The Shop Where
a ¥330 Belt Becomes RM17.70

Ghosts, and a state flag

Walk in, and ghosts hang from the ceiling. Halloween decorations: orange pumpkins, black cloth, white phantoms. And there among them, for some reason, is the flag of Sarawak. Surrounded by ghosts, and still loyal to home. Very Sarawak.

The store is big and bright. The signs come in English, Chinese, Korean and Japanese: four languages to tell you, “Kitchen tools are here.” Japanese signage is not common in Malaysia, so for a Japanese shopper it feels a little like coming home.

Sold in Japanese, as is

I stopped in front of the sweets. Salted lemon, salted tomato, Shine Muscat grape, Unshu mandarin throat drops. The packaging is entirely in Japanese. Not one word translated. Most Malaysian shoppers probably cannot read it. They buy it anyway, because Japanese they cannot read works as a label that says “made in Japan”. They are throat drops, after all: the Japanese works on you too.

Canned coffee without sugar

I put coffee in the basket too: drip coffee for three cups, and a can of black coffee. Malaysia, in fact, grows coffee. But what grows here is mostly Liberica and Robusta; Arabica is imported, and there is not much of it. So I live in a coffee-growing country and go looking for Arabica at a 100-yen shop. Or rather, an RM5.90 shop.

Canned coffee is a more serious matter. Malaysia has little canned coffee to begin with, and what there is always contains sugar.

In Malaysia, “less sugar” means sugar right up to the limit of what will dissolve. “No sugar” means the original sweetness stays, but the staff will not add any extra sugar or syrup. Half of that is a joke. The other half is true.

So unsweetened Japanese black canned coffee is a rare treasure. At Daiso, it costs about RM5.8. No sugar, and at that price: in this country, that is close to a miracle.

Sweets and tea are the same. If you want sugar-free or low-calorie sweets, or unsweetened tea, with plenty of choice, quickly and cheaply, there is nowhere but Daiso. In an area with many Japanese residents, like Mont Kiara in Kuala Lumpur, you might find them elsewhere, but probably for more. It is no accident that the sweets wall was full of “sugar-free” and “25% fewer calories”. Selling unsweet things in a sweet country: Daiso stocks what the discount stores do not.

¥330 becomes RM17.70

Now, the belt. It looks like leather and does not feel cheap. I needed a belt, so I was delighted.

At home I looked at the back of the tag. Under materials: polyurethane. Not leather after all. And since I am still delighted, I call that a win for polyurethane.

The price tag, though, is almost too honest. The Japanese tag is still attached: ¥300, or ¥330 with tax. Stuck on top is the Malaysian one: RM17.70, about ¥690. Almost double. No attempt to hide it whatsoever. I rather like that honesty.

The paper basket on the next shelf: RM17.70 on top of the ¥300 tag, too. On the back of its tag, again, Portuguese and “MADE IN CHINA”. Do the maths, and RM17.70 is exactly three times RM5.90. Divide the Japanese price by ¥100, multiply by RM5.90. You do not even need a calculator.

Everyday items follow the same ratio. Most cost RM5.90, about ¥230: again roughly double Japan’s ¥110. The price rose from RM5.30 to RM5.90 in 2017, and has stayed at RM5.90 for nine years since. Every bit as stubborn as Japan’s ¥100.

Cost alone does not set the price

Judged on cost alone, there is no reason to charge more than in Japan. Much of what is sold in Japan and in Malaysia is made in the same overseas factories. If anything, Malaysia, close to China and importing everything from food to cars from there, may well pay less to bring goods from China than Japan does. And yet the price doubles.

Having lived in Singapore for many years, and in Hong Kong for about two, I know this mechanism well. In Singapore, every rent bill taught it to me. Prices are set not by cost but by rent, wages and the depth of the local wallet. Malaysia looks a lot like Singapore fifteen years ago. Daiso in Singapore, by the way, stayed at S$2 for 19 years, from its opening in 2003 until 2022, absorbing even the GST itself. It finally gave in, and now starts at S$2.18.

