Why Did UNIQLO Grow Up Quickly And Healthily In The Past, But Now There Are Problems?

According to the world clothing shoes and hats net, in January 6th,

The fast selling share price of the parent company plunged from 42590 yen to 39720 yen, down 6.7%.

This makes the company's chairman and founder Ryui Masa's personal assets shrink by 1 billion 400 million dollars in one day, ranking the sixth place from the Peng Bo billionaire index to forty-fourth.

The culprit comes from Japan's December January 5th, released by UNIQLO.

Sales data.

In the middle of this month, sales of UNIQLO Japan fell by 5% compared with the same period last year, while same store sales fell 5.9% year-on-year.

UNIQLO said the reason for its poor performance was "unusual warm climate", which affected the sales of winter products.

The fast selling of UNIQLO parent company fell by 6.7% on the day of January 6th.

If only it were so simple.

UNIQLO is facing serious problems.

In the past 2015/2016 fiscal year, the rapid growth of the parent company has experienced the slowest growth in the last three years, with an increase of only 6.2% in sales, far below the 21% growth rate in the previous two years.

To make matters worse, the company is not too confident about the future.

At the same time, when the earnings report was released, the "2020 plan" set down in 2012 was downgraded by fast sales. According to the plan, the sales volume of fast sales should reach 5 trillion yen in 2020, and this figure has been reduced by 3 trillion, and it has shrunk by 40%.

This basically announces fast sales.

Both the strategy and the US market have failed.

Xun had hoped to pull the sales of the two groups in the two. But in the 2015/2016 fiscal year, the brands including JBrand and Princessetam.tam are still losing money. In 2006, though the sales of their own brand GU increased by more than 30%, the small size of the brand could hardly produce enough stimulating effect on the fast sales.

As for the US market that entered in 2005, UNIQLO is still in a state of "loss increase".

UNIQLO is still the most important brand of fast selling, which has contributed more than 80% sales to the latter.

So to some extent, the problem of fast selling is the problem of UNIQLO.

The problem with UNIQLO today is that Japan and greater China are more troublesome than the US market, which has not yet been opened.

The two markets contributed 63.4% of sales to UNIQLO.

In Japan, the sales growth of UNIQLO in the past year was only 2.5%, the growth rate was only about 1/4 of the previous year, and its operating profit increased to 12.6% negative growth in the previous year. In the Greater China region, the operating profit of UNIQLO in the past year decreased by 5.5%, which is the first time that the company has lost its sales since the 2012/2013 financial year alone announced its sales results in Greater China, and sales growth has also dropped to 9.3%.

In China, UNIQLO has not experienced such slow growth or even declined for a long time.

You know, during the 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 fiscal year, sales growth of UNIQLO Greater China reached 66.5% and 46.3% respectively, and the growth of operating profit was 83% and 66.1% respectively.

You may be unbelievable about UNIQLO's current situation.

After all, many people's recent impression of UNIQLO is that "double 11" has been robbed and hot, and it has been the first seller of Tmall's "double 11" clothing for two consecutive years.

But this sales incentive is based on generous discounts.

In fact, in the past year, not only is Tmall flagship store, but also the "double 11" day, the frequency of UNIQLO discount, price reduction and promotion is increasing.

This points to the problem.

For a brand, discount is a more common way of promotion, but too frequent discount is dangerous. It indicates that the company's stock has accumulated to an unhealthy level.

For UNIQLO China, high inventories have cost it 5.5% of its operating profit.

The situation in UNIQLO is unimaginable in the past.

Some external reasons can not be evade, such as more intense market competition, but frankly speaking, market competition is always available. Why did UNIQLO grow up quickly and healthily in the past, but now there are problems?

We can see how its brilliance has been created.

In a magazine interview, Liu's sentence is often described as the core competitiveness of UNIQLO: "UNIQLO is not a garment manufacturing enterprise in essence, but a technology company. The rival of UNIQLO is apple, not Gap."

The list of "2015 of the 50 most innovative companies in the world" from Boston consulting firm also corroborated this.

In this list, UNIQLO's parent company ranked fifteenth in sales, the only clothing retail companies on the list. The other companies listed include 3M, Amazon, apple, general electric, Google and so on.

In fact, the rapid growth of UNIQLO in the past few years has been brought about by its technological innovation.

Applying technology to everyday clothing can be differentiated and high added value in Ryui Masa's view.

Folding folding lightweight feather down introduced by UNIQLO in 2009

In 1998, UNIQLO was listed on the fleece products.

This fabric was not the first creation of UNIQLO, but before that, the fleece was once monopolized by foreign manufacturers and imported at a high cost. The price of a fleece jacket was around 5900 yen in Japan at that time. With the help of Japanese fabric supplier Dongli company, UNIQLO was able to produce and sell fleece garments at half the market price.

In the same year, the sales of fleece products in Japan reached 8 million 500 thousand, higher than the expected sales plan of 2 million 500 thousand.

By 2000, UNIQLO had sold its fleece sweater to nearly 1/3 Japanese.

