Does Warm Winter Weather Affect The Sale Of UNIQLO?

Last Friday, it would not be a happy day for Ryui Masa, Japan's richest man, because his fortune instantly shrank by 1 billion 400 million dollars, and was directly pulled from the sixth place of the Bloomberg billionaire index to forty-fourth.

The reason is that his industry, fast selling company on the same day, the stock price has plunged sharply, from 42590 yen to 39720 yen, or 6.7%.

And this is a subsidiary.

The pot.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, in January 5th, the company announced its own sales in Japan in December, of which the same store sales had a big decline of 5%, while the sales of self owned entities dropped 5.9%.

Business is bad.

The explanation given by UNIQLO is that in the late December, "warm weather in Japan hit the sales of core winter products".

It is strange that winter is too hot. This reason sounds familiar. If it is not mistaken, last year, when the parent company half year net profit plunged 55.1%, UNIQLO did not hesitate to throw the pot into the "warm winter".

But take a look at the data of Inditex SA, the parent company of ZARA, which has recorded a sales growth of up to 16% from the beginning of November to December 12th (the analyst pointed out that this is equivalent to 10.5% of the same store sales growth).

Obviously, if you want to blame the weather on your own, UNIQLO is deceiving yourself.

The founder, Liu Jing Zheng, once said that "GAP is a technology company" and said that apple is not the apple of its own.

If so, the problem that UNIQLO now faces is much more serious. As with many technology companies, the real problem that makes UNIQLO stagnate is actually because its "technological innovation is slowing down".

The article points out that

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.

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

The result is not only the creation of new demand through technological innovation, but also the novelty, topic and even weakness of brand marketing.

And when you can no longer create more surprises for consumers, it's easy to be forgotten in this increasingly diverse market.

But then again, in November, UNIQLO's Japanese store sales rose by 7.3%.

For this reason, the official explanation is "the stimulation of the low temperature weather and the year-end celebration at the end of the month".

Well, I have to admit that the weather may have an effect on clothes, but it is so.

If a brand becomes a company that relies on heaven for food, it is very perfunctory. After all, you are not Bosideng, UGG, Moncler, Canada goose or anything.

What you think?

In addition to UNIQLO, another Japanese retail brand Muji that released performance data on the same day also failed to welcome the good news.

The company's third quarter earnings report showed that, in the first three quarters of November 30, 2016, the sale of MUJI (Muji) was 38 billion 659 million yen, or about 2 billion 201 million 500 thousand yuan (RMB to Japanese yen exchange rate of 17.56), an increase of 3.6%, a fixed exchange rate increase of 29.4%, an actual increase of 10.5%.

It sounds good, but if you look at its sales data in the Chinese mainland market, the result is not so ideal. In the third quarter, the sale of Muji on the mainland only recorded a 0.8% increase, which was close to stagnation, while the comparable growth rate in the previous two quarters was 4.7% and 5.4% respectively.

The Hongkong market has recorded a rare decline, a comparable decline of 2.9%, and only 5.9% increase in sales.

The decline in sales can be attributed to the depreciation of the renminbi and relative urgent expansion.

In 2016, Muji finished its expansion target in 200 stores in China.

Reporters said, "200 shops for MUJI (Muji) in China will be a bottleneck, whether or not to break through will depend on more uncertainties, if the brand continues to adopt a price reduction strategy, the market capacity can reach 400-500.

However, at present, the fluctuation of exchange rate is very unfavorable to the price reduction strategy of MUJI Muji, and the profits of the two way oppressed brands. From the perspective of the company's expansion strategy, it is more desirable to open a shop, that is, to make profits, rather than to develop through the strategy of opening stores and closing stores.

Last year, 11 copies of the company announced plans to continue to take price cuts to 300 commodities such as spring and summer clothing and food products launched in early 2017.

It seems that in addition to continuing to advocate lifestyle, price cuts are also a major strategy for the brand to stick to.

More interesting reports, please pay attention to the world clothing shoes and hats net.