UNIQLO Profits Hit A Record High, Founder Liu Jing Is Once Again The Richest Man In Japan.

When Zara, H&M and other traditional fast fashion get bogged down, and ASOS and other ultra fast fashion are beginning to slow down, it is an exception for Japanese UNIQLO to sell basic funds.

The fast selling group of UNIQLO yesterday released its first half financial year performance report as of February 28th. Its sales increased by 6.8% to 1 trillion and 270 billion yen, or 76 billion 300 million yuan, gross profit margin was 47.9%, operating profit increased 1.4% to 172 billion 900 million yen, net profit increased by nearly two digit, and 9.5% to 114 billion yen, or 6 billion 800 million yuan, reached a record high.

The group revealed in its earnings report that during the period, the income and profit of UNIQLO in mainland China both recorded strong double-digit growth, of which the sales of e-commerce outlets rose by 30%, pushing UNIQLO's sales in the international market apart from Japan to rise by 14.3% to 580 billion yen, or 34 billion 700 million people's currency, while operating profit increased by 9.6% to 88 billion 400 million yen.

In addition, UNIQLO's same store sales in Southeast Asia and Oceania have recorded an upward trend, and the operating profit in the US market has also been successful.

Sales of UNIQLO Japan continued to be affected by the weather, down 0.5% to 491 billion 300 million yen, and operating profit plunged 23.7% to 67 billion 700 million yen, but the sales of e-commerce channels also recorded a strong growth of more than 30%. The proportion of revenue increased from 7.5% in the same period last year to 9.9%.

According to Nikkei BP consulting company recently released brand image survey, "brand Japan 2019" results, UNIQLO ranked twelfth, is also the first clothing category.

GU brand performance in the first half of the fiscal year increased significantly, sales grew 10.7% to 117 billion 100 million yen, operating profit rose 54.3% to 14 billion 100 million yen.

During the period, GU successfully launched the commodity mix that complies with the mainstream trend, and with the promotion of digital marketing such as TV and Internet advertising, quickly obtained the positive response from the market and consumers, and gradually returned to the growth track.

Sales of the global branding Division continued to fall by 0.9% to 77 billion 700 million yen, but operating profit recorded 3 billion 100 million yen, which has improved significantly compared with 5 billion 600 million yen in the same period last year.

Among them, the Theory brand benefited from the strong performance of the US market, and the profits increased significantly. The French brand Comptoir des Cotonniers still recorded a loss.

Profit less than expected impact, XXX group for the first time in three years lowered its performance forecast for fiscal year 2019, estimated operating profit of about 260 billion yen, down 10 billion yen compared with previous sales, sales growth is expected to grow 8% to 2 trillion and 300 billion yen, net profit of about 165 billion yen.

However, thanks to the importance of foundation and innovation technology, chairman and CEO of fast marketing group, UNIQLO has now surpassed Zara and H&M, becoming the fastest growing fast fashion brand.

In the 2018 fiscal year ending August 31st, sales of XXX group rose 14.4% to 2 trillion and 130 billion yen, or 131 billion 400 million yuan, and net profit rose 29.8% to 154 billion 811 million yen, or 9 billion 500 million yuan, to close to the 10 billion mark.

According to fashion headline data, in the 2018 fiscal year ended January 31st, Zara parent Inditex Group sales increased 3% to 26 billion 100 million euros compared with the same period last year, while net profit increased 2% to 3 billion 444 million euros, further slowing down compared with the 2017 fiscal year.

In the three months ended February 28th, H&M sales increased by 4% to 51 billion Swedish kronor about $5 billion 490 million, while profits fell 41% to 803 million kronor about $86 million 550 thousand.

Through the diversified matrix composed of UNIQLO, GU, Comptoir des Cotonniers and Theory, XXX group covers almost all the age groups of the current main consumer groups, but the source of income is still the UNIQLO, which is the flagship basic product. The brand parity, simple and quality products become the first choice for consumers to change every season.

Up to now, UNIQLO has opened more than 2000 stores in 22 markets worldwide.

However, because UNIQLO products have always been the main selling point of thermal insulation, the core products are HEATTECH underwear series and light down garments. Once the cycle of summer fall to the fall, consumers' purchase of warm clothing will also be delayed. The weather factor has gradually become a barrier on the development path of UNIQLO. According to the fashion headline observation, in the past three years, the word "weather factor" has appeared in the performance report of UNIQLO Japanese market for 12 consecutive quarters.

