UNIQLO Has A Huge Deficit In The United States. Why?

2015 fiscal year,

Us performance failed to meet expectations and losses increased.

According to Goldman Sachs analyst Sho Kawano, in the last fiscal year, UNIQLO

The loss may reach $84 million, which will last until the 2016 fiscal year.

UNIQLO's deficit in the US is far bigger than expected. It is not a cold day.

Since 2001, UNIQLO started its overseas market, UNIQLO's 15 year road has not gone smoothly.

This summer, UNIQLO placed an unusual advertisement on the US version of the website's home page and the one page page of the paper version - the chairman and CEO of Fast Retailing, founder and parent company.

The form of handwritten letters.

Will this make more Americans know whether UNIQLO will boost its market share and reverse the weakness of UNIQLO in the US market?

UNIQLO plans to become the world's largest apparel retailer in 2020, and it is running out of time. In East Asia, UNIQLO is expanding in an orderly way, and the US market is the key to reaching a plan.

The encounter between oriental aesthetics and Western fast food culture

A random scene on the subway can reveal the fundamental predicament of UNIQLO in the United States.

This is the advertisement of UNIQLO in the Chicago subway car. The body is painted red and white. The square symbol UNIQLO occupies the skin of a car beside the car door.

UNIQLO often uses logo instead of product promotion, which is a very cool visual strategy. It wants to turn UNIQLO into a icon, but the problem is not sexy.

The motive behind it may be that UNIQLO urgently seeks a shortcut to implant UNIQLO's brand logo in the land and soul of the United States.

But in most cases, people are more likely to be attracted by perceptual symbols. For example, H&M love beauty advertising is a more common visual strategy in the United States. A&F, GAP and Banana Republic are more commonly used handsome beauty posters.

Founder's simple block is a minimalist aesthetic design more loved by the eastern society: but in the American society influenced by pop art and even Marilyn and Monroe, all the red and white squares are pale.

When choosing cooperation with brands, designers and stars, UNIQLO also shows a different vision from American society.

The United States UNIQLO's partners are quite low-key, including the most famous French model in 1980s, Ines de La Fressange, Japanese designer Gaoqiao shield, Irish designer Orla Kiely.

They are famous, but the general public in the United States is not familiar with them.

This is similar to that in China. A fashion brand does not invite "Liu Wen". It is like "Qu Ying" and "Marry Ma".

People will ask why they asked the latter to speak. After 90, they even asked who they were.

This seems to be in line with UNIQLO's low profile and restrained character, but in the United States that advocates individuality, UNIQLO may not realize the truth that "wine is also afraid of deep alley".

Although not long ago, UNIQLO and Disney released the large-scale cooperation plan of "MAGIC FOR ALL", the two sides will work closely together in the design, production and sales sectors, and the products will also become more. On the 14-16 D23 Global Conference of fans on "8 D23", the company even opened a flash shop to try to get rid of the understated temperament of too low East, but whether's "global" is beyond its American character; whether Disney's fans are too young and prefer bright wear; whether this strategy is conducive to the distance between UNIQLO and American consumers still needs to be observed.

Single product explosion VS fast fashion

It can squeeze out up to 50% gross profit from a flannel coat priced at 1900 yen, which is the envy of UNIQLO. It is also the fleece of this high Maori price. In the three years from 1999 to 2001, it helped UNIQLO achieve three jumps of 100 billion yen, 200 billion yen and 400 billion yen, making it enter the world's four largest fast fashion brand, and boosted its founder Ryui Masa to the world's richest position many times, becoming the first person in Japanese history to occupy the top spot of Forbes in the clothing industry.

The fleece jacket is not an extreme case. UNIQLO even sells regular products on the scale of one million pieces.

"Unlike other companies that have every season's fashion theme, we are more concerned about the product itself, year after year, continuous testing, upgrading and improvement."

Katsuda Yuki, senior vice president of global research and Design Department of UNIQLO, described this.

According to media reports, 70% of UNIQLO's products are basic, and the stock is kept at around 1000.

In contrast, the American brand ZARA produces more than 12000 clothing styles every year, stores supply two times a week, and every 3-4 days the shelves will be updated, and for the same style of clothing, there are only a few stocks in the retail store, which is a strategy for ZARA to execute forever.

In addition, the ZARA's most famous fast fashion strategy makes it only 12 days for its preamble from design to sales.

"High speed, small batch, multi style" production mode ensures that ZARA can bring the most fashionable new clothes to customers at the first time.

The financial figures may have won the battle for "simple" and "fancy" duel.

In the 2014 fiscal year (February 2014 -2015 1), the sales of Zara parent Inditex's brand in the US market amounted to US $2 billion 700 million (more than that of UNIQLO's 2015 fiscal year in Greater China), accounting for 14% of total sales.

