Marui Co., Ltd. (株式会社丸井) is a Japanese multinational retail company which operates a chain of department stores in Tokyo as well in other major Japanese cities. They are best known for their women's fashion and accessories, which are aimed at the 25–35 age range.
In 2003–4 the company generated US$2.75 billion in revenues. Its president is Hiroshi Aoi.[1]
Name and logo
The company's name (丸井) is a combination of the name of its predecessor's parent company "Maru-ni" (丸二) and the name of its president "Ao-i" (青井). The name of the department store is customarily written in Japanese as "マルイ", in katakana.
The department store's famously ambiguous present-day logo is a symbol resembling "○I○I", and read "marui". The Japanese symbol "○" (not to be confused with the Latin letter "O" or "o") is read "maru", meaning "circle" or "zero". The symbol "I" ostensibly represents the numeral "1", which can be read "i" in Japanese (note that the Latin letter "I" is also the romanized representation of the Japanese hiragana "い", a third visual pun).
Despite being read as numerals, the symbol is written "OIOI" in Latin letters on the company's website, though the address of the website itself is "www.0101.co.jp". The "○I" in the logo is repeated, partly for aesthetics and also as an inference to the "0101" ending of the phone number of all Marui department stores.