Why Is A "Sweater" A Japanese Richest Man?

Why can a sweatshirt company achieve the richest Japanese? If it's Akiotoyoda of TOYOTA, financial oligarch Sun Zhengyi can understand and manage. Uniqlo Liu well was promoted to Japan's richest man in 2009. After 4 years in a row, Liu well kept Japan's first richest position in addition to 2011.

30 years ago, willow well was setting up the first UNIQLO store in Hiroshima, Japan. After 4 years in Hongkong, a registered company member had written the "C" in "UNICLO" as "Q", and had the story of "UNIQLO" afterwards. In 1991, Liu well was renaming the small business of the company founded by his father as "Fast Retailing", that is, Xun marketing group, and began to run chain stores, and UNIQLO became the main brand.

In 2000, UNIQLO became the largest in Japan with a hot winter sweater. Clothing retailer And began global expansion. Misaki Sato and the unique "canned T shirt" display design makes "UT" fashionable, and its popular flagship store style also makes UNIQLO become recognized as a leisure fashion brand.

As of August 2014, UNIQLO has opened 1500 stores in 14 countries around the world. In the past 30 years, what kind of fashion culture did UNIQLO create? What opportunities have been taken to put Ryui Masa on the top of the list?

How big is a UNIQLO? The world's top fourth fast fashion brands.

In 2012, UNIQLO became the fourth fastest fashion brand in the world, ranking behind the Spanish fast fashion brand ZARA, the Swedish fast fashion brand H&M and the American fast fashion brand GAP.

Ryui Masa was put on the richest position in Japan. In 2009, Forbes magazine announced that Ryui Masa was the richest man in Japan. In 2010, 2012 and 2013, he won the richest Title three times and maintained Japan's first richest position. Until this year, Alibaba listed, CEO Sun Zhengyi, Japan's Softbank group, replaced Ryui Masa as the 7.8% richest holder in Alibaba, becoming Japan's richest man.

According to the results released by Xun marketing group as of August 2014, 1464 stores in 14 countries have 1464 stores worldwide, of which Japan accounts for more than half. China is Japan's largest overseas market, accounting for over 59% of 633 overseas stores in UNIQLO.

What did you do in 30 years?

In fact, UNIQLO initially sold foreign brands, such as Nike, Adidas, etc. after that, Ryui Masa was inspired by the American leisure brand GAP business model, and began to try warehouse self service shopping mode, and designed and sold its own clothing products, and aimed at "continuously providing high quality goods at the lowest price in the market".

In 1999, UNIQLO was the biggest leap since its establishment, thanks to its star products. Fleece "Fleece. By 2000, UNIQLO had sold its fleece sweater to nearly 1/3 Japanese, and UNIQLO became the largest clothing retailer in Japan. This fleece product also helped UNIQLO penetrate overseas markets outside Japan. UNIQLO's global expansion began this year.

In 2005, Ryui Masa hired designer Misaki Sato Cox and creative director. Misaki Sato changed the original "UNIQLO" dark red logo to pure red, and designed the world's first flagship store for UNIQLO in New York. It confirmed the style of "full wall display" of the UNIQLO store's momentum and opened the flagship store operation mode after UNIQLO.

At the end of this year, UNIQLO, which was losing money in the Chinese market, ushered in a turning point. Pan Ning, a professional manager, has been the head of UNIQLO China, and his "middle class" brand positioning strategy has made China the most successful overseas market of UNIQLO. Now the number of stores in UNIQLO has exceeded H&M.

In 2007, Japan's Harajuku U flagship store, Misaki Sato Cox's "canned T-shirt" design made this T-shirt series get rid of the original "hypermarket" image and began to become fashionable. After that, UNIQLO also made a lot of articles around UT.

In 2014, UT was repositioned by Nagao Zhimin (NIGO) as "new generation T-shirt", launching about 30 themes, over 1200 kinds of colors and patterns, and raising the trend of UT.

Of course, it says it is a technology company.

UNIQLO may be the latest clothing company with technology. Compared with "fashion company", Ryui Masa is willing to position UNIQLO as a "technology company". Because technology is applied to everyday clothes, in Ryui Masa's view, differentiation and high added value can be realized.

In 1998, fleece products were listed. The fabric was formerly monopolized by foreign manufacturers, and the cost of imports was very high. The price of the fleece jacket in other jewelry stores was usually 5900 yen. UNIQLO has cooperated with fabric supplier Dongli, Japan to reduce the cost and sell it for 2900 yen.

