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Brand Uniqlo

The US store of Japanese clothing retailer Uniqlo was packed on Thanksgiving weekend, while The Gap was empty a few blocks away. Uniqlo combines the fast-fashion of Zara, commodity pricing of Old Navy, quality of Gap and accessibility of Lego.

Ed Cotton writes:

Uniqlo has created a template for the brand and provided some cues, but left it up to people to define the brand in their terms. This flexible template is attractive because it can be molded and shaped. Many brands could learn a lot from Uniqlo in how to let the customer in to play and shape.

... The critical part of Uniqlo's success in NYC has been in finding a way to make its Japanness cool and relevant, much of this has been built around great collaborations and brilliant communication, but you can't overlook the product, there's something they've got right with product design, something that The Gap hasn't yet mastered.

W. David Marx writes at BoF:

... the clothes say almost nothing: no logos, no design flourishes, no distinguishing marks. Uniqlo’s advertising rarely tries to inject a particular statement or identity into the brand, unlike the hipster sex of American Apparel or the “classic” preppie vibe of The Gap. Uniqlo is basically a Pantone-hued commodity, making it a perfect fit for both highly sophisticated and completely disengaged fashion consumers.

... The amazing thing about Uniqlo is: nobody thinks the brand is offering them an inferior product in exchange for lower prices. Indeed, Uniqlo’s “cost-performance” generates tremendous goodwill with its customer base. The brand makes solid, well-designed apparel that keeps up with trends but — unlike H&M and Forever21 — lasts longer than a season.

In 2008, W. David Marx wrote at Bof:

The incredibly functional, but not particularly stylish “Heattech” line of winter under items is currently selling-out nationwide despite a production run of an unprecedented 28 million pieces.

... Japanese consumers are not just buying Uniqlo out of desperation but actively like the brand. In the yearly TBS General Consumer Preference Survey, Uniqlo took the top “preferred brand” ranking in 2008 for women in their 20s at an incredible 41 percent — beating out perennial favorite Louis Vuitton (26.7 percent) for the first time. Just a year before, Uniqlo had only hit 23.1 percent with the same survey group.

Uniqlo's founder has said:

In those days there were only two kinds of casual clothing - the cheap and poorly made kind or the brand labels that were of good quality but expensive. I realized that if I were to produce high quality and inexpensive clothing then it would be imperative to dispose of all waste in the process.

... I believe that individuality does not rely on clothes, but on the individual person, in fact if the clothes themselves are too unique, people may feel awkward wearing them. It was my intention to make clothing consisting of constituent parts that would complete a whole "look."

... The concept for the Uniqlo brand that I attempted to convey was for a "new casual brand that all people could wear at any time." I thought that if I could get this across then products would sell.

There are also people who feel that apparel alone is a special product, but I believe this is a flawed argument. I think those who believe that fashion is god are also wrong. With the concept that retailing is nothing but redistribution, without further added value nothing new can emerge.

Posted by dotpeople at December 4, 2009 02:55 AM