Uniqlo – Japanese casual wear designer

Uniqlo is a Japanese casual wear designer, manufacture and retailer. In the past few years, Uniqlo has grown substantially through out many countries and continents. One special thing about Uniqlo is that it started out as a unisex casual wear store. As you can see that Uniqlo’s clothes are very simple, basic and fits for everyone. It offers clean and sleek looks where you can wear them everyday.

The main competitors of Uniqlo are Gap, H&M, Zara, Abercrombie, and American Apparel. Nevertheless, Uniqlo is uniquely different from other retailers in the way that it’s the only brand that it fits perfectly to almost everyone and quality is excellent. Some materials incorporated Japanese technology into the clothes. The example is Heattech legging or heat retaining legging where it kept you extremely warm during winter.

Uniqlo has an impeccable store management. The store itself is being arranged in an orderly approach and when a customer enters a store, Uniqlo employees will greet he/she enthusiastically as it’s a store opening day and will offer assistant constantly while a customer browse through the store. I found this to be a very distinctive feature of cloth retailer because it makes me feel like an important customer.

One of the key policies that Uniqlo implement is that it always restocks product every morning. This way there will always be a large supply of clothes in all sizes. Therefore, a customer will not have to face the problem of not having the right size. This is a big plus for me personally because many times when I visit other clothes store such as Zara or H&M, my size will always run out quickly. Therefore, shopping with these brands will not provide me with the assurance or comfort that there will always be sizes for me that are available like Uniqlo.

In terms of marketing, Uniqlo has done a great job on getting the message of high quality, fashionable pieces in lots of color at reasonable prices. And they have many notable projects such as Designer Invitation; where uniqlo invites famous designer to design for certain collections. Pharrell Williams for example, release a collection for Uniqlo in Apirl 2014 which is called I am OTHER. There are several mobile applications for Uniqlo including catalogues, alarm clock and charity study book applications with the purpose to raise brand awareness and reinforce Uniqlo’s image rather than selling the products.

Uniqlo clothes are basics and it does not follow high-end brand trends that bring the latest fashion to masses like Zara and H&M do. Instead, Uniqlo clothes are kept on shelves longer which implying that Uniqlo has high volume deal with suppliers and thus makes managing inventory a much simpler and cheaper approach.

In retailer industry, customers have lot of buyer power where they have many choices and low switching costs. And the threat of substitution is high. People can buy cheaper fashions including Walmart or Target during recession.

Uniqlo first established stores in 2005 and back then it didn’t hit off and resulted in a close down by years end. It came back in 2011, which began with opening stores in big cities.

As mentioned earlier about Uniqlo main competitors, Uniqlo came in third rank for worldwide apparel specialty store after Zara and H&M. The industry is really matured and there are many players in the market; however there are still rooms for growth. The total U.S. apparel market is estimated to be about $200 billion and at the growth rate of 2.5% over the last 2 years. By applying the growth rate of 2.5% to $200 billion market forward, by 2020 US market will approximately be about $232 billion. This is a very big market and I personally believe that Uniqlo will be able to capture more, although its goal is very ambitious at $50 billion in revenue by 2020.