In 1998, the original 6 million sales plan resulted in 8 million 500 thousand sales. With such a great success, UNIQLO made 12 million sales plans in 1999, developed 15 colors in the same style, and at the same time, with a super low price of 1900 yuan as the main selling point, sold 26 million pieces in the winter of that year, and created a miracle of Japanese clothing history.

In recent years, Heattech has been popular in Japan. In fact, a fabric similar to Heattech has been made into sports underwear in Japan, but its appearance and texture are not good enough only in sporting goods stores. Faced with this potential market, UNIQLO's approach is to overcome obstacles to technology by cooperating with many years of fabric supplier and Japanese textile giant Dongli (Toray), and applies this professional fabric to mass products. The research and development of Heattech began in 2002, and so far it is still evolving.

UNIQLO has every technology content "explosive products" behind, all from Dongli R & D team as support. In 1998, when UNIQLO was a small company, Liu well visited Maeda Katsunosuke, former president of Dongli company, and worked together. In 2006, uniqo and Dongli signed the strategic cooperation agreement and formally established the "sub generation raw material development team". It is made up of UNIQLO and Dongli employees, mainly developing new kinds of clothing materials.

From "fleece", "down feather" to Heattech, UNIQLO's "technology commercialization" path is to develop materials with high price and strong performance, but rarely used in daily life costumes, and develop it with materials suppliers to reduce costs and create a new market. {page_break}

The competitiveness of UNIQLO

The efficiency of UNIQLO in the past 10 years (sales per square metre) is basically 1 million yen, and in 2001, the highest peak was about 1/3 of the apple retail store with the highest level of global efficiency. Now the Ping efficiency is basically the same as that of the US luxury brand Kate Spade. This is pretty good for parity UNIQLO.

What kind of competitiveness can it do?

"Cost-effective"

Whether in Japan, the United States or China, if you ask consumers the impression of UNIQLO, in fact, UNIQLO has done such a brand research, basically a completely consistent answer - cost-effective. High cost performance often means that most people can afford to buy, quality is not bad, taste is not low.

Takizawa Naoki, the design director and former chief designer of Lssey Miyake, told the media that UNIQLO would choose to stitch the edges of a single coat when it was 20 seconds less than a double seam. The design of UNIQLO is to do subtraction, leaving only the need at the end. Compared with the fashion sense, UNIQLO pays more attention to the functional requirements of the product. This explains why UNIQLO sells all kinds of basic funds, which is also the main reason why UNIQLO prices are so cheap.

"We don't talk about fashion design. We talk about store design."

An interesting point is that when UNIQLO talks about design, it often refers to its store design. This is largely due to the designer Misaki Sato Cox.

In 2005, Ryui Masa hired Misaki Sato as the creative director. His first job for UNIQLO was to design the flagship store in New York. In order to be able to stand out in the competitive market of casual wear. In addition to the striking red logo instead of the original dark red, Misaki Sato used a strong visual display method in store design. In the new flagship store, the POLO shirt of the same color was combined into a color wall, and the momentum was overwhelming. The evaluation of the flagship store by the US media was "unprecedented publicity."

After that, it became the fixed design style of UNIQLO shops. In April 2007, the Japanese flagship store, which fully embodies this design concept, opened in Harajuku. Misaki Sato packed each T-shirt in a cylindrical red lid plastic tank, and the 500 T-shirts were displayed on the wall for sale. This is his famous "canned T-shirt" design. It can save shop space, reduce clerks' difficulty in folding clothes, and most importantly, bring fresh feelings to customers. UT is also beginning to become a single product with fashionable elements.

UNIQLO began to implement more than 500 square meters strategy after 2005, and flagship stores are outstanding. In 2010, UNIQLO opened fourth global flagship stores in Nanjing East Road, Shanghai. Misaki Sato himself took up the store design work that occupied three floors of space. He has set up a batch of hanging doll models in the window, which is similar to his "canned T-shirt" made in promoting UT products. As of April 2014, UNIQLO has reached 13 flagship stores worldwide.

It is worth mentioning that UNIQLO was not considered a fashion brand in Japan at the very beginning, but in the process of overseas expansion, this new flagship store design and display mode was considered to have a sense of fashion.