Code of Conduct
Our Commitment: Creating Value for Five Stakeholders Value for Customers - Value for Employees - Value for Business Partners - Value for Society - Value for Shareholders
The UNITED ARROWS Group is supported by five different stakeholders: customers, employees, business partners, society, and shareholders.
We are committed to creating and enhancing value for each stakeholder (value for customers, value for employees, value for business partners, value for society, value for shareholders) to achieve our corporate philosophy.
The most important is the creation of value for customers. Only after we successfully create value for customers can we create value for the other four stakeholders. The UNITED ARROWS Group also believes that enhancing value for the other four stakeholders in a balanced manner will ultimately improve the value for customers.
The UNITED ARROWS Group’s Code of Conduct describes how we should think and act to realize our corporate philosophy. We will always keep the Code of Conduct in mind and maintain our commitment to achieving the corporate philosophy, thereby contributing to society. We will review the Code of Conduct on regular basis to keep up with changes in society and respond to requests from society and will act in accordance with the Code of Conduct to continue to contribute to society.
5 Values
UNITED ARROWS Group’s Code of Conduct
We consider anyone who cares about the UNITED ARROWS Group to be our customer, including customers of our physical stores and e-commerce platforms.
For us, creating value for customer means being attentive; creating a sense of beauty in our services, products, and places; and building trusting relationships with our customers by providing sincere hospitality.
We believe that we can keep growing only when we create value for customers by remembering that the satisfaction and impression our customers gain through our hospitality will lead to the development of affinity with customers and encourage them to make initial and return visits.
We have established specific guidelines for the creation of value for customers, such as the Basic Sales Policy, Basic Product Policy, and Compliance Manual.
The key codes of conduct developed based on these guidelines are as follows:
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As our employees are associates who agree to our corporate philosophy and work with us to realize it, we call them “members.”
Our group’s corporate name, UNITED ARROWS, embodies arrows that fly straight toward the same target together. UNITED ARROWS represents a group of individual members with different personalities working together to realize the same corporate philosophy (goal). With this policy in mind, we aim to manage our human resources well.
For our group, creating value for employees means to make sure that our employees improve their abilities, reach their full potential, and feel happy in their work at our group.
To achieve this goal, we believe that it is important to provide our members, who value their community and enhance productivity, with opportunities to upgrade their abilities and to reward our members according to their performance.
We have established specific guidelines for the creation of value for employees, such as the Handbook for a Management System for Human Resources and Compliance Manual.
The key codes of conduct developed based on these guidelines are as follows:
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We consider all parties with whom we have business connections to be our business partners.
In particular, product suppliers must comply with the Action Guidelines for Business Partners of UNITED ARROWS LTD.
We believe that creating value for business partners means establishing a business relationship with business partners indispensable for our business that benefits both parties.
To achieve this goal, we understand that it is important to do business on an equal footing while sharing a common goal in a spirit of gratitude.
We have established guidelines for the creation of value for business partners, such as the Basic Product Policy and Compliance Manual.
The key codes of conduct developed based on these guidelines are as follows:
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We consider any environment surrounding our group to be society.
Creating value for society means building a relationship of trust with society by paying taxes, complying with national and regional laws and regulations, respecting local culture and customs, and giving consideration to the conservation of the global environment in our efforts for the “continuous creation of standardss for lifestyle culture,” which is our corporate philosophy.
To achieve this goal, we believe that it is important to develop a corporate environment and culture that encourages each of us to take part in social activities so that our company and members will contribute to the development of society.
We have specific guidelines for the creation of value for society, such as the Sustainability Statement, Materiality for Sustainability, and Compliance Manual.
The key codes of conduct developed based on these guidelines are as follows:
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We consider the people who help us to realize our corporate philosophy by holding our company shares to be our shareholders.
For us, creating value for shareholders means to continue to grow and improve our corporate value in the medium- and long-term by continuing business operations based on the corporate philosophy.
To achieve this goal, we believe that it is important for us to make sure each of our members engages in the management and business activities of the company responsibly, to establish a system that can prevent fraud and scandals, and to report the current status of the company to shareholders in a timely and appropriate manner.
