It is now time to start the financial results announcement of ZOZO for the Q2 of FY 2022, ending in March. In order to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we would only be offering live streaming this time, and we plan to have the session until 5:35 P.M. After this, on a separate Zoom channel, we will have a Q&A session with institutional investors.
I would like to now introduce the participants. Representative Director, President, and CEO, Kotaro Sawada. Hello. Director, Executive Vice President, and CFO, Koji Yanagisawa. Hello. Director and COO, Fuminori Hirose. Hello. We have three presenters today. Our CFO, Yanagisawa, will take us through the business results.
Hello, I'm Yanagisawa. I'd like to walk you through the earnings results of the Q2 of FY 2022 ending in March. The presentation document we will be using today has already been uploaded to the RR's page of our website, so please take a look. By the way, our wardrobe, we're all wearing hoodies today because it's trending right now. Let's jump right in. Here are the highlights. Once again, we included a lot of manga featuring Kuritaro.
That's the hero wearing a hoodie like us, so please enjoy that. Here are the highlights of the Q2 . Our gross merchandise value, GMV, went up by 23.6% year-on-year, landing at JPY 229.5 billion. GMV, excluding the other GMV, went up by 12.7% year-on-year, landing at JPY 209 billion. Operating profit was up by 19.5%, landing at JPY 23.7 billion.
Operating profit margin was 11.4%, improving by 0.7 percentage points year-on-year. The progress rate against the full year target is for GMV 48.5%, OP 49.8% against the plan. It is progressing steadily. Next slide, please. This is page 7 of the document. These are the quarterly changes of the business results. In the Q2 , GMV, excluding the other GMV, was up by 13.5% year-on-year.
After the Tokyo Olympic Games, we temporarily experienced a decline of visitors to the site, but we sustained more than 10% of growth year-on-year nevertheless, and it is doing quite well.
Regarding operating profit, on top of GMV and the advertising business growth contributing to the increase of gross profit, we managed to reduce logistics costs and payment collection commission fee, which worked to improve OP by 18.1% year-on-year. With respect to OP margin, this is due to the fashion industry seasonality, both retail price and order value tend to be low in the Q2 , and it's quite difficult to generate a high margin.
However, we managed to land high at 10.9%. Next. I'd like to touch on the highlights of the business results. By the way, you see new characters appearing on this manga. This is page eight. Let's look at the increase/decrease analysis of the operating profit. OP was JPY 19.9 billion in the Q2 last year, and this year it was JPY 23.79 billion.
It improved by JPY 3.89 billion. Factors attributable to the growth of the OP were, there are three. The increase of consignment shop commission due to the GMV growth, JPY 5.28 billion. The increase of sales from the advertising business, JPY 1.2 billion. The growth of shipping revenue and payment settlement revenue coming from the GMV expansion, JPY 2.15 billion. On the other hand, factors that drove down the OP were, there are four of them.
The increase in fixed costs, including the increase in the number of employees, logistic bases, and outsourcing, -JPY 1.86 billion. The increase in variable costs correlating to the GMV growth, -JPY 2.21 billion. The increase of promotion expenses due to the active airing of TV commercial, -JPY 650 million. Other expenses, -JPY 20 million.
Next slide, please. This is page nine of your handout. The balance sheet. Compared to last year, cash and deposits shows decline, and treasury stock shows increase. This is because, as we have explained in the Q1 financial results announcement, we acquired treasury stocks to adapt ourselves to the Prime Market. For other points, there's really no major change. Next, page 10. This is our consolidated cash flows. For cash flows from operating activities, there was increase in income taxes paid, so it came down.
For cash flows from investing activities, there were expenses related to the new office and expansion of the logistics center and warehouses. We do see a change here. For cash flows from financing activities, as I have explained, there were gains and losses from purchase and disposal of the treasury stock. You do see a major change here.
Next slide, please. This is page 17 of your handout. Quarterly changes of GMV. During the Q2 , Z Holdings executed aggressive promotion, driving up the PayPay Mall GMV share by 3.5 points year-on-year. This now makes up for 8.3% of our GMV. That is a big jump. Also, the share of the other GMV, which started to be recorded from the Q2 of the previous year, amounted to 9.2% this quarter. Next slide, please.
