Many of the details of Uniqlo’s aggressive US expansion still need to be worked out, but at least one thing is clear: The campaign will start on the coasts.
The Japanese apparel chain, known in its home market for its cheap chic clothing basics, has so far confined its US adventure to cities like Boston, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
However, a broader US presence will be inevitable as the company blankets the country as part of its ambition to become the world’s biggest specialty apparel retailer. Uniqlo hopes to grow from fewer than 10 US stores last year, to about 40 by the end of this year, to 200 by 2020.
“We will have a much larger footprint, which has to include the middle of the country,” Uniqlo USA chief executive Larry Meyer said.
So far, Uniqlo’s brand recognition is strong in the northeast, where consumers know its flagship US stores in New York City, and in the west coast, where a large Asian population already recognizes the company.
Uniqlo, a unit of Fast Retailing Co, is part of a wave of giants remaking global apparel. This group includes Spain’s Grupo Inditex, parent of Zara; Sweden’s Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) and US chain Gap, all of which have greater sales than Uniqlo. For now.
The US, along with China and Southeast Asia, are the key growth markets identified by founder and chief executive Tadashi Yanai, ranked Japan’s second-richest man by Forbes
Yanai aims to increase global sales to ￥5 trillion (almost US$50 billion) by 2020, about a fivefold increase from last year’s sales and a sum that would make it the biggest player in this segment.
Yanai’s philosophy “and my philosophy is, ‘If you think small, you get no higher. So you might as well think big,’” said Meyer, a retail industry veteran who joined Uniqlo in January last year.
Uniqlo is especially known for basics like T-shirts that may fetch US$12 and undergarments that cost less than half of what they would at department stores.
The company also prides itself on innovations like “heattech,” a thin fabric that keeps heat from escaping the body, and “performance wear,” athletic gear donned by tennis star Novak Djokovic that is sweat and odor-resistant.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
The US on Friday penalized two Chinese firms that acquired US chipmaking equipment for China’s top chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯國際), including them among 32 entities that were added to the US Department of Commerce’s restricted trade list, a US government posting showed. Twenty-three of the 32 are in China. GMC Semiconductor Technology (Wuxi) Co (吉姆西半導體科技) and Jicun Semiconductor Technology (Shanghai) Co (吉存半導體科技) were placed on the list, formally known as the Entity List, for acquiring equipment for SMIC Northern Integrated Circuit Manufacturing (Beijing) Corp (中芯北方積體電路) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International (Beijing) Corp (中芯北京), the US Federal Register posting said. The
India’s ban of online money-based games could drive addicts to unregulated apps and offshore platforms that pose new financial and social risks, fantasy-sports gaming experts say. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government banned real-money online games late last month, citing financial losses and addiction, leading to a shutdown of many apps offering paid fantasy cricket, rummy and poker games. “Many will move to offshore platforms, because of the addictive nature — they will find alternate means to get that dopamine hit,” said Viren Hemrajani, a Mumbai-based fantasy cricket analyst. “It [also] leads to fraud and scams, because everything is now
RSS