Uniqin President of China Pan Ning: Ten Years in China

The famous international fashion casual wear brand “Uniquku” entered the Beijing market. The president of China discussed the objectives:

On March 29th, UNIQLO (UNIQLO), a popular Japanese fashion casual brand, officially landed in Xidan Joy City, Beijing. In April, UNIQLO will also open stores in the new Dong'an, Wangfujing and Sanlitun Village thermal stores.

In an exclusive interview with the reporter from China Economic Weekly, Mr. Pan Ning, President of Uniqlo China, said: “We will continue to open stores in Beijing. We hope that Uniqlo's exclusive stores in Beijing will reach 10 next year. Then we will use Beijing as the center to open the market in North China. Including the three provinces of Northeast China, Shandong, Hebei, and Tianjin, followed by opening stores in the southwest and south China regions to make arrangements for opening stores throughout the country."

“In terms of brand loyalty, storefront profitability and even scale, Uniqlo will be the first in Beijing in the shortest time and the first in China in the medium and long term. It is expected that it will take ten years to be the first in China. time."

Shops in China cannot lose money

According to the reporter's understanding, Japan Fast Retailing Co., Ltd., as the owner of Japan's largest leisure clothing chain retail brand Uniqlo, has positioned its products for popular, low-cost, and good-quality casual wear brands for nearly 60 years. There are more than 750 shops in Japan, and the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and South Korea also have their footprints throughout. What is still fresh in their memory is that it has created fleece (polyester fiber two-ply colored fabrics) jackets that sell hundreds of products. The miracle of 10,000 pieces. As one of the few “blue chip stocks” in Japan’s retail industry, UNIQLO’s current stock market value on the Japanese stock exchange market has reached 8,000 yen per share.

Since 2001, Fast Retailing Co., Ltd. has experienced a near-saturation in Japan’s domestic market share. For example, when the company sold 36.5 million pieces of double-faced velvet clothing, there was an average of 1 for every 3 Japanese people, and the sales growth rate of the company slowed down. Therefore, Uniqlo hopes to expand Asia, especially the Chinese market, as soon as possible.

In 2001, Uniqlo officially landed in China. Pan Ning, who has been growing together with the company since 1995, described the situation at the time as "China Economic Weekly". "At that time, China had not completely opened up the clothing retail industry. We have found our own trading partner, China Chenfeng Group. In the form of a Sino-Japanese joint venture, Fast Retailing (Jiangsu) Garment Co., Ltd. was established, and Uniqlo is a casual wear brand under the Japanese Fast Retailing Group. In December 2004, the Chinese government fully opened up its retail business. Soon, we In the form of sole proprietorship, Fast Retailing (China) Trading Company was formally established."

Compared with other large retailers, Uniqlo’s development in China seems to be somewhat slow. Entered the Chinese market in 2001. Today, Uniqlo has 11 stores in China, including 1 in Beijing, 8 in Shanghai, 1 in Hangzhou, and 1 in Wuxi.

The general manager of Penning gave an analysis to the “China Economic Weekly” reporter. “China’s rapid economic development has many opportunities and there are also many reasons for failure. Therefore, Uniqlo’s development in the Chinese market is rather conservative. We can be very cautious. We only want to pass trial operations. The quality control of the products is good, the image of the store is well controlled, the positioning of the brand is well controlled, and the service control is good.Uniquku operates more than 800 stores in Japan, and no one shop loses money. We also need to do this in the Chinese market. ”

Participate in the fight for the Chinese casual fashion market

Uniqlo will also be affected by the global economy. However, in the face of the US subprime mortgage crisis, UNIQLO did not face as much operational pressure as other Japanese companies. President Yanai Yan pointed out: “Subprime mortgage crisis is not always a bad thing. The biggest benefit it brings to Japanese companies is foreign companies that are easy to invest overseas and have difficulties in mergers and acquisitions. In the next few years, the company will invest overseas 40 Million US dollars, mergers and acquisitions of some clothing retailers and manufacturing companies, so that the company's annual turnover in 2010 reached 1 trillion yen (about 10 billion US dollars).