Friday, March 16, 2012

Uniqlo opens multilingual megastore in Ginza


The clothing chain Uniqlo has launched today a 12-story and nearly 5,000 square meters store  in Tokyo, in the main street of Ginza, the area known as the home of the most sophisticated and luxurious shops in the country. It will be the chain’s biggest store  and will have staff able to speak in English, Korean, Chinese, Spanish and French.
The company has its origin in the 80's in Yamaguchi, near Hiroshima, about 800kilometers from Tokyo. Its success has been based on  cheap production of its products in China with Japanese design and quality control. 
While in Japan many shops and department stores were still betting on a multitude of brands at exclusivist prices, Uniqlo stores were selling only it’s brand with a very good relationship between price and quality.

In 1994 it had 100 stores in Japan. Today there are about 800, and 200 more in the rest of the world (more than half in South Korea and China). And prospects to keep growing and become a global enterprise. The opening of the multilingual superstore in the neighborhood of luxury in Tokyo is significant. Products are designed in Japan, produced in China and sold to the world, with stores in an increasing number of countries, and now in Japan itself. 
Why? Until the Fukushima fudge, the number of foreign tourists in Japan had been rising.
With the Chinese Yuan up and the Yen down, the prospects are for that tendency to be reinforced.

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