Fast Fashion: The Business Way Of Selling Clothes By UNIQLO

When evaluating a person out of date, he would say, "when I first saw this news, I was still a virgin, and now I am the mother of two children." Just a few days ago, when I went to the news of Sanlitun women's mother in UNIQLO, I suddenly realized that something was wrong. "The ten years of repairing the same boat and the 100 years' repair of UNIQLO" have been more than 4 years old.

Sanlitun with UNIQLO fire has spread all over the river. However, this incident has not hit the UNIQLO, but in the past few years, the volume of business, the number of stores and the profit margins have come to blossom. UNIQLO FY2019 sales in China reached 33 billion 100 million yuan and 848 stores under the line. Average store sales are up to 40 million, which is 10 times that of other brands.

Not only that, its online sales are also very fierce, but it has won Tmall double eleven clothing category TOP1 for six consecutive years. Last year, double eleven sales exceeded 1 billion 500 million, and men's and women's clothing sales were ranked first. Even underwear sales were second.

UNIQLO's clothes look very mediocre. They are not even trendy with fashion. Why do people run to UNIQLO in those years?

01, making clothes can also reject fashion.

The birth of UNIQLO was inspired by Liu Jing's visit to the United States in 1982. At that time, there was a fashion shop for self-help shopping in American universities. The store was a storehouse without shopping guide or buying. But Ryui Masa thought the fashion retail business was very interesting. He said, "buying clothes in this shop is like buying CD." So he went back to Japan and founded UNIQLO.

The translation of "Uniqueclothing warehouse", which is called "unique clothing store type store", is also a reflection of its main feature.

At the same time, UNIQLO has another major feature, that is, more than 70% of the clothing sold is basic. We can see from the slogan of UNIQLO in the past few years that the translation of "make for all" in Chinese means that UNIQLO's clothes are made for all. What kind of clothes can be described like UNIQLO? The answer is basic.

Now, do not all advocate consumer escalation, advocating personalization? Do not follow the fashion front line to make clothes, they are embarrassed to say that they are first-line brands. But UNIQLO is good. Instead, it regards the building of basic funds as a strategy.

Has Ryui Masa got a clip on his forehead?

Liu Jing is not stupid. On the contrary, he is very smart. UNIQLO's strategy is closely related to its historical background and cultural background.

Let's start with the background of Japan at that time. At that time, there was a large number of people in the society, called the busy families, just like our current moonlight clan. They believe that the Japanese economy will always flourish, so a wage will be bought and sold immediately, and 10 Fen will remain. It didn't last long. In 1990s, Japan entered a period of economic downturn for 20 years. The economic brake has forced them to tighten their belts. The group of young people at last could not afford to go on the cheap dress.

UNIQLO will choose to operate basic funds, which is also closely related to cultural background. Asians do not like to publicize their clothing. A survey shows that Canadian consumers think dress styles are more important, while Chinese consumers think that clothing's functionality and comfort are more important. In addition, the sales and profits of UNIQLO's global revenues, China, Japan and South Korea are much larger than those of Europe and the United States. This data also illustrates this problem from the side.

Earlier in the year, Liu well discovered that although the basic clothing was not so popular, it usually accounted for 30% of the total sales. Even now, another fashion giant Zara, who advocates fashion and design sense, accounts for half of the top 10 sales. At the same time, the basic demand is large, the standard is high, and it is easy to mass production.

02, go to play in formal clothes.

Because 70% of the clothing is basic, an ordinary T-shirt can't be changed, so the SKU of UNIQLO will be much smaller than that of other garment enterprises. The annual number of new products is only about 1000, which is only 1/10 of the clothing giants such as Zara.

Thanks to SKU, UNIQLO's supply chain pressure is much smaller than that of other manufacturers. At present, the 128 factories have already been able to meet all the needs of UNIQLO, while some garment enterprises have even exceeded the supply chain. A small number of factories will help UNIQLO control upstream and enhance bargaining power.

After SKU has come down, UNIQLO can concentrate on the creation of clothes. And the direction of its product research and development is to build a strong suit of clothes as mentioned before. The applicability of UNIQLO clothes is divided into two aspects: one is to adapt to human beings, and two is to adapt to scenes.

First, adapt to different groups of people. UNIQLO is the typical clothing company that does not have enough color to match. Its single product is often divided into round collar and V collar, and each of them has 5,6 color to choose from. UNIQLO launched its first explosive fleece jacket, which has up to 51 colors.

In order to make the coverage of the population wide, the price can not be too high. Many people like UNIQLO. In the final analysis, they still have to go back to the cost performance: it's not expensive to wear well. UNIQLO, compared with several other fast fashion brands Zara, H&M and Gap, has a lower price. After all, it took the low price route in early years.

Take UNIQLO's fleece coats for example. In the late twentieth Century, if you want to buy a warm coat, wool is the best choice, but the price of the woolen coat is over 10 thousand yen at that time. UNIQLO introduced the fleece at the same time. It also used warmth as the main function, but the price was 1900 yen, equivalent to 80 percent off. The price exploded at that time. By 2000, the Japanese 1/3 could not help buying its fleece jackets. This is another evidence of the true fragrance law.

Low price of light is not enough. Consumers will buy it if the quality is too high. Compared with a lot of domestic brands, UNIQLO's clothes are also in the implementation of the dimension reduction strike. Those 80 and 90s grew up, and when they looked back at the brands of X and X horses passed through the earlier years, it was like looking back at the QQ space in high school.