While creating the sales miracle of Japanese clothing history, UNIQLO has also jumped to become the largest clothing retailer in Japan, and this achievement has been maintained until now.

In 2003, UNIQLO launched the new HeatTech series and introduced it to China in 2008.

This fabric can not be considered as the original creation of UNIQLO, because before UNIQLO entered the field, similar fabrics were used in sports underwear, but only in sports shops.

The cooperation with Dongli enabled UNIQLO to break through the technology barrier, which enabled it to push the HeatTech heating fabric to a more popular market at a lower cost and lower price.

By 2011, HeatTech had sold more than 300 million pieces in the world.

In 2006, UNIQLO directly entered into strategic cooperation with the Dongli company. The two companies deployed staff members to form a "next generation raw material development team", which mainly developed various new types of clothing materials.

Three years later, in 2009, UNIQLO light down jacket was listed in China.

You may remember how it first became popular. In addition to fabric innovation, UNIQLO also gave the product formal innovation. By folding, a down jacket, known as only 206 grams, could be stored in a triangular handbag, which is easy to carry.

When the market is full of bloated down coats, UNIQLO's light feather brings surprises to consumers.

As you can see, the path of commercialization of UNIQLO technology is to create a new mass market by reducing costs and ultimately lowering prices.

However, since the light feather down, UNIQLO has not appeared this kind of technology oriented "explosive products" for a long time.

This is not to say that the research and development capacity of UNIQLO is decreasing.

UNIQLO has been trying to launch new fabrics and technologies, including the "fast drying series" for summer 2008, and the SilkyDry and Sarafine series launched in 2010 for men and women (merged into AIRism in 2013).

But these new products have not aroused strong reactions among consumers.

The ability of product innovation in UNIQLO is weakening or slowing down.

"Sports and leisure wind" may be a good example. Before 2014, "sports and leisure wind" began to prevail. This field which had higher requirements for fabric technology was not valued by UNIQLO until then. In November 2016, UNIQLO officially announced the "UniqloSports" campaign series for the first time in the 2017 spring summer conference in Tokyo. In the same year, it launched a new windbreak Blocktech. However, in the case of sports and leisure for two years, UNIQLO had missed the best time.

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2016 new Blocktech wind resistant fabric

For UNIQLO, the core of manufacturing technology explosion is not only to sell more clothes, but also to set up the right to speak. The innovation and application of technology is essentially a process of satisfying or even creating a new demand.

For example, UNIQLO's fleece and HeatTech realized these two high and scarce technologies to enter the mass market to meet the needs of the masses. Instead, feather down simply created a new market segment. Before it became popular, most of the down garments were too large to be easily absorbed.

And the new market it has opened has been squeezed by all kinds of imitators.

There are many brands of fleece. Taobao has many brands known as "hot and warm underwear". As for light down, it is already a standard for many brands and sports brands including Bosideng, including Only.

The more fatal thing is that technology driven products are not only a direct source of income for UNIQLO, but also tools, or manufacturers of concepts, topics, marketing exploding points.

These products have attracted curious young consumers to enter the store continuously, and at the same time have led to more sales of other products, such as T-shirts, shirts and so on.

Photo taken at HeatTech exhibition hall on the first floor of flagship store, Huaihai Road, Shanghai, UNIQLO.

In the case of technology driven vacancies, UNIQLO has tried new ways to stimulate consumption in the past two years, such as the introduction of designer joint names.

But in addition to the two quarter UniqloxLemaire cooperation launched in 2015 and 2016 (the partner is ChristopheLemaire, the former Hermes design director), the rest of the cooperation is difficult to count as a success.

A Shanghai consumer was asked about the impression of UNIQLO's joint account. "(joint name) is now piled up in the store and it can't be sold at a discount."

He claimed to have visited UNIQLO every once in the moonlight, but the frequency of his recent visit to UNIQLO has decreased. "I feel like I should have bought it," he said.

This is not a case of "buy everything".

Another consumer we met at the flagship store in Huaihai Road, Shanghai, told reporters that since 2011, she has frequented UNIQLO. After three years, UNIQLO products had accumulated twenty or thirty pieces, but now only when they sell joint funds will they enter the store.

Her complaint about the joint name is that "I have been playing forty percent off in a few months, and I am very heartache."

And this time she patronized the flagship store in Huaihai Road, and she also learned the lessons of discounts. She wanted to bump into luck to buy a UniqloxLemaire that had been sold at the original price.

UNIQLO's latest cooperation failed in the Chinese market.

In June 2016, UNIQLO announced that the new product line UniqloU will be launched, and ChristopheLemaire will be the artistic director.

However, the product line has entered a discount period three months after its launch. In the secondhand idle application of "idle fish", many products of the series are being resold at a price lower than the original price. A V collar woolen shirt marked "brand new UniqloU" and "tag" is being sold at a price lower than the original price of 219 yuan.

In contrast, the $499 original cooperation between H&M and Balmain had been snatched up to $1200 on eBay.

It is not without successful cooperation.

