PARK 24 Co., Ltd.: PROFILE

■ The market: Japan, a country with more cars than parking spaces.

  Japan owns one tenth of the world's vehicles*. This makes Japan the world's second biggest car-owning nation and the number of total vehicles owned continues to increase. Unfortunately the Japanese government has been slow to provide the infrastructure to support high vehicle ownership. Park 24 considers vehicle infrastructure to be complete when it includes good cars, good roads and good parking facilities. In Japan right now, only the cars are good. Adequate parking space for these cars is very much lacking. Convenient parking is something which the government ordinarily would be expected to provide motorists, but as it has not Park 24 has taken on the challenge. The potential market for parking facilities in Japan is worth trillions of yen. Park24 is a pioneer in this field and has reached its current size in a relatively few years. However, we have only scratched the surface of the potential market.

*72,860,000 as of March, 1998 (Ministry of Transport)

■ The company: Park24 is at the forefront of Japan's parking facility business.

  Since its establishment more than two decades ago, PARK 24 has been active in businesses centered on automobile parking.
  In 1972, PARK 24 become the first company in Japan to install meters in hospital parking facilities. In 1989 PARK 24 introduced the forerunner of today's "Times" chain of 24 hour metered parking lots. The first of these parking lots opened in Tokyo in 1991. As of October 1998 the total capacity of "Times" parking lots includes over 21,000 metered parking spaces in 2,200 locations. On average, 250 new spaces are added per month.
  Future plans include a parking reservation system, multi-function parking facilities jointly operated with firms in other business fields, and "Park & Charge" spaces for electric vehicles. These value-added businesses are based on the company's belief that automobile parking is a service industry.
  To expand parking lot operations, PARK 24 uses the "clean parking" concept. Clean parking may be roughly defined as parking and related services available when, where and as long as needed, thus easing the strain on urban motorists.

As a leading specialised parking lot operator, Park 24 will continue to create convenient traffic facilities for Japan's cities.