pencil case, B8 zipper bags and a mini memo key chain (Ure Pia Soken, in Japanese).

The notable thing is the number: round 8. In our view, a series is also a way of designing how information circulates. With each new drop, media and social media produce roundup articles, so release news spreads without extra ad spend. Chiikawa sells at both Daiso and Can Do/Watts, which also secures a large total of exposure across chains.

Seria x Sebon Star

Starting in mid-August 2025, Seria released 16 items in all, including trading card cases and mejirushi charms (charms for telling your items apart). Every product cost ¥100 (¥110 with tax) (Nijimen article, in Japanese).

The aim is to prompt purchases across a wide range of ages at once with a low-priced collab. Sebon Star is a long-running brand, so parents’ memories overlap with their children’s interest. In our view, making the trading card case the collab product is a practical stroke. This is not a collab that stops at design. When the tool fans actually use for oshi-katsu becomes the collab item, it keeps getting used in daily life after the purchase.

Can Do x Toy Story

From June 25, 2026, Can Do rolled out a wide lineup tied to the latest Toy Story film, from ¥110 stickers and memo pads to leisure bags and pouches (AEON Co., Ltd. press release, in Japanese). The aim was to build buzz around the film’s release and to capture summer leisure demand.

What matters is how the price range is built. The line held at ¥110 but raised the price of a few items, such as bags. In our view, this lets the shop make an easy entry point and a higher spend per customer work together. Someone who buys at ¥110 has a path, on the same shelf, to a product costing a few hundred yen.

Daiso x Sanrio “Poppin Cider”

From August 11, 2025, new flavors of the carbonated drink “Poppin Cider” featuring Sanrio characters (the family that includes Hello Kitty) joined the lineup: raspberry, lychee and mango (Sanrio official news, in Japanese).

This is a collab in drinks, not general goods. In our view, it is an investment in visit frequency. General goods, once bought, aren’t replaced for a while, but a drink gets consumed. Put a character on something that gets consumed and the oshi-katsu touchpoint moves from once a month to several times a week.

What Works and What to Watch

Lined up together, the cases show that the 100-yen shop’s strength lies less in any one product than in how it assembles shelves and price bands.

Type	What it is	Examples
Works: keep permanent generic fixtures that don’t depend on an IP	Make products any oshi’s fan can use, such as trading card cases and can-badge supplies, a standard shelf	Each chain’s oshi-katsu corner (prices from ¥110)
Works: make completion possible with a low unit price and many items	Keep the total to a few thousand yen even if you buy everything, offering the thrill of collecting on a small budget	Daiso x Chiikawa, 28 items
Works: let a series spread the news by itself	Stack up “round X” so roundup articles appear with each new drop	Can Do/Watts x Chiikawa, round 8
Works: maximize in-store exposure across chains	Don’t make it exclusive to one chain; roll out across several so people see it more often	Chiikawa (at both Daiso and Can Do/Watts)
Works: raise the price band for only some items	Use ¥110 as the entry point and place higher-priced items like bags on the same shelf to raise spend per customer	Can Do x Toy Story
Works: extend into categories that get consumed	Put collabs on frequently bought items such as drinks to raise visit frequency	Daiso x Sanrio “Poppin Cider”
Watch: how shortages and restocks are communicated	Popular items sell out fast; leaving fans unsure about restocks breeds distrust	Daiso x Chiikawa (restocked several times)
Watch: results aren’t disclosed, so decisions have little to go on	Sales and sell-out status of individual collabs are almost never published, which limits the grounds for investment decisions	100-yen shop IP collabs in general

Practical Points for Company Planners

Putting this into practice, here is the order to work through.

