The market is down, many chain brand clothing stores, have collapsed, only this brand is constantly being planted.
That's Uniqlo.
In the past three years, under the impact of the epidemic, many similar stores have closed stores, but UNIQLO's offline stores are still strong, online sales have not decreased but increased, with a sales growth rate of 20%, and have been dominating the sales list of e-commerce clothing brands all year round.
It has to be said that Uniqlo does "have a hand".
And when it comes to Uniqlo, we have to talk about the man behind it, the founder of Uniqlo, Masa Yanai.
What is so remarkable about turning a small clothing store into a world-renowned brand?
Waste firewood youth takes over the family business
Yanai Masa was once a proper "waste firewood." ”
In 1949, Yanai Masa was born in a prefecture on the island of Honshu with an older sister and a younger sister.
As the only son in the family, Yanai Masa naturally received a "hawkish education" from his father.
Although my father was busy running a suit shop, he came home late every day. But no matter how late it was, he had to catch Yanai Masa to ask for homework. As soon as you are slightly dissatisfied, you will be furious.
In order to avoid being criticized, Koyanagi ran to bed early every day.
Under his father's continuous "chicken baby", Yanai is gradually growing up, and although his grades are not top-notch, they are not bad.
Finally, after graduating from high school, Yanai was admitted to Waseda University in Tokyo, and he left home without looking back, full of yearning for freedom.
Children who grow up under pressure become overindulgent once they are free.
During college, Yanai spent all day playing cards, parades, watching movies, taking classes and never thinking about employment. At that time, Yanai Zheng only had one sentence in his mind, "It is best not to work."
He lay flat for 4 years and mixed until graduation. But after graduation, he was unemployed, could not find a job, and remained unemployed at home for several months before he joined a supermarket as a tally clerk.
However, after working for several months, Yanai thought the job was too boring and resigned.
He said that he wanted to study in the United States and simply ran to learn English, but after a long time, he said that he wanted to marry his girlfriend and ran back directly.
His father looked at Yanai Masasa, who had achieved nothing, and said nothing, but told him that he would come back to run the family's suit shop after getting married.
This year, Yanai was 23 years old.
At that time, the family's small suit shop was already small, but under Yanai Masasa's takeover, in two years, 6 clerks left 5, and the last remaining one continued to "stick" because he had not found another job.
Yanai panicked and hurried to ask his father for help.
Unexpectedly, the father, who has always been strict, uncharacteristically pushed the seal of the company's account book in front of his son with a smile and told him: "Come on, son, the future of the company is entrusted to you." ”
Yanai was confused, so he had to bite the bullet and take over.
Unexpectedly, he seems to be a waste of firewood, because he was "chicken" since he was a child, he has long engraved the belief of "not admitting defeat" in his bones.
Yanai decided to rise to the challenge and put the operation of the suit shop on the right track.
Feel a way
Just do what you say.
Yanai Masa and the only remaining employee took care of the large and small affairs in the store, such as purchasing, sorting, arranging, cleaning, selling, and settlement... I can't wait to grow in the store every day, and one person breaks into several petals.
Hard work is hard work, Yanai went deep into the business and soon discovered the shortcomings of the suit store.
First, the purchase frequency is low.
At that time, only employees in banking, securities and other industries needed to wear suits when working, which could be used as workwear, and generally one or two sets were enough.
Therefore, the turnover rate of goods in the store is very low, which means that Yanai is very slow to "return to the cost" of the same clothes.
Second, the technical requirements for sales are high.
Selling suits requires a high level of business for waiters, and the same set of clothes is sold to one person, this person cannot be sold, and the other person may be sold.
In this way, the already low sales success rate is more bluntly and increases the risk.
And the casual wear store opposite his house, every day customers are endless, Yanai Masa is very moved, ran over to study for half a month, found that the sale of casual clothes, perfectly avoid the sales drawbacks of suit stores.
Yanai Masagi's heart moved faintly, as if something had touched him.
He went to the United States, inspected clothing retail brands such as GAP and NEXT, and made up his mind to switch to selling casual wear.
Back in Japan, he began researching overseas monopoly products.
The new store opened, closed, and tossed back and forth for several years, but still could only maintain the turnover near the cost, and did not make any money.
Unwillingly, he went to the United States to investigate, but unexpectedly, this time, he really captured inspiration.
Following the model of self-service stores for college students in the United States, Yanai decided to open a "clothing warehouse where you can buy high-quality casual clothes at any time", with a small number of clerks in the store, and all products can be tried on by customers at will, completely abandoning the sales model dominated by salespeople.
HE NAMED THE STORE "UNICLO CLOTHING WAREHOUSE," WHICH OFFERS HIGH-QUALITY, AFFORDABLE GOODS, HOPING THAT CUSTOMERS WILL BE AS FREE TO CHOOSE CASUAL CLOTHES AS THEY ARE TO NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES.
After busy preparations, on June 2, 1984, the first Uniqlo opened in an alley in the city center.
