In The New Retail Era, What Does UNIQLO Grow In The Global Trend?

In the just concluded 2018 double eleven, UNIQLO created another record: in just 35 seconds, sales reached 100 million, Tmall double eleven women's clothing, men's clothing sales ranked No. 1.

In the last three years, UNIQLO has occupied Tmall with no suspense.

Class champion, and sales of millions of faster and faster.

Remember ten years ago when Zara, UNIQLO, H&M,

When foreign fast fashion brands enter China, they rely on the two weapons of "parity" and "speed" to sweep the Chinese clothing market and become the "enlightening teacher" of many Chinese consumers entering the global fashion gate.

Since 2016, the growth of fast fashion apparel brands has slowed down in China.

Under the pressure of inventory, there has been a wave of shop closes and began to carry out digital pformation. The strategies adopted include the introduction of mainstream e-commerce, self built e-commerce platform, the development of children's wear market, price reduction and increased discount intensity.

Among many brands, UNIQLO has always been known for its "pursuit of stability", but sometimes it likes to "go against the road".

For example, in the electronic business platform, UNIQLO does not make distribution, only the official website and flagship store. The same price and the same price on the same line are not diversion relations. For example, when other clothing enterprises are closing up, UNIQLO still maintains the annual expansion rate of 80 to 100 stores in China, and plans to increase to 1000 by 2020, which is expected to exceed Japan.

These "abnormal" competitive strategies, however, demonstrate the consistent style of UNIQLO: adhere to the doctrine of long term and focus on user needs.

In the Harvard Business Review 2018 global and China's 100 CEO list, three principles of business long term were emphasized: having a sense of mission, sticking to values, and craftsmen's craftsmanship.

These are the secrets of UNIQLO's "winning the game" in the clothing retailing industry.

In Ryui Masa's view, facing the reality, keeping pace with the times and taking the initiative is the real meaning of "pursuing stability".

In the face of the new wave of retail sales in China, Youiku pioneered the online marketing model, but always insisted on the core competitiveness of goods and services, and created his own new retail mode.

The concept and essence of new retail

The concept of new retail sales was unprecedented in 2017.

Especially in the field of clothing, a group of brands quickly entered into the new retail concept, betting on celebrity endorsements and laying down shop lines.

Under the consistent "Buddhist system" style, UNIQLO is still keeping an amazing sales performance in Tmall and other e-commerce platform providers, and has not changed its principles because of the electricity supplier, and has been sticking to its "change" and "unchanged".

Wu Pinhui, a CMO Jalin in Greater China, said in an interview: "new retail is a big concept.

But in every industry and every company, it has different Business Model.

What is the pain of consumption in this industry? What is the hunger of customers? Only by understanding these, can we do a good job in new retail.

Compared with the new retail "new", we pay more attention to the essence of "retail" - products and services.

According to UNIQLO 2018

The survey found that consumers showed new demand trends when shopping in the shop, including: more than 50% shopping will refer to friends or opinion leaders. Social interaction and word-of-mouth become important decision reference; online and offline, customers want to get the same comprehensive information; 92% prefer to go to the physical store to feel the effect of fabric and dress, while 60% will search for product information online before shopping, and 90% trust and continue to buy a brand or commodity because of the good quality of products.

In order to meet the new needs of users, in October 2018, UNIQLO officially launched the flagship flagship store linkage with Ming projects, and entered through the official website, APP and WeChat applet. It can realize the functions of commodities such as buying, sizing and stock inquiry, membership discount and management, etc., and is committed to providing goods and user services that are not differentiated on line and online.

The Ming plan is a plan for the pformation of "data consumer retail companies" proposed by UNIQLO in 2017, that is, through cooperation with technology companies, efforts are being made to import data from design, production, manufacture to full staff.

This plan is the most important and most strategic move of UNIQLO in recent years.

"Buy big", "general quality", "chromatic aberration", "wait too long", "lazy to return" and other pain points, UNIQLO launched the online order / store pick up, A underground single /B pick up logistics strategy, can also provide weekly store location and inventory situation; aiming at the shortage of goods, the problem of missing goods, through the big data deployment of the national store inventory, store direct delivery can deliver the fastest 1 hours; online shopping size color is not appropriate, can also be exchanged or free to modify trousers in the store, etc., through the AR technology layout virtual clothing scene, sweep and browse, including posters, costumes, collocation scenes and clothing details. For example, for electricity providers, "buy small".

Wu Pinhui said, "whether online or offline, new retail for us is a product and service experience amplification.

Therefore, the flagship store is actually a starting point for the online import and export of the UNIQLO brand.

Based on the design concept of one touch to serve, we have opened up the "people goods field" to meet the needs of users.