This is page 21 of your handout. SG&A breakdown as of the quarter. As of the Q2 of this year, SG&A against GMV for the Q2 was 23%, down by 0.4% year-on-year. The ratio decrease is attributed to these main reasons.
One, with the application of the new revenue standard, points related expenses recorded as an SG&A expense last year is now deducted from net sales. This decreased the reward point related expenses by 0.5 point. Improvement of the logistics business efficiency resulted in a 0.3 point decline of logistics related expenses under payroll and staff costs. That's the second point.
Thirdly, improvement of economic conditions coming from the change of the payment collection company for credit card payment resulted in 0.3 point decline in payment collection commission. This is the ratio of payment collection commission against the GMV, so that was 0.3 point change. Mainly due to the change of packing materials, others decreased by 0.3 point. We changed our packing materials in the middle of the Q2 of the previous year.
Factors that increased SG&A are. There are two reasons. One, the advertising expenses related to TV commercial and other proactive measures. Free distribution of ZOZOGLASS plus 0.6 point. The second factor is the rent expenses going up by 0.2 point, coming from the increase of the logistics bases. Next slide, please. Page 22. Let's look at the OP and OPM changes.
In the Q2 , coupled with the GMV growth, we managed to improve gross profit thanks to the advertising business growth and reduction of SG&A. As a result, our OP margin improved by 0.4 point, landing at 10.9% year-over-year, which is at quite a high level. Next slide, please. Moving on to the main KPIs of ZOZOTOWN. We'll start with the number of buyers.
By the way, these KPIs hereafter do not include the results of PayPay Mall or B2B business. The number of total buyers was up by 160,000 from the previous quarter, amounting to 9.89 million, of which active members was 8.5 million, increasing by 140,000 against the previous quarter, and guest buyers increased by 20,000, finishing at 1.38 million. Regarding active members, newly recruited members we acquired last year were retained successfully.
Also during ZOZO Week and summer sale, we aired TV commercials, and this worked to attract customers. Guest buyers was at the same level as the Q1 . Next, please. This is page 26 of your handout. Number of shops on ZOZOTOWN.
As of the end of the Q2 , the number of shops was 1,502 shops, which is the net increase of 14 shops from the end of the last quarter. In the Q2 , we were able to welcome 38 shops onto our platform. To name a few, we brought on Chanel, Albion and other cosmetic brands, and RIMOWA and other luxury brands.
Next slide. Next slide, please. This is page 31. With respect to average retail price, it was JPY 3,264, down by 3.5% year-on-year. Although we did not experience a big change of the markdown ratio, we saw an increase of users who prefer lower priced items, and this pushed down the average retail price of the markdown products. Next, please. This is page 32. Now average order value.
AOV was JPY 7,346, down by 0.3% year-on-year. The number of items per order saw a slight increase, but impacted by the decline of average retail price, our AOV decreased year-on-year. Next slide, please. This is page 35. Our full year consolidated business performance forecast and estimated dividends for FY 2022, there's no change to the plan. We will progress keeping these targets in mind. This brings me to the end of my part. Now I'd like to pass the microphone over to Sawada, our Representative Director, President, and CEO.
Hello. I'd like to offer you supplementary information. In April of this year, I do remember that I shared with you our three pillars to this strategy. One is to increase the traffic outside of just buying. Secondly, step into the production support. Three, try selling technology licenses.
These are going to be the three pillars for us going forward. I have some news about these three pillars, so I would love to share them with you today. Next slide. The first one, which is about increasing the traffic outside of just buying, is that of course we would like to continue to increase the traffic of the purchasers, but along with it, we also want to focus on those who come to our platform to do research about fashion, and we want to offer them useful information when they do come.
We want to increase that type of users significantly. There is ZOZOGLASS, which is the technology that we developed in-house.
When you use this ZOZOGLASS, we can give you insight about your complexion color, and you can choose the best matching shade of the foundation, and it's been well-received as a service. It's not just about buying, but it's about offering fun experience to our users. That is the objective of this technology. Brands have their own content and information, and we want to be able to utilize such information on our ZOZOTOWN platform more.
