Boycott Of Japanese Goods: South Korean People Boycott UNIQLO, Leading To The Closure Of The Largest Store Next Month

South Korea's Seoul Mingdong store, one of Japan's clothing brand UNIQLO's flagship stores in Asia, announced that it would close next month due to the double blow of the South Korean people's "boycott of Japanese goods" campaign and the new crown epidemic.

Previously, UNIQLO's sales fell sharply due to the outbreak of the new coronavirus and trade disputes between Japan and South Korea. UNIQLO recently said in Korean on its website that its global flagship store in Mingdong, central Seoul, would close on January 31. This store is the second largest store in the world after New York.

Fast Retailing Co., which operates UNIQLO in South Korea, has an operating loss of 88.3 billion won (US $81.3 million) from September 2019 to August 2020.

UNIQLO's sales in South Korea have been hit by South Korean consumers boycotting Japanese products since July 2019 to protest Japan's export restrictions on some key industrial materials destined for South Korea. In 2018, South Korea's Supreme Court forced Japanese companies to impose labor compensation restrictions on victims.

UNIQLO's "quietly rising prices"

Some time ago, UNIQLO was once again on the hot search for "quietly rising prices.".

According to some media reports, UNIQLO's price has risen quietly in China. Some netizens complained that the clothes below 300 yuan in UNIQLO only appear at special discount, most of them are 599, 799 and 999 yuan, so they will not feel it is worth consuming.

In this regard, some industry insiders have pointed out that the main reason for UNIQLO's price increase is the decline in sales and the rise in labor and raw material costs under the influence of the epidemic, so the price of clothes naturally rises.

UNIQLO said: "in fact, UNIQLO has not raised its price. The price has been stable for many years. Even some products have been reduced, such as flannel shirts and wrinkle resistant shirts."

As early as 2014, the price of UNIQLO's autumn and winter products increased by 5%; in 2015, the average price increase of the brand reached 10%. Since then, UNIQLO's customers have begun to decrease. After that, fast retailing group found out the problem in time and had to reprice its products. The price reduction plan covers the world, with a decrease of 30% in * *.

From the current point of view, UNIQLO's rising price trend is not very obvious, a lot of "warm water boiled frog" feeling.

UNIQLO's "silent price hike", some netizens said, "UNIQLO only needs to wait and see when discount, the quality and style are very general", "UNIQLO's price often changes back and forth, the clothing style is general, the quality is OK, and the price performance ratio is not high", "it's not that I can't afford it, just feel it's not worth it"

China market becomes the main force

Recently, UNIQLO's parent company, fast retailing group, announced its full year results for fiscal year 2020 up to the end of August. Among them, the company realized a net profit of 90.3 billion yen, a year-on-year decrease of 44.4%, and an income of 2.01 trillion yen, a year-on-year decrease of 12.3%.

Although there is no deficit, this is also the annual performance decline of Fast Retailing since 2017.

The majority of the group's revenue comes from the sub brand UNIQLO. Data show that UNIQLO's revenue in the previous fiscal year was 1650.825 billion yen, accounting for 82.2%. Less than 20% of other brands.

In fact, compared with the news of fast fashion brands withdrawing from China, selling business, closing stores and laying off employees, UNIQLO is still a "stable" clothing brand. Even in the plight of expanding losses in North America with severe epidemic situation, UNIQLO can still turn around freely, and temporarily stabilize its declining trend with the recovery of consumption in masks and greater China.

After the epidemic situation was alleviated, UNIQLO expanded rapidly. By the end of August, the number of stores in China had reached 767. Some media pointed out that this is UNIQLO's 764 Direct stores in Japan.

For the reason for the decline in the performance of the whole fiscal year 2020, FMCG also made a statement saying that the offline sales volume was greatly reduced due to the epidemic.

UNIQLO founder Liu Jingzheng has publicly said that more stores will be opened in China in the future, with 3000 stores expected to open in the future according to the Chinese population.