Whereas Uniqlo UT has attracted a younger audience, as well as those customers who have an interest in the arts, design, and popular culture. The Uniqlo U line has become a popular constant in the Uniqlo offering, with many savvy trend setters favoring its more contemporary and directional shapes over the mainline Uniqlo alternatives. Yanai’s business acumen and Sato’s design know-how has been crucial to the success of Uniqlo in the US and Europe with the brand continuing to offer its core items but crucially staying ahead of the curve. Now with drops selling out online in minutes and queues around the block for limited releases, Uniqlo has tapped into the psyche of new (and existing) customers by offering collections with KAWS, JW Anderson, and Undercover. Collaboration now forms the backbone of Uniqlo’s philosophy of staying current and tapping into designers or artists who can reinterpret Uniqlo’s core approach and offer a new vision. The approach was a huge success and much of the Uniqlo’s current approach still hinges on this method. Sato went on to take a radical approach which led to lines such as Charlotte Ronson, Vena Cava, and +J (the latter in collaboration with Jil Sander). He planned his next move wisely and enlisted the help of famed Japanese designer Kashiwa Sato to lead a creative team that would set up international flagship stores for Uniqlo. In addition to the issues with sizing, Yanai firmly believed that Uniqlo had to be accessible and stylish to succeed in overseas markets. Uniqlo and JW Anderson FW19 (Image via Uniqlo) Shortly after, Uniqlo closed 16 of 23 London and 3 recently opened locations in New Jersey. Due to issues with the Japanese sizing of the garments, Uniqlo did not make as great an impact as Yanai had hoped.

But taking the company’s success in Japan and replicating the same retail model abroad was not as straight forward as it might have seemed. In 2002, Uniqlo opened 21 stores around London and later a handful in the US. Success was plentiful for Uniqlo as 10 years after Yanai had inherited his Father’s business, there were already 100 stores in Japan.īut now the time came to expand internationally and this was where the brand began to hit stumbling blocks. Cutting production costs and in turn increasing profits, set the stage for Uniqlo to become the global giant which we know it as today. However, in the 1990s Japan experienced an economic downturn which encouraged the brand to shift all production overseas to China (where approximately 70% of Uniqlo’s garments are currently manufactured) in order to meet the public demand for cheaper goods in hard times.

Uniqlo in Seattle, Washington (image via Uniqlo)

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