"This ability to provide high-quality daily clothing for any consumer at any time and anywhere will make us more special."

Ryui Masa, founder of UNIQLO.

Fashion philosophy of UNIQLO

Compared with the fast fashion brands in Europe and America, UNIQLO can not be regarded as a typical representative of fast fashion, because UNIQLO has only 1000 clothing launches every year, and is famous for its minimalist style of "Less is More".

The change in clothing tastes of Chinese young people is obvious, because although they have limited budgets, they are not willing to do so in pursuit of comfort, texture and personalization.

Based on the needs of young people, UNIQLO's fashion philosophy also sticks to its "change" and "invariance".

As early as 2013, UNIQLO changed the brand Slogan from "Made for All" to "LifeWear (life)". From this change, we can see that the fashion style of UNIQLO is indeed changing.

Wu Pinhui made a simile: "I think clothes are like food. They have some constant needs.

Food must be tasty, healthy, nutritious and affordable. It will become a habit of eating.

So is UNIQLO.

Clothing should first be comfortable to wear, and then it can meet the basic matching of functionality, fashion and so on, and evolve into the habit of dressing for most people under these premises.

However, as the staple food can be "amazing", the basic clothing can also be very fashionable.

This is also a unique fashion philosophy of UNIQLO.

"Now there's a lot of designer money in UNIQLO, and people will think that we have changed fashion and become cool, right?" Wu Pinhui laughs. UNIQLO currently has world-class fashion designers, set up R&D centers in Tokyo, New York, Paris and Milan, and is committed to collecting the latest trends, customer needs, lifestyle and fabric usage.

"But when all designers cooperate with UNIQLO, we first need to understand the brand spirit of UNIQLO. He must think in our design principles, so that people can wear them in more scenes."

She also revealed three elements of UNIQLO's "fashion".

The first is the balanced version of the design, although there are some unique design style, but always maintain a style of balance; the second is that the color will not be too bright and too abrupt, but very soft; third, continuous innovation on the fabric.

Taking UNIQLO 3D wholegarment full molding technology as an example, this new knitting technology has realized seamless three-dimensional knitting, which meets the needs of different editions, and can bring more warm and soft touch.

For example, Tomas maier holiday series waterproof fast drying windbreaker, from the beach inside shaking out, you can go directly to party.

When it comes to the fashion of UNIQLO, we must mention its "black technology" element.

The ULD senior lightweight feather down series of UNIQLO is the most proud series. This "lightweight and warm" design has completely conquered young people nowadays.

The series adopts many design factors: hi-tech superfine fiber, absorption of water vapor, heat energy, warmth, light, antibacterial, moisturizing, antistatic, seamless sewing and so on.

These constantly stacked elements provide a sense of technology for clothing based on comfort.

"The special technology of high quality feather down and compressed down inner liner is also very cheap, comfortable, well worn, and high technology, so on this basis, the young people will feel that the down jacket becomes fashionable and beautiful."

In addition, the HEATTECH is now at its peak in China.

"In China, our products have three kinds of thickness -- warm underwear, double warm and high warm three main lines.

Why are the three kinds of thickness? Because the north and the south are different, so according to this climate demand, we have evolved three different fabrics, three increasing warmth, which brings people different environment temperature under the cold scheme.

The same "super fashion" also has UT series of UNIQLO.

This year, UT of UNIQLO made 3000 models and sold very well.

Among them, UNIQLO? Weekly youth Jump is the most popular. One Piece, seven dragon balls, Naruto, Dora A dream... Are full of two dimensional strength.

All T-shirts were sold out on the first line, and the shops were queued up. The young people who bought it were scrambling for pictures to upload their friends circle.

But UNIQLO will not be "cool" for "cool".

"In all kinds of fashion endorsements, you will find that uniqo rarely uses the so-called traffic stars, and more of the use of artists and athletes.

Because he represents an attitude, it is our own.

Many different individuals make a person, but he is too much traffic. He is not an individual. "

Wu Pinhui said.

UNIQLO once again made a bet. In October of this year, the fast selling group of UNIQLO parent company released its latest 2018 fiscal year report, with an increase of 14.5% in revenue, a net profit of 154 billion 800 million yen, and a 2 consecutive fiscal year.

The report shows that the China LED market has become the main driving force for UNIQLO overseas market (except for all markets outside the Japanese market).

UNIQLO's development in China is very typical, and the problems she faces are also common problems encountered by overseas apparel retailers in China.

UNIQLO's "change" and "changeless" also provide an important reference for Chinese enterprises in the new retail wave: the essence of new retail has not changed, and rapidly meet the needs of users is the core competitiveness of the retail industry.