Uniqlo Is Expanding In The United States

Many American retailers are evacuating large shopping malls, such as Gap, Abercrombie&Fitch, Coldwater Creek, Talbot, etc Famous clothing brands Hundreds of stores will be closed. However, the pain of their broken arms is becoming more and more foreign retail Business development opportunities.

Japanese Ready to wear Uniqlo is expanding in the United States. The company plans to open 20-30 new stores every year in the next eight years. Uniqlo, which already has three stores in New York, plans to add another store in the downtown of San Francisco this fall. At the same time, the company has just signed a lease with Garden Department Store in New Jersey, which will replace the low-cost clothing brand Old Navy in the mall.

Other international retailers, such as the low-end Spanish fashion brand Massimo Dutti and the British fast fashion brand Topshop, the high-end French luxury giant PPR Group's brand Yves Saint Laurent, the handbag brand Bottega Veneta and the fashion brand Balenciaga, also have plans to add a large number of stores in the United States this year.

In general, the retail commercial real estate market has begun to recover. According to the report of research company Reis, as many retailers increase their stores or expand the size of existing stores, U.S.A The rent of shops began to rise in the first quarter, and the vacancy rate of shops declined for the first time since 2005.

Many overseas companies are interested in the U.S. market because of its relatively convenient credit card service system, relatively less market regulation than other countries, cheap store rent brought by the economic recession, and the advantage of being more easily concerned by Wall Street's capital market.

Uniqlo has attracted much attention among many residents. In the past few years, it has suffered setbacks in the development of the American market. This time, the company's management said that they would learn from the last lesson and carry out a wider range of promotion activities. Last time, the company rented a 7000 square foot store in the mall; This time, Uniqlo's store rented in New Jersey Garden Department Store has an area of 43000 square feet, and will set up billboards on nearby roads and parking lots.

In 2011, UNIQLO's advertising investment in the US market was almost four times that of the previous year, and its goal is to achieve sales of more than 10 billion yuan in the US market by 2020. Therefore, on the one hand, Uniqlo will expand into department stores as soon as possible, because that is where Americans shop most often. On the other hand, Uniqlo plans to expand the American market in the field of e-commerce.

Fast Retailing, the owner of the Uniqlo brand, said that in the first half of fiscal year 2012 (from September 2011 to February 2012), Uniqlo's overseas sales increased by 68% to 84.8 billion yen (1.07 billion dollars), and its profit increased by 45% to 11.4 billion yen.

A retail analyst from a research company said that, unlike Zara, H&M and Mango, which are inexpensive international brands, they often attract public attention by rapidly renovating popular clothing styles, Uniqlo takes a simpler approach, emphasizing the choice of fabrics, such as high-tech fabrics. In addition to T-shirts, shorts and Sweater In addition, Uniqlo will also sell T-shirts made of sweat wicking textile fabrics in summer. At the same time, the clothes sold by Uniqlo are also very affordable, with the cheapest T-shirt selling at $9.9 and knitwear selling at $79.9.

Yasunobu Kyogoku, CEO of Uniqlo's US division, said that the main reason why Uniqlo could lower the price was that they would not change the commodity plan every year due to the change of fashion trend, but determined the annual capacity plan in advance and carried out production step by step.

He said, "Just as products are seasonal, factory processing will also be seasonal. Sometimes the factory will be overloaded, and sometimes the capacity cannot be fully utilized. In order to balance the two, we will try our best to ensure that the factory is fully loaded 365 days a year in order to improve efficiency".