There is a basic rule of business I have seen among Chinese merchants in Singapore and Hong Kong: if it sells at a higher price, sell it as high as it will go. Cost has nothing to do with it. That is not a criticism. It is a thoroughly rational idea: the market sets the price.

Daiso itself has owned up to as much. In a 2020 article, an executive explained that labour costs and rents had risen sharply across Asia. Even in Taiwan, where tariffs are low, an item costs about ¥180, and almost all of the roughly ¥80 difference from Japan is labour. Some goods are sourced from China, yet Daiso’s stores in Japan are cheaper than those in China (about ¥160).

Another article puts it more bluntly: Japanese shoppers will not buy unless it is cheap, so an item sold for ¥200 elsewhere is sold for ¥100 in Japan alone.

In other words, Malaysia is not expensive. Japan is too cheap. A belt that crossed the sea with its ¥330 tag still on made that point in person.

Double the price, next to the discounters

Malaysia has cheaper shops. The largest single-price chain, Eco-Shop, has 462 outlets, charging RM2.60 in West Malaysia and RM2.80 in East Malaysia: less than half of Daiso. Even the discounters charge RM0.20 more once they cross the sea to East Malaysia. That RM0.20 is probably the ferry fare. MR.DIY, a home-centre-style chain, has 1,610 outlets in Malaysia alone (as of June 2026). Its sign reads “Always Low Prices”.

Line them up, and something stands out. Japan’s ¥110 is about RM2.84: almost the same as Eco-Shop’s RM2.80 in East Malaysia. Daiso in Japan sells at the same price as the cheapest shop in Malaysia. Bring Japan’s 100-yen shop here, and it would be the cheapest chain in the country.

MR.DIY sources around 70% of its goods from China, reportedly. And in East Malaysia, with less competition, some of its stores sell up to twice as much as a typical store. Across the sea, there is still room.

Daiso, right beside them, charges double. It is not competing on price. What it sells is Japanese quality, and a Japanese face. Down to the ¥330 on the tag.

Through a business lens

Occupational hazard, so here are four lessons.

First, how prices are set. Many people set prices by cost: add a margin, and that is the price. Daiso’s prices do not seem to be set that way. Rent and wages, of course, but also the balance against Eco-Shop and MR.DIY next door, its competitiveness among them, and the strength of the “Japan” brand. Weighing all of that, it settles on a single point: RM5.90. A ¥300 item is three times that. The yardstick is not cost but the Japanese price tag. Build up from cost, and you will never read pricing abroad.

Second, how to carry “Japan”. The sign says DAISO JAPAN in large letters. Yet the back of my belt’s tag says “MADE IN CHINA”. The warnings are in Japanese, English and Portuguese, and the importer is “DAISO BRASIL”. A tag made in a Chinese factory for Japan and Brazil hangs, unchanged, on a shelf in Borneo. I never expected to read a Brazilian importer’s name in a Daiso in Borneo. No translation, no redesign. And yet, or rather because of that, the image of Japan seeps in naturally. Doing nothing extra becomes brand-building in itself. I find it brilliantly done.

Third, a single price means different things in different countries. Japan’s ¥100 is a promise of cheapness. Malaysia’s RM5.90 is closer to a promise of “no need to think” and “Japanese quality”. The same single-price model, selling different value.

Fourth, choosing partners. The SOLD tape on my throat drops read, in small letters, “Managed by Newniso”. Newniso Group, it turns out, was Daiso’s first franchisee in Malaysia, and has run twenty-odd stores since 2008. There is also Daiso Malaysia Group, with a Malaysian chairman and 73 stores (as of 2025), while the two stores in Kuching are “DAISO by AEON”, run by AEON. Three companies sharing one sign. If you are opening in high-rent malls, teaming up with local companies or the malls themselves is the fastest way in.

Daiso Another Day

Twist the Bond film Die Another Day, and you get Daiso Another Day: buy it cheap at Daiso another day, back in Japan.

Still, I have no regrets. The belt is holding up my trousers perfectly well today. For about ¥690, one problem solved. Even at twice the Japanese price, it was there when I needed it. That may be what a shop is really worth. Even if it is polyurethane.