Uniqlo's expansion in China: 30 million to shake the market

Leading Word: Uniqlo, the casual wear brand of Japan's richest man, may change its brand strategy in China. It no longer emphasizes parity as in Japan, but tries to develop to the mid-to-high end and become the world’s leader in casual apparel retailing.

30 million U.S. dollars, which is the amount of investment in Uniqlo's fourth flagship store in the world, which will be unveiled at Nanjing West Road in Shanghai in May. This will open up the new “expansion” of UNIQLO in the Chinese market.

5.5%, which is the proportion of UNIQLO's sales in overseas markets in 2009 to its total sales of the company (FastSet, Uniqlo is a fast-selling group's brand), and the Chinese market is only part of this. Such a "big deal" investment in a flagship store shows the "resolve" of its Chinese strategy.

Yosui, chairman and CEO of Fast Retailing, Inc., was explaining these two key figures when he was interviewed on April 1 by the media including CBN.

In fact, as early as around 1998, Yanai was planning to enter the Chinese market. In UNIQLO, who finally got his wish in 2001, the road to "expansion" has not been smooth because of its unclear positioning. By the beginning of 2008, it had only 11 stores and had closed several of them. Even in the past two years, the popularity of Uniqlo began to be established in Shanghai, but in other cities, such as Beijing, it still appears to be “unknown”.

In this regard, Yanai is admitting to the media: “In Beijing and other cities, the popularity of Uniqlo is indeed not high.” But he said slowly but calmly, because this way, the space for expansion is even greater. He hopes that "in the next two to three years, we will try to catch up and even exceed the popularity of ZARA and H&M."

Uniqlo Store in Shanghai

Yanai is hopeful that in the next 10 years, the Chinese market will have a sales share that exceeds the Japanese market, reaching 1,000 billion yen (approximately US$ 10.7 billion). And Yanai’s new position on the company’s development scale over the next 10 years is 50,000 billion yen. In other words, in the next 10 years, Uniqlo’s sales in the Chinese market account for one-fifth of its total sales.

At present, Uniqlo has a total of nearly 900 stores in the United States, Japan, Korea, China, Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong.

Yanai believes that opening a flagship store in Shanghai in May and opening the Shanghai World Expo will have many opportunities.

Currently, 85% of Uniqlo's products sold worldwide are produced in 70 factories in China, but its global design centers are in Paris, New York and Japan. In response, Yanai said that he is considering putting the design and R&D center closer to China than the production plant.