UNIQLO's clothing has texture and strong sense of design. At the same time, its basic funds belong to the category of "Wan Jin oil" clothes, and can match well with other brands. This is undoubtedly a good news for China, a vast and straight base. The emergence of UNIQLO solved the needs of a large number of men who did not know how to dress up. This is one of the reasons why it can win the double eleven sales champion of men's clothing.

Two, apply different scenarios. Many clothes have their limitations. We all know that POLO shirts are worn when they go to work, and the more colourful sportswear are worn during sports. Just imagine that if you wear a suit to play basketball, this picture is pretty spicy.

To break this scene, UNIQLO's practice is to apply functional fabrics to regular clothes. In 2015, UNIQLO introduced DRY-EX quick drying fabric. This fabric has the functional properties of sweat absorption, breathability and keeping dry, which is suitable for sportswear, but UNIQLO has incorporated this fabric into its own POLO shirt and T-shirt. If you wear it to work, it will not be a breach of the rules. Even if you wear it to play, you will be able to adapt well and kill two birds with one stone.

In order to get through this scenario, UNIQLO can not spend much time in researching and developing fabrics. Due to the continuous investment in these years, UNIQLO has launched a series of main functional fabric products, such as HEATTECH, BLOCKTECH, Ultra Light Down, AIRism and so on, besides the DRY-EX fabrics mentioned earlier.

03, every dress has an ID card.

It does not mean that UNIQLO has a very high cost performance. The cost performance of its clothes is high, mainly depending on its efficiency in improving production and operation through digitalization.

Ryui Masa became the richest man in Japan when she sold clothes, and many of her colleagues often used Liu to learn how to run a clothing company. But he repeatedly stressed: don't get me wrong, I'm a technology company! But Ryui Masashiya didn't talk nonsense, because UNIQLO always had the trend of digitization. UNIQLO realizes the feedback of products and the acquisition of user information through digitalization, so its clothes will sell faster than others.

First, store location by data. UNIQLO has won the double eleven sales champion for 6 years in a row. Its backstage naturally harvested a lot of data. For example, which people are buying, how much money they buy, which age groups are more, which areas are higher in consumption level, etc. If the sales of a certain area conforms to the revenue expectations of UNIQLO, it will set up offline stores in this area.

Two, improve turnover by digitalization. UNIQLO stores fully introduced the RFID system in 2018. The advantage of RFID is that every garment is equivalent to having an identity card recorded, and the flow record is clear. The emergence of RFID has greatly reduced the cost of inventory management, as well as the turnover rate.

Online and offline inventory of UNIQLO is shared in real time. If stores or online stores are in urgent need, they will be able to increase production or deploy them from other stores in a timely manner. So UNIQLO can reduce the average inventory turnover to 83.72 days, which is at least half faster than that of domestic garment enterprises.

Three, stores now have intelligent test glasses, self checkout and other intelligent devices. When choosing a piece of clothing, the customer will show the size, style, fabric and other information on the smart fitting mirror. At the same time, you will also provide information on other items that are suitable for this dress, such as trousers, hats and so on. UNIQLO is trying to empty your wallet in all directions.

With these devices, how long the customers enter the shop, how long they have considered for a clothing consumption, which clothes have been taken down and put back, these data can be clearly understood by UNIQLO.

With these specific feedback, UNIQLO again uses these data to build products, so it is no surprise that it can pop up repeatedly.

04, people who hear guns make decisions.

The common management method of chain stores is to issue orders on headquarters, while shops are subordinate to execution. In this way, the above and the following are secretly competing. Recently, I also saw a joke: the relationship between leaders and subordinates is like two birds standing on a tree. The birds standing on it pull the excrement onto the bottom of their heads. So the birds above looked down at shit, and ass looked down.

This seems to be convenient for centralized management of stores, but the management mode is very extensive. Because headquarters is the most distant part of users, it is difficult to receive timely and accurate market feedback, which is like pointing out the truth.

On this point, UNIQLO, on the contrary, gives the stores more autonomy so that people who hear guns can make decisions.

Whether the store wants to increase the order of goods, headquarters will no longer decide all about it, but will carefully refer to the suggestions of the staff below. Because stores take warehouse shopping, employees no longer need to follow the consumer behind them. And they have a more important task, like buying stocks, keeping an eye on all kinds of data and analyzing consumers, finding their real needs.

In the autumn of 2010, after the listing of men's lamb coats, the S code was soon sold out. But sales of M codes and L codes are flat. What's the matter? A shop assistant found out that he bought the S code from the dark observation. All the men's sheep coats were female customers, so he suggested that the headquarters should increase the production of female sheep's coats. The headquarters was so successful that they made quick efforts to produce women's coats. As a result, this single product made a good sale.

UNIQLO pays more attention to store managers. Ryui Masa thought they were even more important than CEO. Its stores and headquarters are no longer subordinate relations. On the contrary, shops have become the real protagonists.

The store manager is also divided into three levels: General Store Manager - Star shopkeeper - Superstar manager. Superstar manager has the right to order all stores and shop operators. In the process, the headquarters is more like an expert who plays a supporting role in the operation of the store manager and provides professional support.

　　 epilogue

Why is UNIQLO so popular? In fact, it is not without cause. Reduce product categories, production basic funds, and use data to create products and businesses, giving employees more autonomy. When UNIQLO is set down, UNIQLO may not be dominant in a single way, but it can produce strong product strength in a comprehensive way.