Business Model
The SPA manufacturer retailer model ensures low cost, high quality products
R&D
R&D Centers
At our R&D Centers in Tokyo, New York, Paris and Milan, we are always collecting and compiling the latest information on different trends around the world, local news, lifestyles and materials. We gather this information from the city streets, from Group subsidiary stores and business clients. We then determine a concept for each season based upon the information gathered. Designs are created simultaneously in the four cities and garment ranges compiled to suit each individual market.
The global product development system generated by the R&D centers in each country is helping to create new and exciting value at UNIQLO.
Head Office
Store Development & Store Design
We look at location development and store design in our pursuit of the most convenient and most comfortable shopping experience for our customers.
Distribution Management & Inventory Control
We control inventory levels by adjusting the timing of price changes in order to minimize inventory risk.
Merchandising & Marketing
At UNIQLO, we collect information from around the world to create product concepts. Once we have a concept as a pivotal theme, each of our five product sections (men’s, women’s, kids’, goods and innerwear) can proceed deftly and decisively through the process of product strategy, product planning, sales promotion and sales planning, visual merchandising, etc.
Materials Planning
The Materials Planning Team procure the very best materials by negotiating directly with leading manufacturers around the world. This style of direct negotiation is what enables us to retail valuable cashmere at low prices. In addition, we continue to develop new materials through our business tie-up with TORAY INDUSTRIES, INC.
Materials Procurement, Production
Quality Control & Production Process Management (Takumi Team)
We dispatch ourTakumi Team (expert team of veteran Japanese engineers) to our Chinese offices in Shanghai, Shenzhen and our Vietnamese office in Ho Chi Minh to help improve product quality and production progress rates at our contract factories. We transfer Japanese textile expertise in apparel and factory management to our partner factories and technicians in China.
Factories
Ninety percent of UNIQLO products are manufactured in China. We have business dealings with 50 companies and 60 factories, most of which are located in China. Because we view the factories that we deal with as long-term partners, we continue to offer positive technical support while insisting on very thorough quality management. That is why we are able to maintain high quality even on job lots of one million units.
Materials Manufacturers
We have managed to bring down materials costs due to our large-scale 800 store worldwide network, and the fact that we commit to buy up 100% of the raw materials. Again thanks to the large scale of our operations, we are able to negotiate directly with leading global textile manufacturers, and we are keen participants in the joint development of new materials.
Sales
Japanese Stores
UNIQLO boasts a network of 750 stores across Japan consisting mainly of roadside stores and outlets housed in commercial shopping centers.
Families make up our core customer base. Our aim is to ensure that our stores are stocked with the appropriate number of garments in terms of color and size so that customers can always get the products that they want. We continue to expand our store numbers based on location and the best possible business format to suit our customers, ranging from our 150sqm small stores, to our 700sqm regular sized stores right through to our grandest, largest stores with shop floors of 3300sqm.
UNIQLO stores worldwide
We began opening UNIQLO stores outside of Japan in September 2001 starting in London. Since then, we have expanded our international network across five countries; UK, China & Hong Kong, USA, South Korea and Japan. We opened our first global flagship store in New York’s SOHO area in 2006. We plan to further develop our flagship store strategy in the future focusing on the major fashion cities of the world.
Online Store
Our online store offers the entire UNIQLO product range and also some original products designed exclusively for online sale.
http://store.uniqlo.com/
(Our online store serves the Japanese market only)
Customer Views
The various views and impressions received from our customers are incorporated into our product, store, service and management policies.