Top Message


New Year's Greeting for 2025

Our Founding Aspirations

Kinya Seto, Director and Chairman Kinya Seto, Director and Chairman

Work with respect for each other.
Test small changes quickly, and adapt based on the results of those changes.
Follow these principles, and MonotaRO will continue to grow.


The founding of a company includes a mission to society. The first mission is to provide new value to society. All industries have existing companies trying to optimize in their own environments. To enter and win there, a new company needs to bring new value which society demands, but which does not yet exist.

When I founded MonotaRO in 2000 with my colleagues and entered the indirect material market, I sensed that we could provide new value through transforming the complex distribution of the indirect material market by utilizing database marketing through the Internet. My colleagues, who also shared a commitment to this value, and I have changed the mechanism of indirect material procurement by constructing and providing a new and efficient purchase platform so that we can distribute sufficient indirect materials, without wasted time and effort, to all businesses nationwide in Japan.

However, the new value that we create must be continually subjected to scrutiny in order to evolve and develop further. If not, this would mark the end of our mission to society. The second most important mission, therefore, is that the company must continue to evolve in order to keep making contributions to society. In Japanese, "kaisha", the word for company, is written by reversing the characters for "shakai", the word for society. I wanted to realize a better society by creating a good company. If each person working at MonotaRO comes to think MonotaRO as a society in which he or she belongs, the evolution necessary for our existence can be incorporated into the system.

In order to accomplish that, first, we must work with respect for one another. We join society’s circle of trust when this mutual respect does not just stay limited inside of MonotaRO, but also expands to the world at large. I believe that Monotaro can continue to grow by consistently testing small changes and then evolve by adapting to the results of those changes.


Founder and Honorary Advisor Kinya Seto