Message from the President
To Our Shareholders
Our company services the restaurant industry, and during the first part of the year ended March 31, 2012 the industry was seriously affected by the massive earthquake and associated nuclear crisis that struck Japan in March 2011. In the latter half of the year, however, a recovery in personal spending and business conditions ushered in a general improvement in the business environment. At Gurunavi, our performance also reflected the impact of the disaster on our industry, and that impact was visible in our quarterly earnings.
Despite the unprecedented challenge of this unforeseeable once-in-a-thousand-year event, we were able to reconfirm the real worth of our official website and, working with the 1,000 people in our offline organization, greatly increase our market presence as the restaurant industry was reminded of the necessity for infrastructure. We were able to improve our official website through work with search engines, to strengthen connections with social media and to conduct comprehensive SEO for our social network service, Chotto-GU. Our new and highly effective direct mail email service, Gurunavi e-DM, is growing steadily, and through the relaunch of our Gurunavi Food Market e-commerce business we improved levels of convenience for users and sellers and enlarged distribution channels.
Net sales for the year ended March 2012 decreased 3.7% to ¥24,302 million, while operating income decreased 1.7% to ¥3,312 million. Ordinary income decreased 0.9% to ¥3,375 million, and net income increased 5.3% to ¥1,909 million.
During the year ended March 2011 we actively pursued new projects and promoted Gurunavi as the restaurant world's information wholesaler, based on the concept of relaunching. Our aim is to create a new appreciation of Gurunavi's far-reaching services, and in the year ahead we will continue to dedicate our resources toward realizing the re-launch concept in the hearts and minds of our customers and business partners.
As always, we greatly appreciate your ongoing interest and support.
Since its establishment in 1996, Gurunavi has been a tireless supporter of the food service industry, aiming to become indispensable to restaurants and consumers alike by developing and growing a business based on operating the Gurunavi restaurant information search site.
The Gurunavi site has substantial power as an information media entity, with more than 28 million unique user visits per month and 9.26 million registered users generating 890 million page views per month. Users of our site support us as a platform that provides official information about restaurants.
In turn, we help restaurants to attract customers, and support them in other ways through our online platform, our organization of 1,000 people working in our call centers, our Gurunavi Academy, and by traveling around our member venues. We aim to provide comprehensive support to help our members build their clientele and increase sales.
In addition to these two elements of our business infrastructure, we are moving ahead with other new infrastructure elements for providing information, such as Gurunavi PRO, with its advances in the foodstuff-based stock business and touch-recognition in daily life, and with Gurunavi Concierge, an original concierge service aiming to become the ultimate means of bringing together people and IT.