According to Wu Pinhui's earlier interview with CMO in UNIQLO's Greater China, in April last year, the cooperation between UNIQLO UT product line and graffiti artist Kaws was sold in China within a few months, and sold 1 million pieces, calculated at the unit price of 99 yuan / piece, which is equivalent to 100 million yuan sales for UNIQLO China.

However, Kaws, such as IP based cooperation, does not match the target consumers with UNIQLO. It is not difficult to pform the consumers into the consumers of the core products of UNIQLO.

It is necessary to point out that although the sales growth in UNIQLO China has slowed down and the joint venture attempt has not been successful, it is still the fastest fashion brand in China.

In fiscal year 2015, H&M China had sales of US $1 billion 200 million (less than half of UNIQLO). As of November 30th last year, there were 383 stores in mainland China (500 of UNIQLO), and Zara did not disclose sales data in the Chinese market. As of October last year, there were 189 stores in the mainland of China.

Earlier, Zara said in 2015 that it would slow down its plans to open stores in the Chinese market.

But the expansion of competitors is also threatening.

In fiscal year 2016, the number of newly opened H&M stores in China reached 80, close to 85 of UNIQLO.

H&M also said that "the expansion of future stores will mainly focus on China and the United States". At the same time, Korea's fast fashion brand 8seconds officially entered China in 2016. The fast fashion brand NewLook of the United Kingdom claims to open 500 stores in China.

They all put UNIQLO in a more competitive and intense environment.

And in such an environment, the things that create brand differentiation are more important: innovation, technology and cost performance.

In Japan, the weakening of these products has led competitors to narrow the gap with UNIQLO, and in addition to the economic downturn, cheaper products have been welcomed by the market.

The Shimamura we have reported is typical in this environment. This fashion company, which does not flaunt quality and buys on the scalp, takes up second of the retail share of Japanese apparel, with a lower price than UNIQLO. In the first half of last year, the company's net income increased by 46%, and its operating profit increased by 15.8% over the same period last year, much higher than that of -12.6%.

With the slow pace of technology and product innovation, another problem, which is not stimulated by new consumer demand, is the saturation of the market.

That is, when consumers have a light feather and two light down, why do they need third more? That's what the respondents said, "feel like buying everything."

UNIQLO store

In the past year, UNIQLO has not been able to bring surprises to consumers, which is enough to detonate new products in the market.

In the first tier cities, the consumers of UNIQLO are aging. There are more and more middle-aged and elderly consumers in the stores.

You may have similar feelings from Tmall's flagship store at UNIQLO, such as "buying for parents" and "mom loves it".

UNIQLO's popularity in the first tier cities is experiencing a slight decline in a market research by the financial times.

UNIQLO seems to have realized this problem.

In November 2016, UNIQLO published 6 dialectal videos, which used Cantonese, Shandong dialect, Shanghai dialect, Minnan dialect, Sichuan dialect and northeast dialect to explain the winter's main down products.

According to the then official at UNIQLO, "speaking dialect is a cool thing". They believe that "this generation of young people even respect the culture of the land, the sense of belonging, the sense of labels, and the unique arrogance that make a unique cool."

But relying on only a few ads is hard to make a brand "cool", let alone "cool" has never been the gene of UNIQLO.

Innovation, technology and cost performance are the means to attract young people. This is also the reason why it can not be fashionable, but it is also more popular than H&M and Zara.

At present, UNIQLO plans to expand in China at the rate of 80 to 100 per year, according to Pan Ning, an interview with CEO in the Greater China region of UNIQLO, "taking into account the consumption power of two or three cities, these markets are worth exploring."

This is a way for UNIQLO to find new growth points.

In these markets that have not yet been penetrated, HeatTech, AIRism and light down may still have considerable market space, but the time left for UNIQLO will not be too long.

"Eating old books" is always dangerous.

One good news for UNIQLO is that the financial times market research also shows that UNIQLO's popularity in China's two or three tier cities has increased significantly over the past year.

FTConfidentialResearch's survey of Chinese market shows that the popularity of international fast fashion brands has increased significantly in the two or three tier market. UNIQLO's popularity in the first tier cities is much higher than that of its competitors and the two or three tier cities of the brand, but it has declined.

However, the two or three line market also has its complexity, which is a stronger market for local brands. By adopting the franchise system, laying a wide range of sales channels and high-profile marketing is a way to take a firm foothold in these markets, including Metersbonwe, Semir and Hai Lan's home. Whether the excellent clothing store can adapt to such a market environment is still unknown.

At the end of 2016, in the fourteenth year of entering China, UNIQLO opened 500 stores to more than 100 cities in China.

But in Ryui Masa's words, "UNIQLO is just beginning in China."

Their ultimate goal is to open 1000 stores in China, which exceeds the number of stores in UNIQLO now in Japan.

This is a grand goal.

But what UNIQLO may be wary of is that the more intense competition is, the more important it is to create brand differentiation. Ignoring this will lead to its mediocrity.

Innovation is the most powerful weapon at all times to boost growth.

If the null window time of the UNIQLO is too long, the chain reaction that happens to the bad aspect is likely to be faster than the imagination.

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