We are ready to share a little bit more about that today. This is what it is. This is an OMO platform that ZOZO will be launching. It's titled ZOZOMO. We will start offering services under this brand name. This is not so much focused.
It's not geared so much towards the consumers, but this is more of a B2B service, and we do already offer several B2B services, and we'd like to group them together and operate them under the name ZOZOMO. As the first step of this, as I mentioned, different brands have information that's useful for consumers, namely data of the physical stores and their staff, the data that their staff have, and they are really positive about sharing their insight in this pandemic situation. We would like the brands to be able to use our platform to the fullest extent.
Some users are not interested in making a purchase on ZOZOTOWN, but they want to make a purchase on elsewhere, for example, in physical stores, but they want to see how that item can be stylized with other items, other pieces of clothing, so they can come to our platform and check that out. We're not just receiving data and information from the brands, but let's say that a user shows interest in trying out an item or seeing the item with their own eyes.
We can send the customer over to the physical store. That will be the first step of ZOZOMO. When we do that, what will be most important is this app called FAANS, which is indicated at the bottom of the screen. I did talk about this a little bit in the previous briefing session.
This application will help the staff of the brands working at physical stores. We'd like for them to download this app into their smartphone. When they use this app, the staff will be able to freely do promotions on the ZOZOTOWN platform. In the future, maybe they can offer videos, for example. Digital shift is progressing, and we've been saying that many times already.
Finally, things are starting to change, but it's not like 80 physical stores and 20 online. It's finally coming to 50%-50% ratio or so. We are aiming to create a world where the boundary between physical stores and digital is erased.
We have an infrastructure that allows people to make a purchase online, but we also want to go into the physical world so that we can start to offer new values to the staff and the brands. This is how the actual screen will look like. Next slide, please. This is how it will look like on ZOZOTOWN. On the left, you see the picture of the product, and this lets you see which physical stores have this particular item. That can be indicated on the screen.
Of course, there's detailed description of the product that gets displayed here as well. Then there is a button that says layaway. A layaway order. We don't want the user to be excited and go to the store and find out that the item has just been sold.
You can place in a lay order, a layaway order. Many brands started to show support for this, and we'll be able to launch this from January, and we'll be able to welcome brands onto this in a phased manner. When an item is layawayed, then the staff can use Fans, and the staff will be notified that a customer will come to pick up that item.
Then the customer will come, and then they will show the QR code to the staff. Then they'll be able to make the payment directly to the store, not through us. The customers will be making the payment to the cashier of the physical store directly. That's it for Fans and ZOZOMO. Next, I want to talk a little bit about the step into the production support.
As a matter of fact, I have already talked about this before. We have been serving as an infrastructure, but we want to step it up and go into production. We've been doing B2B business, and we have also gone into production, and we learned the hardships, the difficulties of it. We thought that there could be a way for us to support the brands with the production.
One way to make this happen that I can share with you today is that this also incorporates physical stores into this too. Together with Hankyu Department Store, we will set up a pop-up store of influencer brands in Hankyu for two weeks. There is the Umeda Hankyu, which is their flagship store.
In that department store, we will invite our influencer brands to come in and make the sales in this physical store. Next. These influencer brands, we help out with the planning. We also help out with the production management as well already. We've been selling these brands on ZOZOTOWN. Umeda Hankyu will come in as a place for sales. When you go to Umeda Hankyu, you'll be able to meet these influencers in person.
Also on the e-commerce site of Umeda Hankyu, these brands will be sold as well. What it means is that these influencer brands can now be purchased anywhere. Going back to what I just said, finally, we're seeing the ratio of digital versus physical stores being 50-50. This is one of the initiatives that will basically endorse that.
This is the third pillar, the last pillar. We'd like to try selling technology licenses. What are the types of technologies we have? We have measurement technologies. How many users do we have? For ZOZOMAT, it's been about 18 months since the launch, and the number of those who placed an order is 1.83 million, and the number of people who measure themselves is 1.88 million. For ZOZOGLASS, it's only been about 6 months, but 1.19 million people have placed an order for it, and 1.08 million have measured themselves with it.