We have established specific guidelines for the creation of value for shareholders, such as the Corporate Governance Policy and Disclosure Policy.
The key codes of conduct developed based on these guidelines are as follows:
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We will listen sincerely to our customers’ opinions, consider them valuable messages, and respond promptly and honestly in order to build a relationship of trust with our customers. We will also organize and utilize the information on a daily basis so that we can develop products and improve services.
By providing products that satisfy and impress customers in an appropriate manner, we aim to meet the five wants of customers so that they can buy when they want, what they want, at the price they want, in the quantity they want, and where they want.
We will continue providing product information when requested by customers and other information useful to customers, including making representations in accordance with laws governing products and services.
In order to build and maintain relationships of trust with our customers, we will make every effort daily to continue to improve the safety and quality of services, products, and places, the three elements needed to ensure satisfaction of and create a positive impression on customers.
Should a problem occur, we will build a framework to prevent recurrence by raising awareness and introducing systems to make improvements.
Being fully aware of the importance of protecting personal information, we will establish and maintain a management system for the proper protection of personal information.
The Customer Service Desk serves as UNITED ARROWS LTD.' point of contact for customer service, and is staffed by experts who support customers via phone calls, emails, and a chat tool to raise the level of service quality throughout the company. Customer feedback is summarized and shared across the company on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis, and analyzed to improve customer satisfaction.
We sometimes receive comments from customers who thank us for our services and products. UNITED ARROWS LTD. has compiled these words of appreciation into an “Arigato Report” that is shared throughout the company to further improve customer satisfaction.
At the same time, we also share opinions and complaints from customers as valuable messages from them, identify issues and problems by analyzing them, and use them to further improve product quality and customer service and to prevent recurrence of problems.
In order to deliver safe and secure products to our customers, we have established our own quality standards based on past cases and various laws and regulations, and check our quality and safety against the standards. Product procurement personnel work closely with the Quality Control Department to ensure proactive quality control with the cooperation of suppliers.
In the unlikely event of a serious problem, a cross-departmental team consisting of related departments, including product procurement personnel and the Quality Control Department, promptly discusses the issue and works to respond to customers in compliance with laws and regulations.
Customers’ personal information is a very important asset to customers and to UNITED ARROWS LTD. Our company has established a policy for protecting personal information as well as an information security policy. To prevent accidents such as unauthorized access and information leakage, we have high level security systems and are working to protect customers' information appropriately.
Our group places the highest priority on securing stable employment for our members and promotes personnel policies that support their dreams, motivation, professionalism, passion, goals, vitality, a sense of growth, happiness, and a sense of meaning and value at work so that they can work energetically and feel safe.
We will develop a mechanism to comply with labor law by developing a work environment where various types of harassment are unlikely to occur and promoting work-style reform to enhance productivity and eradicate excessive overtime. In addition, we support employees’ physical and mental health by offering access to occupational physicians and public health nurses.
Recognizing that our members have diverse personalities, abilities, racial backgrounds, ethnicities, nationalities, religions, ideas, beliefs, genders, physical characteristics, gender identities, and sexual orientations, our group provides all members with equal opportunities to make full use of their abilities and to develop their skills without discrimination.
In addition, we endeavor to ensure fair and impartial evaluation and treatment, appropriate provision and sharing of information, appropriate allocation of human resources, and high productivity and remuneration so that every member can feel satisfied.
Our group will provide an environment where our members can learn basic competencies, knowledge, and skills and have opportunities to improve their skills through the in-house soliciting system and to take on challenging work.
Furthermore, we will create a work environment where every member feels that their abilities are continually growing and where they can work hard while learning from and encouraging one another.
UNITED ARROWS LTD. has developed a variety of personnel systems to create a corporate culture in which employees can play an active role. To ensure appropriate career path designing and personnel allocation, we have a Target Management System, which serves as the basis of the personnel appraisal; a Talent Management System for the centralized management of records of personnel assessment and changes; and a 360-Degree Assessment Multifaced Observations where several persons involved assess the speech and behavior of officers above a certain class. Furthermore, we conduct an Employee Awareness Survey every year to reflect the opinions of employees in our management.