Plan backward from the ¥110 constraint. The premise is to design the license fee and manufacturing cost inside that price. To raise the unit price, split the price band for a few items, such as bags and pouches.
Launching at several chains takes channel-coordination skill. When a collab goes on sale at multiple chains at once, the IP holder has to manage each company’s contract and release timing centrally. IP-side managers need a setup that can bundle the distribution flow.
Build an annual collab calendar. For a series, real examples run on a cycle of about two to three months. Lining up rounds across the year makes roundup articles and word of mouth more likely.
Make a tool people use the collab product. Items fans actually use for oshi-katsu, such as trading card cases and storage supplies, stay in contact with the buyer longer after purchase than decorative items do. They answer everyday problems like those in ideas for storing oshi goods.
Decide and announce the restock policy before release. Shortages create buzz, but if no one knows whether restocks are coming, buzz turns into frustration. When you do restock, as with Daiso x Chiikawa, announcing the plan early changes the experience.
Consider categories beyond general goods. Extending into consumed categories such as drinks and food helps visit frequency.
Confirm numbers from primary sources. Teikoku Databank’s survey gives figures for the whole market and does not disclose the contribution of individual companies or collabs. To discuss the effect of an individual program, check the company’s earnings summaries and briefing materials directly.

Practical orderSeven points for planners

Start from ¥110License and cost inside the price
Coordinate chainsOne IP-side owner
Build a calendarRounds across the year
Make a useful toolCases and storage supplies
Announce restocksBefore release
Look beyond goodsDrinks and food
Check primary sourcesEarnings and briefings

At a low unit price, planning matters more than luck.

A pre-planning checklist:

You have run the numbers to see whether license and cost work within the ¥110 price constraint
You know the total if someone buys every item
If you are making it a series, you have set the schedule for the next round
If you are rolling out to several chains, you have coordinated contracts and release dates
You have confirmed it is practical as a tool people use
You have decided whether to restock and when to announce it
You have decided who makes the primary release announcement, your company or the IP side
You have defined the metrics to track (units sold, shelf turnover, repeat visits) up front

Notes From The Oshi Lab: ¥110 Guards the Way In

When people talk about oshi-katsu, they tend to mention concert ticket prices or photo cards that cost tens of thousands of yen. But everyday oshi-katsu is held up by ¥110 tools: sleeves so a can badge doesn’t get scratched, and small stands for displaying trading cards. This price band is why middle and high schoolers with no budget, and people who have only just started, can take part.

100-yen shops are strong not just because they are good at character collabs. The essence is that they made generic fixtures, unaffected by IP trends, a standard first. Even as booms change, fans of the next boom come to the same shelf. Few industries have this structure.

The companies’ challenge is that results are hard to see. Almost no company publishes the sales or sell-out status of individual collabs. There are statistics for the market as a whole, but the effect of an individual collab tends to go unmeasured as the next plan moves ahead. At a unit price of ¥110, gross profit per item is small, which is exactly why investment decisions lean on gut feeling without metrics like shelf turnover and repeat-visit frequency.

One more thing. A low price lowers the barrier to taking part, but as series multiply, the spending needed to get everything adds up. Even at ¥110 per item, chasing 28 items every round is no small sum over a year. Can the shops protect low prices as the way in and still leave a design that is fun even if you can’t collect it all? We see that as the next question for 100-yen shop oshi-katsu strategy.

FAQ

How big is the 100-yen shop market?

Teikoku Databank's fiscal 2025 outlook survey puts it at about ¥1.11 trillion for the big four chains, up 2.7% from the previous year. That is 1.5 times the ¥736.9 billion of ten years earlier.

Why do 100-yen shops now have permanent oshi-katsu corners?

Generic items not tied to any one IP, such as trading card cases and can-badge accessories, work for fans of any oshi. The ¥110 price also makes trying them easy.

How often do character collabs at 100-yen shops rotate?

In the cases covered here, a few weeks to a few months is typical. Serialized collabs such as Chiikawa add a new round roughly every two to three months.

Can licensed products work at a ¥110 price?

Yes, provided the license fee and manufacturing cost are designed to fit inside that price. Another option is "partial premiumization," pricing a few items higher, such as bags and pouches.

Where can you find release information for 100-yen shop collabs?

Each chain's official site and the IP holder's official news are the primary sources. Often, as with Daiso x Sanrio, the announcement comes from the IP side.