H&M is a safe winner. In the first three quarters of 2015, its total sales in the US market increased by 22% compared to the same period last year, and the total number of stores reached 381, which is nearly 10 times that of UNIQLO.

According to the earnings data, ZARA, a Native American pipeline replication fashion machine, seems to win over the efficient operation of UNIQLO.

Japanese style domesticated VS American melting furnace

UNIQLO can become a hegemony in the Far East, and has its deep roots in the eastern culture of the spinal cord, including the love of "basic funds", the path preference for making garments, and even the homely propaganda of brand stories. It seems that the shadow of technology companies can be seen vaguely and addicted to technology and can not extricate themselves.

Ryui Masa, the founder of the magazine, once told us magazine that UNIQLO's only competitor is not Gap, but apple. Compared to "fast fashion," Ryui Masa thinks that UNIQLO should be a technology company.

But the fate of UNIQLO and apple is obviously different, even if UNIQLO's thermal conductive fabric Heattech and the carbon fiber fabric of the Boeing 787 airliner of the United States come from the same high-tech Japanese supplier. This kind of technology story that attracts Japanese customers and pursue perfection is not known to most Americans.

For fashion, UNIQLO is also different from western fast food culture.

In the book "the secret of the global sale of UNIQLO," Misaki Sato, the famous commodity display designer of UNIQLO, believes that UNIQLO is not a fashion brand, but a TokyuHands that provides all the parts needed for life and helps consumers structure their daily lives.

That is to say, UNIQLO sells fashion elements instead of fashion itself. "We are just providing some objects that allow consumers to freely assemble and create. It represents Japanese culture, a simple but joyful force."

Misaki Sato explained.

You can actually find the same fashion traits in MUJI and other Japanese brands - simple, simple, but not stereotype.

UNIQLO emphasizes the "fashion casual brand from Japan". The whole environment is a publicity for modern minimalism. Everything is simple and bright. Products are placed in the exclusive store center without much distraction. These seem to convey a message: you want to buy UNIQLO, because it shows a very Cool Japanese fashion.

Whether it's tonality, brand and design, UNIQLO is deeply immersed in the atmosphere of Japan and even Eastern culture.

In all aspects of art, Japanese design emphasizes the harmony with nature and the love of natural materials, and in a concise form, the essence of materials.

However, this kind of minimalism which contains Oriental Zen is very clumsy and heavy when it comes to the fashion interest of the American people.

Even in Japan, the younger generation, which is deeply influenced by the trend of Europe and America, is becoming more and more complex in the attitude towards UNIQLO.

NHK in Japan conducted an interesting test in the first half of 2015 to investigate the reasons why Japanese young people "regret to purchase UNIQLO".

Of the survey samples, 27.2% of Japanese young people thought there were too many people wearing the same clothes.

23.2% of young people said they were too cheap to regret.

In fact, to a certain extent, this reflects young people's complex mentality: they want to express themselves through personalized clothes, but they can not refuse UNIQLO's low price strategy.

In the United States, UNIQLO prices are appropriate and clothing is slightly fashionable. Flagship design and display show strong style of simple beauty and logic, but lack of American practicality and Manhattan's colorful international style.

Besides, the consumption habits of consumers in the central part of the United States are also a big problem.

People are used to buying discounted products at supermarkets such as WAL-MART, which are not sensitive to the quality of clothing.

This time, UNIQLO opened its store in Chicago, and its prospects deserve attention.

Of course, the embarrassing situation that UNIQLO encountered in the United States may not only lie in its monotonous style, lack of publicity and arbitrariness, and the acclimatization of consumption habits.

The problem also lies in the fact that Japanese culture is domesticated, while American culture is inclusive. The aesthetics of UNIQLO is to domesticate the introverted masses who are equally influenced by Confucian beliefs by the technical pursuit of low-key, repressive and self seeking, but the culture of American society is self driven and encourages the spirit of cowboys to show themselves.

When UNIQLO believes that its own Japanese characteristics can be popularized into international fashion, the International United States is turning the UNIQLO into a multicultural and fashion trend through invisible hands.

"I want to raise this brand to a higher level. The first task is to let the whole world know the real us.

People either misunderstand us or basically don't know us. "

John C Jay, global creative chairman of UNIQLO said.

When Asian immigrants first came to the American society, because they did not know how to adapt, the most direct way was to study hard, score high scores, and let the people around them look at the super excellent results. There were only a few ways to prove themselves.

The problem of UNIQLO is difficult. It can not be closed to practice, and it is difficult to change the belief rooted in oriental aesthetics. For 15 years, UNIQLO can not find the clue of how to adapt to the western fast food and unrestrained pluralistic society.