Many shops have reopened since the state of emergency was lifted on May 25. Of course, the threat of the coronavirus has not been eliminated, and it seems we must live with the virus for the foreseeable future.
The "new normal" style is taking roots in the fashion industry as well, particularly at brick-and-mortar shops, where both the staff and customers are now required to follow new rules, such as disinfecting their hands, wearing face masks and sometimes even face shields, keeping a distance from others and sanitizing the clothes customers have tried on.
Many customers find it quite bothersome and so go for online shopping, which has resulted in a steady growth in e-commerce sales for each fashion brand. I think e-commerce, or online shopping, will continue to have an edge over physical shops from now on.
That said, it's also true that the prolonged self-restraint life has made us keenly aware of how exciting it is to do shopping at actual stores. Many new shops that have temporarily postponed their opening due to the pandemic are now opening.
Among them is shopping complex With Harajuku, which was developed by NTT Urban Development Corp. and opened in front of JR Harajuku Station in central Tokyo on June 5. The most prominent presence of the complex is undoubtedly Uniqlo Harajuku, which occupies the first floor and the first basement floor.
Surprisingly, there was no Uniqlo shop in Harajuku for some while. Uniqlo's old Harajuku branch, which opened in 1998 along the Meiji-dori avenue, was the brand's first shop in central Tokyo. At that time, Uniqlo's name was gradually becoming known, and the Harajuku branch cemented its fame. The shop's annual sales in 1998 were 83.1 billion yen, which increased five-fold over the following three years to 418.5 billion yen. The branch shop then became Uniqlo's specialized T-shirt shop in 2007, which moved to inside the brand's current flagship shop in Ginza, Tokyo, in 2012.
For eight years thereafter, Harajuku remained a blank area for Uniqlo. Therefore, the newly opened Uniqlo Harajuku is attracting attention as the brand's return to a fashion hub of Tokyo after the long absence.
Fast Retailing Co., which operates Uniqlo Co., considers its three new stores in Yokohama, Harajuku and Ginza as strategically important for the brand. The Uniqlo Park Yokohama Bayside store, which opened on April 13, shares the 4,000 square-meter floor with GU, another popular fashion brand of the company. The shopping center carries the concept of being family-friendly and has a park and a playground for children on the rooftop. Another Uniqlo store that will open in Ginza on June 19 is called Uniqlo Tokyo as there is already the Uniqlo Ginza flagship store. This Uniqlo Tokyo will occupy the first to fourth floors of the Marronnier Gate Ginza 2 shopping building. It is the relocation and augmentation of a Uniqlo shop that used to be on the seventh floor of the building. The new store has a massive floor space of 4,460 square meters and is set to become the brand's global flagship store that will showcase its top value and quality.
And the Harajuku store, which has a floor space of 2,000 square meters, is promoting Uniqlo T-shirts as well as sales floors that are interlocked with StyleHint, a fashion styling search application of Uniqlo and GU, as many of the customers are young and non-Japanese tourists.
Sales for apparel retailers and companies from March to May were down to about 30% to 60% of last year's, causing severe financial problems for them. It has even forced an established company like Renown Inc. to file for civil rehabilitation procedures. Fast Retailing must be feeling the adverse wind as well, but the company looks alive and well as far as the three new stores are concerned. The company's consolidated annual sales is 2.29 trillion yen, which brings it to the third on the list of the apparel companies with largest sales in the world, trailing only Inditex, whose main brand is Zara, and H&M. However, Tadashi Yanai, the chair, president and CEO of Fast Retailing and Uniqlo, turned 71 and stopped talking big, such as that he would make Uniqlo the most successful company in the world with annual sales of 5 trillion yen.
WWD Japan weekly fashion magazine in its combined issue for April 27 and May 4 carried a special feature on Yanai and seven people who will carry the Uniqlo torch into the future. In an interview by journalist Kumi Matsushita, Yanai said: "The mission for us apparel shops is to provide customers with products for a better life. The coronavirus is throwing us into hard times, but ideas will come along if we are to overcome the situation." His words sounded quite sobering.
Uniqlo's challenges will thus continue as the company remains a driving force of Japan's apparel industry.
Miura is the editorial adviser of WWD Japan.
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