UNIQLO Tries To Expand Its Territory In China

To become the world's largest clothing retailer, Asia's largest chain store.

The so-called "fast fashion" (fast-fashion) apparel retail industry is currently under the leadership of the Spanish InditexSA (ITX-ES) Zara brand, and Sweden's Hennes&MauritzAB (HMB-SE) is also expanding rapidly in the world. The main reason is that consumption habits change, and people prefer cheaper and cheaper clothing than high priced products.

FastRetailing said that the company's goals surpassed Zara and H&M in 10 years, and the company continued to open new stores, especially in Asia.

Uniqlo's brand fashion orientation, unlike other competitors, is based on leisure and economic benefits, such as wool coats, jeans or thermal shirts.

FastRetailing executive director NaokiOtoma claims: "we do not sell clothes that live for only one season."

In the domestic market, Uniqlo has set off an upsurge to break the rules of many Japanese enterprises.

Fast stipulates that English meetings must be conducted in all business meetings with foreign participants. By 2012, all e-mails should be written in English; and the number of foreign employees is expected to exceed Japanese in 2015.

Fast's style is rapidly becoming a model of the Japanese industry. Other Japanese companies are facing double obstacles. Apart from shrinking domestic demand, there is also a lack of high-level executives with global market expertise and language skills.

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It is estimated that Uniqlo has 844 stores in Japan at the end of August this year (2010), and there are 76 in China.

By 2020, the total number of branches in China is estimated to be as high as 1000.

In October 31st, Zara had only 60 stores in China.

Otoma said Uniqlo also hopes to enter the market in India and Brazil in 5 years.

Although foreign businessmen in India can only occupy a small number of market interests through local partners, Otoma claims: "according to our research, these restrictions may disappear in a year."

In the key US market, Uniqlo is rebuilding its brand positioning to make up for the mistakes of early operation.

The company is now evacuated from the suburban shopping malls, leaving only a single store in the SoHo District of Manhattan.

Fast is now planning to open an online store to capture more American consumers' vision and plan to open flagship store in Fifth Avenue, New York, in Ming (2011).

Although Fast has great vision of global development, its performance has been bumpy after a period of lucrative profit in the past year.

Fast's same store sales in Japan decreased by 15% in November, shrinking for fourth consecutive months, the number of customers coming down by 7%, and the sales of single customers by 8.1%.

In October, Fast expected that the net profit of the company will drop for the first time in 4 years, reducing 17% to 51 billion yen (US $608 million).

Although net sales are expected to rise by 5% to 856 billion yen, the company's share price is down 27% this year.

Analysts said that Japan has more than 800 Uniqlo stores, the market is saturated, consumer attitudes are conservative.

Otoma points out that Fast itself still needs a lot of learning, especially for foreign competitors.

"We can learn things from H&M and Zara," he declares. "They are developing fast and actively developing new business space, whether successful or not.

In contrast, Japanese companies are over cautious about their operations. "