The Sales Master’s Program is designed with four tiers so that excellent sales specialists are granted the title so that they can develop their career path. Persons who are certified are those who have been highly evaluated both qualitatively and quantitatively. The qualitative aspects include their smiles, voice tones, behaviors, and fashion that are ahead of others, and attractive traits in them that cause several customers to support them, whereas the quantitative aspects include their sales records.
UNITED ARROWS University is an educational institution for all UNITED ARROWS LTD.’ employees. Various lectures are given by face to face and online to employees at the Head Office and stores throughout Japan. The lectures cover a wide range of subjects, including training to enhance customer service skills and product knowledge, training for new employees, and management training for managers. In training for new employees, which we place particular emphasis on in human resource development, we strive to deepen the participants’ understanding of the company philosophy through lectures and group work.
UNITED ARROWS LTD. works to create a fair and impartial work environment where there is no discrimination based on age, gender, nationality, or religion. We strive to create a working environment where employees can continue working at our company even after they experienced various life events by providing a number of systems such as maternity leave, parental leave, childcare leave, family care leave, and shorter working hours. We have received the Kurumin mark by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare as a company that actively promotes childcare support.
We will always conduct business on an equal footing with business partners and be grateful for their supply, purchase, and cooperation. In addition, we commit to our policy of growing together in a synergetic manner by learning together and continuing to sharpen our ingenuity.
Moreover, to promote innovative product development, sales, and advertising activities, we well understand and respect the creativity of designers and creators.
With the goal of a sustainable society and environment, we work together with business partners in promoting initiatives to ensure compliance with laws and regulations, respect for human rights, consideration of the environment, appropriate quality control, traceability, and transparency throughout the supply chain.
We place high priority on ensuring fair and impartial business transactions, and we will never receive nor offer unethical inappropriate business entertainment, gifts, or personal benefits.
We will never engage in bribery and corruption as well as any acts prohibited by the Act on Prohibition of Private Monopolization and Maintenance of Fair Trade, etc., including unjust low-price sales, boycotting and abuse of dominant bargaining positions.
We will also develop a system to monitor our compliance with such rules.
In order to provide safe and secure products to our customers, we cherish mutual trust with business partners, and work collaboratively to improve the quality of product by respecting human rights, giving consideration to the environment, and ensuring appropriate quality control. At QC meetings with major business partners, we share information for better manufacturing, such as by encouraging them to beware to prevent faulty products and sharing good practices for upgrading products.
UNITED ARROWS LTD. has established systems and rules to prevent the violation of the Anti-Monopoly Act and the Subcontract Act, which the Company regards as especially important to ensure fair trade with business partners, supports employees in understanding the law well, and promotes necessary activities to make them known to everyone by using video content on the intranet.
To prevent, detect, and correct violations of laws, improprieties, or unethical practices committed by officers of our company, the Compliance Consultation Desk is established, and a question box for business partners is set at the reception desk of the Head Office. In addition, the whistle-blowing system is made known to everyone in the company, and a compliance manual is prepared to raise awareness.
Many of the products and services that we handle are associated with intellectual property rights such as trademark rights and copyrights.
With internal regulations for management put in place to control and protect our rights appropriately, we are striving to prevent the infringement of rights of third parties through measures including advancing internal education and stepping up a check system.
By correctly understanding and respecting creativity, we at the Company are promoting initiatives to provide products and services to our customers.
We pursue the “continuous creation of standards for lifestyle culture” and will continue to take initiative with sincerity and a sense of beauty to realize a sustainable society and environment in which everyone can be themselves and live enriched lives.
With the cooperation of our business partners, we promote business while giving due consideration to human rights by abolishing child labor, forced labor, discrimination, and bullying and by ensuring safe work environments and the rights of workers.
We work to prevent corrupt practices and do not engage with antisocial forces while systematically cooperating with relevant agencies and organizations, such as the police.
