UNIQLO And Young People Tell You How The Store Design Expresses The Aesthetics Of City Life.

Business is the most active part of city life.

UNIQLO thinks so too - look at all the flagship stores in the world known as card hit resorts. You know: the flagship store of UNIQLO, 887 Huaihai Middle Road, Shanghai, when you sell the theme UT, you can play the game of bean dads here, or experience the wonderful combination of MAGIC and FOR ALL in the concept area of UNIQLO and Disney.

UNIQLO London flagship store is a representative of creative culture and free Utopia. On the roof terrace of the five floor of flagship store, fitness, roof barbecue, music and fashion events are often held.

Paris's oldest and newest fusion area is in the Mar District, where UNIQLO set up a city concept store, which is pformed by an alchemist factory, and melted the fashion culture and business essence of the whole block.

Business is so permeated into everyday life, "LifeWear service life" as the brand concept of UNIQLO, is also thinking about in addition to providing simple and comfortable clothing to decorate your life, what else can provide a beautiful possibility.

In January 10, 2019, the second UNIQLO store design competition (hereinafter referred to as "shop design competition") held a final judging and awarding ceremony at Tongji University.

This is a joint competition sponsored by UNIQLO, Tongji University design and creative Institute and China Interior Decoration Association. It aims to explore with the younger generation new materials, new technologies and new ideas, and create a new pattern of future urban shops.

The second store design competition expanded from Shanghai to the whole country. It attracted more than 300 entries from the national universities. The total number of participants was more than 700, an increase of nearly 4 times over last year.

Based on the five dimensions of city characteristics, commodity experience, creativity, enforceability and expressiveness, after the first round of three party reviews and hot consumer online voting, the 12 groups finally entered the finals.

The theme of this year's design competition is "city shops", and this is not a coincidence.

The China LED market in the Greater China region has become the most important overseas market of Japanese apparel companies. In the first quarter of 2019, the overseas UNIQLO business division performance significantly surpassed the Japanese market, and China's operating profit maintained a good momentum of double-digit growth.

UNIQLO has been continuously infiltrating into cities in China. How to design and experience stores in a city makes consumers feel that the concept of "LifeWear service life" is quite important for them.

As you can see, the costumes provided by UNIQLO make people feel the infinite possibilities and beauty of everyday wear from design, color and edition.

What about a store?

Good design for College Students

In the era of consumerism, designers have also thrown themselves into a big proposition -- how to integrate the whole city or even a block of business atmosphere into people's lives through design.

The Japanese bird house bookstore shop has become a world-famous card hit resort. Designers AstridKlein and Mark Dytham have created a seamless business experience from the moving line, space lighting, bookshelf materials and even seats.

In the shop design competition, you can also see contemporary college students integrating these design trends and insights into life into a UNIQLO City store.

For example, the Competition Gold Award "ShowField", based on the investigation of the urban culture of Beijing, based on the idea of multiple scenes and information interaction, taking the context and life of Beijing as the content, and taking the "dressing room, stage and balcony" as the container of behavior and information exchange, designs a new type of retail store for the excellent clothing store, connecting people, cities and shops, creating the "CityStore" which carries the Beijing culture, and redefines the new living space of UNIQLO.

The silver award, "UNIQLO @ Shenzhen", is aimed at the characteristics of the city with a large number of local immigrants. At the same time helping the brand to build the big data Intelligence Center, the unique night design is more intimate to give warm support to the foreign population, so that the "CityStore" of UNIQLO Shenzhen is full of humanistic care.

The bronze medal work "UNI021" is rooted in every aspect of Shanghai's clothing, food and shelter. It combines Shanghai's "living and exquisite" culture and wisdom with UNIQLO's "simplicity, quality and beauty". With a "highlighting quality and unique clothing, once stressed that the dressing is just right, one second shows the superiority of the garment technology, and it conveys the uniforms' durability and individuality". It will combine the details of the life of the people in Shanghai with the products of UNIQLO, and create and convey the delicacy from Shanghai and UNIQLO.

"Today, people say that design is the driving force, which is not an exaggeration, because design has indeed played a driving role in the business field."

Fang Xiaofeng, vice president of Academy of Fine Arts, Tsinghua University, said: "this time, we can also see that the design works of the shops brought out by the students are not merely considering a form problem.

They are thinking about technology intervention, business mode and behavior mode, and this design will have a greater impact on business in the future.

The driving force of young people

This year is the second time that UNIQLO has provided such a platform, combined with the actual business form, so that college students can give full play to their extraordinary creativity.

During the competition, UNIQLO arranged the training of the flagship store in North, Shanghai and Guangzhou, so that the students could better understand the design concept of UNIQLO and its shops. The concept of all competitions was also based on the existing stores of UNIQLO, and the theoretical basis and business practice could be perfectly integrated.

"For young people, clothing is an important way to express their individuality."