You can see that many people do measure. For ZOZOMAT, you see more number of those who measured than the number of those who placed an order, because ZOZOMAT can be used by more than one person.
Sometimes when you develop a technology, you will launch it, and you discover that not a lot of people use that technology to measure themselves. Fortunately, we've been able to have a lot of people who measure themselves. In fact, ZOZOSUIT 2 has already been completed. I believe it can be used in so many different ways. So far, ZOZOSUIT has been used as a measurement tool by 2 million people.
These technologies should not just be used for ZOZOTOWN, but we'd like to share these technologies to external parties. We've been able to create the first business case of this. This is it. I believe that I did talk a little bit about this before. Finally, ZOZOMAT for Hands was created. This image might be familiar to you.
This is a technology for measurement that allows you to measure your hands. You might think that it's very easy to come up with the technology to measure hands if we already have something for the feet, but that's actually not the case, because you have to be able to make the measurement very accurately to even the smallest areas. This time, this is going to be a service on the web browser and not on the iOS and Android application.
This is quite a versatile technology. The first client of ZOZOMAT for Hands, and this is as a matter of fact, for the first time for us to share this information to you, we will be collaborating with BVLGARI to use ZOZOMAT for Hands. This will start from November 9th.
You might be able to imagine this very easily, but we can let the users measure their hands using ZOZOMAT. Based on the measurement data, the users can find out what will be the most recommended size of BVLGARI products are. Their items are quite expensive. If you know your measurement, if you know which ring size will work, then you can feel more at ease about making a purchase online. It'll be limited.
It'll be offered as a service for a limited period of time as a trial, and if this proves to be successful, then we can start to offer this service longer. Next, I want to talk about sustainability. In April briefing session, we shared this with you. We defined our sustainability statement. This has been made public already.
We are a platformer, and as a platformer, we put a lot of importance on the word tsunagu or connection. We have our eyes on the future. This is just going back to what I have explained before. We declare that we will engage in four key actions for sustainability. This is very normal, but we'd like to offer, first, sustainable fashion choices to improve users' experience, and two, create a made-to-order platform that generates zero waste. Three, we'd like to promote diversity and inclusion among everyone involved in fashion.
Fourth, we have been focusing on community development, but we want to contribute even further to the making of sustainable community. There are some initiatives that we are already engaging in. One, this is only a small step for us, but we open a page on ZOZOTOWN called Fashion and Sustainability, and it has basic information.
For example, the relationship between fashion and sustainability. What does organic mean? We'd like to be able to answer to those basic questions on our platform, and it'll be full of images. It is a very small step, but we believe that small steps are very important for an initiative like this. Aside from that, for sustainability, we do have other news. One is that we renovated our corporate website. ESG and CSR were already on our corporate website, but we wanted to expand that.
We posted sustainability information on the corporate website. We didn't just organize the information on our corporate website, but we reviewed this page of the corporate website to see what sort of information should be communicated from us. Please do come and see this.
For the governance as well, we do have quite a detailed information about, for example, the attendance of our board members in the board member meetings. Also, we have the English version of this as well. It took some time for us to make the English version of this, but it is now ready. Lastly, for the sustainability part, we published what is called sustainability report.
This is not a consolidated version just yet, but we decided to first share with you qualitative information in the form of sustainability report. In about two years or so, we'd like to create the consolidated sustainability report with statistics. This has all the information you need to have about sustainability efforts. You would see different people in this report answering the interviews as well. You see the globe.
The image of the globe. We created the design using excess fabric, so we did put a lot of passion behind the making of this report. That's it for the sustainability part. The last part of my presentation is about ZOZO Championship 2021. Next slide, please. It was only a few days ago that this championship ended. This time we were able to have yet another great championship. Hideki Matsuyama won the championship, and it was well-received in the media as well.
We are a sponsor of this championship, and that's why you see the name of ZOZO there. We believe that we were able to have a wonderful championship. Thank you. That is it from my side. That concludes the financial results announcement of ZOZO for the Q2 of FY 2022. Thank you very much for your attention.