In order to find a breakthrough, Ryui Masa began to focus on the technological innovation and channel digitalization of products, and accelerate the expansion of globalization.

In his latest earnings report, he stressed once again that the group's medium-term vision is to become the world's leading apparel retailer by virtue of "digital consumer retail enterprises".

In fact, the great investment in digitalization is inseparable from UNIQLO's persistent emphasis on practicality.

Liu stressed the importance of future clothing in terms of fashion and lifestyle. He believes that fashion trends will change over time, but it is possible to provide functional products from actual needs regardless of trends. UNIQLO's business in China is also seen as an important part of promoting globalization.

When H&M and Zara still have doubts about Tmall platform, Japan's already rich experience in e-commerce has started to enter Tmall's flagship store in April 2009. Up to now, the total number of fans has reached 16 million 920 thousand, and it is the 11 most popular clothing brand annually.

According to Qiao Feng, vice president of Tmall, UNIQLO is the first overseas brand to cooperate with Tmall. Besides official flagship store, the head of UNIQLO also hopes that Tmall can help build the official website of the brand, and open up a series of processes such as product and purchase for Tmall store and official website.

Perhaps with Japan's natural prudence, UNIQLO attaches great importance to the foundation of China's electricity supplier, especially sending a team composed of headquarters experts and local staff to work together with Tmall to work out the process and develop jointly.

Despite the fact that both sides encountered many obstacles and even reached a deadlock, Liu Chi, a highly sensitive market trend, has always believed that China's electricity supplier business is a potential stock that can not be ignored.

In the first three months after landing Tmall, UNIQLO almost tried to explore all the functions and promotion methods of Tmall, and decided to participate in the promotion of "double 11" every year. Other times, it mainly adopted the tactics of "pushing the brand but not pushing the product".

In addition, UNIQLO does not rely solely on Tmall to get traffic. Instead, it expands its influence and search volume by upgrading its brand image, and pforms Tmall users into its users with quality products and services.

Thanks to this, UNIQLO's development path in China's extremely special and complex electricity supplier market is smoother than that of other brands. Its strong supply chain and solid image built up by word of mouth have defeated thousands of Taobao sellers.

UNIQLO is the first brand to test WeChat's small program store in China, and has introduced the intelligent shopping guide Xiao you and Xiao Hao Cao grass club to try to provide consumers with a better experience, and also to make the closed loop of the whole channel more complete, so as to lock more consumers.

In the Chinese market, when Zara, H&M and other brands are still groping, UNIQLO has taken the lead in WeChat's 1 billion user traffic pool, and has introduced functions such as offline self promotion and LED digital screen "intelligent buyers" in all e-commerce channels and physical stores. The barrier between online and offline has been opened up to achieve a true sense of all channel retailing.

According to the survey, UNIQLO's "goodwill", "awareness" and "purchase intention" in China all exceed H&M and other competitive brands.

Some analysts pointed out that this benefit from the layout of Ryui Masa, that is, in a certain area of a centralized shop, when the number of stores reached a certain number, will stimulate income rise, Ryui Masa summed up this experience as "dominant advantage phenomenon".

What it means is that H&M has suddenly launched a new fashion platform ITSAPARK, which has the function of "grass planting". This platform aims to provide consumers with a place to solve fashion problems and seek new inspirations, so that people can exchange ideas and suggestions around fashion modeling.

ITSAPARK adopts a visual format similar to Instagram.

Users can ask questions or answer in the form of pictures, videos and texts. Besides answering, the website also provides all links to purchase products, including not only private brands, but also competitors, such as Asos, Topshop, River Island and New Look, which is causing widespread concern in the industry.

Inditex group is also starting to shift the center of gravity to the line. The target is to realize the global business service of its brand official network next year.

Chief executive Pablo Isla recently revealed at the earnings analysis conference that the group's official website visited 500 million times to 2 billion 900 million times last year, and recorded a record of 9500 euros per minute.

According to the financial data, last year, Inditex group's revenue in digital channels rose by 27% to 3 billion 200 million euros, accounting for 14% of the total revenue.

Some people in the industry pointed out that the "fast fashion textbook" in the first 5 years is still Zara, which now seems to have shifted to the head of UNIQLO.

