Indulging In Overseas Expansion, UNIQLO Expands 80~100 Stores Every Year In China

According to the Nikkei news,

From 2017 to 2022 fiscal year (as of August 2022), the number of stores in UNIQLO will increase to 2.5 times to 400 in 2017.

In Asia and beyond China and South Korea

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There are stores in 6 countries: Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia.

As of August 2017, 6 state stores totaled 163.

UNIQLO said it will enter in 2019.

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As the main market of UNIQLO, the number of Chinese stores has been in a "surge" state.

UNIQLO expands every year at the speed of new 80~100 stores. Last year, UNIQLO opened 77 new stores in the mainland of China.

In August 17th, UNIQLO opened 12 new stores in Beijing, Hebei, Henan, Yunnan, Tianjin and Chongqing.

In the Chinese market, UNIQLO's plan is to increase the number of branches to 1000 by 2020, even more than Japan.

Why is UNIQLO so addicted to overseas expansion?

According to a notice released in early July by UNIQLO parent fast Marketing Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as fast sales), UNIQLO failed to gain sales growth for two consecutive months in the Japanese domestic market.

Volatile weather has affected performance. The frequent cold weather in Japan has led to a sharp decline in demand for commodities in summer. The number of customers has dropped by 6.9% in May, and then increased to 7.5% in June.

The same store sales decreased by 4%, an increase of 2.7% over May.

By the end of June, the total sales of all 789 direct outlets and online channels in Japan had fallen by 3.6% year-on-year.

In contrast, UNIQLO's

The performance is more prominent.

According to the results of the first three quarters of 2018, the group revenue grew 15.3% to 1 trillion and 700 billion yen, operating profit rose 32.3% to 238 billion 800 million yen, and net profit rose 23.5% to 148 billion 300 million yen.

Among them, the sales of UNIQLO overseas market increased by 27.5% to 716 billion yen, and operating profit increased by 65% to 112 billion 400 million yen.

The operating profit of overseas market accounts for 46% of the total.

In the overseas market, China has been the second largest market of UNIQLO for many years.

It is worth noting that the first quarter of UNIQLO's overseas market revenues surpassed the Japanese market for the first time.

Kase So, executive director of Asia Pacific and Oceania business group, said that Asia and Oceania outside China and South Korea will grow by 30% in the coming year.

In fiscal year 2022, sales increased to more than 300 billion yen.

In focusing on online layout and reducing the trend of offline stores, UNIQLO's practice is somewhat "contrary to what it means".

Fast fashion brands, such as Zara and H&M, have already entered the slow growth period of expansion bottleneck and market saturation.

Especially in the product, supply chain system and brand marketing strategy and so on, it is difficult to break through again, Zara "suffer" the surplus of shops, the pain of consumer loss.

Zara must not begin to adjust strategies, and frequently shut down in recent years.

Pablo Isla, the chief executive of the parent company Inditex group, said earlier that the strategic adjustment of the offline entity store network and the continuous closure of the redundant stores had a certain impact on the performance.

In addition to Zara, Sweden's fast fashion giant H&M also failed in its first quarter sales in 2018, a 2% decline.

However, some analysts pointed out that UNIQLO's "anti way" is exactly the layout of founder Ryui Masa, which he called "dominance phenomenon" - opening stores in a certain area, and stimulating income when the number of stores reached a certain level.

With the pformation and upgrading of fashion industry and consumption habits, fast fashion brands can no longer rely on offline layout to achieve rapid growth, which has become an indisputable fact.

With the rise of the electricity supplier, the brand breakthroughs in online digitization are particularly important.

For UNIQLO, online layout is equally important.

At present, UNIQLO's sales channels in China are online official websites and offline stores.

Online distribution is not official, only official flagship stores of official website, Taobao and Jingdong. All offline stores are directly operated, and the same price on the same line is not a diversion relationship.

UNIQLO Greater China CMO Wu Pinhui has explained the relationship between online and offline channels: "shop is just one of many stores, no matter what channels are online or offline, the most important thing is how to enlarge our products, services and experience through these channels and means."

In view of the weather

The retail industry will not be overlooked. The Xun group will formally introduce a mechanism in 2018: through AI analysis of weather and fashion trends, and a large number of data to predict the number of goods needed.

This will help to avoid producing redundant products and deliver goods that consumers need as soon as possible.