551HORAI was founded in 1945 in Namba, Osaka by the late Lo Bangqiang (former president of Horai Co., Ltd.) and two other friends. Eventually, the three of them worked tirelessly to grow "Horai," which means Shangri-La in Chinese.

Then, in order to further develop the business, the three of them each became independent, with Lo Bangqiang establishing Horai Co., Ltd. to continue the business.

At that time, Lo Bangqiang was thinking of some good ideas to make his store more familiar and memorable to customers. However, he couldn't come up with any good ideas...

One day, as I was reaching for a cigarette to take a break, an idea struck me!!

At that time, Lo Bangqiang was smoking a foreign cigarette called 555.

The number caught my eye.

Kanji and kana characters were only used in China and Japan. Also, horizontal characters were still unfamiliar to Japanese people at that time. However, numbers are easy to remember and are universal.

Also, since the phone number of the main store at the time was 64-551, the name 551HORAI was born with the intention of "Let's aim to be the best in both taste and service!"