However, UNIQLO has greater ambitions.

From NIGO, KAWS, Murakami Takashi to earlier Futura and Pharrell Williams, UNIQLO specializes in high-tech new retail, and speeds up the invasion of the market by grabbing a series of people who have the right to speak.

According to industry sources, the correlation between UNIQLO and the trend market was 30% before NIGO became the creative director of UT series, and the index increased to 70% after NIGO took office.

At present, the cooperation series of designers of UNIQLO and J.W Anderson, Alexander Wang and other designers has become a big expectation of young consumers every quarter, and the "weather factor" has begun to be weakened.

Last May 1st, UNIQLO hired Takahiro Kinoshita, former editor in chief of fashion and culture magazine POPEYE, to manage the overall creative dissemination of UNIQLO Kinoshita Hyoho.

Kinoshita Hyoho will work closely with UNIQLO's global marketing team and creative President John Jay at his headquarters in Tokyo to supervise and manage UNIQLO's brand promotion and product design creativity.

In the face of changeable consumers and weather, the wisdom of UNIQLO is to constantly increase technological innovation on the basis of core products and focus on the best products.

It is certain that UNIQLO will continue to play a fast fashion "destroyer" through the global Internet and the constantly emerging designers' joint series.

In order to achieve the goal of "the world's first apparel retailer" faster, xinfun group said it will continue to expand its entity store network and consolidate its position as the world's leading brand by opening global flagship stores and large stores in major cities.

The group is responsible for Asia and Oceania business group executive director Guo Lai Cong earlier revealed that UNIQLO will increase sales in Asia and Oceania outside China and South Korea, plans to increase the number of stores in these areas to 2.5 times in 2017 before fiscal 2022, reaching 400.

Besides opening stores in 6 countries such as Singapore, UNIQLO will also enter the India market, aiming to nurture this region as the only overseas market after China, and it is expected that by 2020, the branch of UNIQLO China will increase to 1000.

At the same time, GU, which slowed down overseas expansion due to internal adjustment in the past few years, has also become one of the main targets of the global strategy of XX group. In addition to continuing its expansion in the Japanese market, it will also march towards internationalization with the Greater China market and South Korea as the center.

UNIQLO has become a partnership with the Swedish Olympic Committee for 4 years. It will provide athletes and government officials of the Swedish national team for the Olympic Games related events such as training, competition and opening ceremonies during the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

Last August, UNIQLO opened its first store in Stockholm, Sweden, where more than 1000 consumers queued outside the shop.

In addition, the importance of excellent young people is the key to the growth of UNIQLO and young consumers.

In 2014, UNIQLO was named "the most desirable enterprise in the new generation" by Cheers magazine. It is not only popular among young people, but also one of the largest number of Japanese companies in the world.

According to Nikkei Chinese net news, Xun marketing group will raise the salary level of the employees. The monthly salary of 650 graduating graduates scheduled for April 2020 will be increased by 21% to 255 thousand yen, or 15 thousand yuan, compared with the current 210 thousand yen.

At the same time, Xun marketing group also said it would consider raising salaries for employees who were recruited before April this year to ensure fairness.

It is noteworthy that Ryui Masa will usher in his 70 birthday this year, and is also the deadline for him to set aside his CEO. He will continue to "supervise" the operation of the company as chairman in the future.

It is reported that the new CEO will not recruit from outside, but from the executive directors and other internal staff.

At present, there are more than 40 executive directors in XXX group, and Ryui Masa's two sons are among them, but Liu well has officially denied that he regards his son as chief executive candidate.

Ryui Masa said that UNIQLO brand clothing for all types of consumers, whether they are billionaires, middle class or low price customers, and in the rapidly changing fashion retail market, the actual operation must be responsible for young people, insight into the joy of young people, their successors not only need the ability, but also have rich digital experience, in order to be able to quickly make new business judgment according to market changes.

After the release of the earnings report, the group's share price rose 7.89% to 59 thousand and 800 yen on Friday. Its market capitalization was about 6 trillion and 350 billion yen, or about 380 billion 700 million yuan, while Ryui Masa's personal wealth increased to 24 billion 900 million dollars. Sun Zhengyi, who squeezed Softbank, won the throne of Japan's richest after 2 years.