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MonotaRO

Japanese e-commerce company

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 16, 2026
Entity authorityQ11233609
Source-derived summary

MonotaRO Co., Ltd., is a Japanese e-commerce company of industrial supply products based in Osaka, Japan. The company was named to Forbes Asia "Best Under A Billion" list in 2013.

Overview

MonotaRO sells Maintenance, repair, and operations products through internet and catalogs, targeting small and mid-sized manufacturing companies. MonotaRO sells various product categories such as personal protective equipment, hand tools, fasteners, and lab supplies. It has more than 1 million customers in Japan.

The company name MonotaRO is an acronym for Maintenance, Repair & Operations. It also means to have sufficient number of products in Japanese. It is also a play on the name of the Japanese hero Momotaro.

Global expansion

In 2013, MonotaRO began web-based sales in Singapore. In 2014 web-based sales expanded to Malaysia, Thailand, and Australia.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “MonotaRO” is japanese e-commerce company. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through MonotaRO, Japanese and e-commerce, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2013, 2014—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 2000-10-19. For this dossier, MonotaRO, Japanese and e-commerce is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “japanese e-commerce company” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q11233609. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2013 and 2014.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “MonotaRO”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow MonotaRO primary sources, MonotaRO archive and MonotaRO research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “MonotaRO”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from MonotaRO” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.