Wu Pinhui, a CMO in Greater China in UNIQLO, told young people about UNIQLO in the media interview. "For young people, most of them still value quality and price. It's not cheap, nor is it popular.

At the same time, clothing also plays a very good role, how to give them personality, but also make it easy for them to integrate into the scene.

And this shop design competition has also made the interaction between UNIQLO and young people go one step further -- letting young people define their favorite UNIQLO shops and let young people define the cities they live in.

Large companies often mention a word "consumer insight", that is, through research institutions or internal market teams through various ways to get consumers' brand awareness and expectations.

But few brands can open the platform to their consumers like UNIQLO, so that this group of young people with extraordinary creativity will design their ideal city stores.

In fact, if you are familiar with this brand, you will find that such interaction is not uncommon.

UNIQLO will hold the UNIQLO UT GRAND PRIX in 2005, and set a theme every year, for example, in 2017, it was Nintendo. The UT lovers all over the world could contribute to the voting, and the official selected works will be printed and sold in the official sale at last. UT

These works are not from the hands of masters, but because of this interaction, everyone can participate in the fun, so that this series of UT has been a great success in the market.

For UNIQLO, it can also find some inspiring and sustainable development innovation in such interaction.

"We hope that we can do something sustainable by nurturing young talents, especially to contribute to the future talents.

At the same time, we can help us find inspiration and insight in the whole business practice.

Wu Pinhui said, "a mode of designing competition with universities is a sustainable mode for our customers, enterprises and talents.

And the most important thing is to implement a brand concept of serving people and society.

Why is store design so important?

In the eyes of most people, UNIQLO is the representative of simple and comfortable clothes.

However, UNIQLO's innovation in store design and retail experience, in fact, affects your cognition of the brand.

The retail industry in China has only begun to pay attention to store design and interactive experience in recent years, in order to resist the fierce impact of e-commerce.

But since its establishment, UNIQLO began to convey the concept of "LifeWear service life" through store design and consumer communication.

Once, UNIQLO and Japanese heavyweight designer Misaki Sato and cooperation, opened the first UT concept store in Harbin, Tokyo's tide gathering place, and put UT in a pparent pot. Since then, UT has become the "explosive machine" of UNIQLO.

UNIQLO's store in New York is located near the New York contemporary art museum. The design of the whole shop will be adjusted with the UT of the season's artists' cooperation series, so that the store can be combined with the artistic atmosphere of the block. From time to time, artists will be invited to workshop and consumers' interaction in the store.

In China, Youiku pioneered the "big flagship store" mode and opened two world-class flagship stores in Shanghai.

The innovation of this store type also helps UNIQLO to play a key role in establishing awareness in the Chinese market. The super flagship store can display brand products and ideas more and more to consumers, and understand what the brand can bring to its life.

Subsequently, UNIQLO's various digital attempts at Chinese stores, such as the largest store in UNIQLO, Shenzhen, opened in Vientiane, Shenzhen, in 2018, launched the first nationwide online store to integrate online and offline entities and virtual AR digital experience Museum, to further complement and optimize the store service experience.

In this shop design competition, all works also follow the idea of digital experience, combined with store design.

"A better integration of goods, stores and experience, in line with the urban style and the needs of consumers, enables users to better buy the quality products that are really needed through the" digital experience Museum "smart shopping.

Wu Pinhui said.

The innovation of these stores, coupled with the improvement of the quality of clothing products, helped UNIQLO get a large number of Chinese market, and its operating profit maintained double-digit growth.

And fast selling group is still increasing investment in the Chinese market, and the number of UNIQLO stores will continue to expand.

In such a market penetration, UNIQLO needs to communicate with local consumers according to local conditions. Because the Chinese market is too large, it can subdivide different regional culture and consumption habits.

And store experience and design can help UNIQLO.

For example, the MOMOPARK store in Xi'an, which just opened recently, is the first city shop in the country to integrate urban lifestyle, cultural insight and LifeWear service and life brand concept.

The special set of creative shadow play SHOW can enable consumers to wear their own UNIQLO high light down clothing for their exclusive shadow play, and to experience the interactive experience of clothing, technology and traditional art.

This shop design competition also gave UNIQLO more possibilities of City stores. Through interactive experience and design elements, consumers can feel how to express the aesthetics of urban life and how to find their own way of life in clothing.

"The size of a city is inversely proportional to its home space.

The smaller the family, the bigger the city is, the more developed it is. "

Kawamoto Taro, a Japanese writer, once commented on the development of urban space.

American sociologist RayOldenburg put forward the concept of "third space" for the first time in "The Great Good Place". People are eager to find more life fun and city vitality outside the living space.

A good store is such a role to play. UNIQLO's attempt is to make people see the possibility of this brand. LifeWear life is not just for people to provide a way of dress expression, but to integrate clothing, experience and city life together to achieve a kind of life aesthetics that makes you feel comfortable.