Toward the realization of a sustainable society and environment, we strive to reduce our environmental impact by promoting the use of environmentally friendly materials, procuring raw materials friendly to biodiversity and animal welfare, reducing CO2 emissions, and limiting the waste generated in our business.
We will also fulfill our responsibilities as a corporate citizen through activities that contribute to local communities, such as emergency relief in the event of a natural disaster.
UNITED ARROWS LTD. has supported areas hit by natural disasters such as earthquakes and heavy rains to recover. We work with customers through our sale activities. For example, a portion of the sales of some products and items brought in by customers during a trade-in program are used for support activities. Furthermore, when a natural disaster that we regard as requiring urgent actions occurs, we hold a campaign to raise funds at stores and send clothing as relief supplies.
We will continue to work together with our customers to provide support so that affected areas can recover as soon as possible.
At all physical stores of all brands, we are rolling out activities to donate 10 yen to a forest conservation organization each time a customer refrains from using a shopping bag offered by our stores. Customers who participate in this will receive 500 UA miles in return. We support the development of forests in Japan while sharing the same eco-friendly mindset with customers that value limited resources.
Our company is taking various measures to reduce the environmental load of its business activities.
We are working to reduce electricity consumption, we positively use LED lighting at our stores, and power suppliers of some stores have been switched to operators using renewable energy.
In addition, in order to reduce waste generation, ensure sustainable sourcing, production, and use of resources, we are changing the materials used in shopping bags for some brands, actively using certified and used paper and promoting downsizing of the size.
UNITED ARROWS LTD. has established a whistle-blowing system to prevent, detect, and resolve violations of laws and regulations, improprieties, and unethical practices as early as possible. In addition, we have established a system to ensure that even minor scandals and fraudulent practices are not overlooked. We also conduct educational activities such as Web Tests for all employees.
We will continue to strive to create an environment that does not allow improprieties, including harassment and violation of laws, to occur within the company.
We promote active communication with shareholders and investors by disclosing accurate information on our group in a fair and timely manner on a continual and voluntary basis at general meetings of shareholders and through IR activities.
We will also provide opinions obtained through such communication back to management so that we can promote improvement of corporate value.
We respect the rights of our shareholders and will take appropriate measures to effectively secure their rights, including voting rights at general meetings of shareholders, treat all shareholders equally according to their shares, and allow minority shareholders to exercise their legitimate rights.
We will not use nor disseminate unpublished information illegally, including insider information, either for our own or a third party’s benefit.
We will also set rules for the appropriate management of insider information and prevention of insider trading, make them known to our members, and conduct awareness-raising activities.
UNITED ARROWS LTD. has been offering its stock to the public since its foundation. Since the company first went public, it has been holding personal IR meetings and small meetings with the President for shareholders and investors in Japan and overseas in addition to financial results briefings. Dialogue with shareholders and investors gives us fresh ideas about efficient management of funds and business operations. In addition, we are working toward more transparent management by establishing a disclosure policy and a system to disclose information in a timely manner. Outside Directors also actively take part in the IR activities.
UNITED ARROWS LTD. views maximizing the value for shareholders as the company’s materiality. The company's basic policy is to maximize the value for shareholders by promoting continuous growth, expansion, and increase in performance to raise the earnings per share, and by ensuring stable dividends, stock splits, share repurchases, and retirements that are linked to business performance. Going forward, we will continue to pursue a dividend policy that balances investment and shareholder returns with increased value for shareholders in view.
In order to provide shareholders with an environment where they can exercise their rights appropriately at Shareholders’ Meeting, UNITED ARROWS LTD. has taken various measures, such as sending convocation notices considerably ahead of the meeting so that shareholders have enough time to consider the agenda, and to translate reference documents into English if it is regarded necessary in consideration of the proportion of overseas investors. In addition, we are a member of the Voting Rights Electronic Exercise Platform so that our shareholders can exercise their voting rights more conveniently. The company will continue to promote initiatives such as reviewing the management method of Shareholders’ Meeting, including the holding of “virtual shareholders’ Meeting”.
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