Although the door is small, the affordable products attract a large number of customers, and the store is overcrowded.
In this way, Yanai ran through this business model and led Uniqlo to begin to grow.
One win, nine defeats
After the signing of the Plaza Accord in 1985, the Japanese economy quickly collapsed after a false boom, the yen depreciated, the economy was depressed, and people had to start "breaking away" and entering a minimalist lifestyle.
UNIQLO's simple clothing style just fits people's living conditions, and sales increase instead of falling.
In just 3 years, UNIQLO has 5 directly operated stores and 2 franchised stores, with annual sales of about 100 million RMB.
The rapid expansion of the store, seemingly prosperous, has also brought financial hidden dangers to Yanai, and the company's capital turnover rate is lower.
He decided to switch from a clothing buyer to developing his own products to reduce costs and keep the company growing at a high rate.
But the money saved was far from enough, and Yanai decided to go public and raise more money.
He announced to employees that he plans to open 100 stores in three years to achieve his listing goal.
As soon as this remark came out, all employees were dumbfounded.
At that time, there were only more than 30 stores operated by the company, which were accumulated over the years, and the new goals proposed by the big boss were simply fantastic.
But Yanai didn't think so.
In order to achieve his goals, he made a detailed plan.
He flew to Paris, asked well-known designers to come out to design products for Uniqlo, and directly purchased raw materials in the production area, entrusted overseas processing factories to OEM work, so as to cut production costs, shorten capital turnover, and at the same time put a lot of advertising to attract more customers.
At the same time, Yanai also stimulates the development of the team with material rewards, retains talents, and establishes UNIQLO's product information system, everything is in full swing, with the goal of going public, and it is carried out in an orderly manner.
Sure enough, under Yanai's drastic reforms, Uniqlo finally had its 100th directly-operated store in April 1994, and entered the capital market just three months later.
Yanai, who tasted the sweetness, became more radical, and he decided to lead his company out of Japan and into the world.
In 1995, Uniqlo landed in New York. A year later, VM was acquired.
However, because the goods were not suitable, the acquisition of VM Company suffered a thunderstorm loss, and Yanai Masasa's two charges ended in failure.
In 1997, Yanai launched the sub-brands "SPOQLO" and "FAMIQLO", who knew that the sub-brand occupied the original sales share of Uniqlo in the market, and Yanai had to close these dozens of unprofitable stores with tears in his eyes...
After experiencing one failure after another, Yanai realized that running a business cannot be capricious, and professionalism is a hard indicator to promote the development of a business.
He continued to dig deep into the market, recruited, and finally launched the explosive product fleece series a year later, selling 2 million pieces in one fell swoop and winning 400 million sales.
Until now, the fleece series has been UNIQLO's fist product.
The great success made Yanai Masa want to go to the world again.
The place where he tested the waters this time was London, England.
Yanai wanted to replicate his success in Japan and set a goal of "opening 50 stores in 3 years," but he failed again.
It turns out that the UK's humanistic environment is strictly hierarchical, which is very different from UNIQLO's "employee-centric" corporate culture, and employees simply ignore the actual situation, only mechanically implement the requirements of their superiors, and open stores in order to open stores, resulting in stores that have been in a state of loss.
What's more, the goods sold by Uniqlo in London at that time were completely unsuitable for the British weather, and the clothing that sold well in Japan was not cared for in London.
In the end, Yanai had to close 16 stores again with tears in his eyes, leaving only 5 of them for slow development.
Fortunately, this failure did not bring much loss.
Yanai is regrouping and has decided to enter the Chinese market.
This time, he changed his previous aggressive marketing strategy and decided to "open a stable one, and expand after making a profit".
So, in 2002, two Uniqlo stores appeared in Shanghai at the same time. Even if the market response was good, Yanai was not in a hurry, and a year later, the number of Uniqlo stores in China had grown to eight.
After 2 years of stable development, Shanghai has given Yanai the confidence to expand.
In 2005, he took Uniqlo to Beijing, but it did not go well.
China's market base is huge, the supply chain is more complete, the efficiency is higher, and there is no shortage of low-priced clothing.
As a result, Yanai changed its strategy and positioned UNIQLO's audience at "middle-class people in first- and second-tier cities who pursue cost-effectiveness".
Relying on the strategy of "lower price than European and American brands, higher quality than brands of the same price", UNIQLO finally shook hands with customers in the vast market.
Beijing, Shanghai, Taipei... In China's most representative city, UNIQLO stores one after another, it has finally gained a foothold in China.
In 2009, with the help of e-commerce express, UNIQLO ranked first in Tmall clothing sales for many consecutive years.
Yanai has also extended the digital retail experience accumulated in the Chinese e-commerce market to Japan, Europe and the United States, which has promoted the development of UNIQLO to a greater extent.
Until 2019, UNIQLO's total sales in China accounted for 1/4 of the total global sales, and looking back at the time when Yanai was leading the way into China, no one will not be amazed.
Yanai Masaya also relied on "Uniqlo" to become Japan's richest man 8 times.
Actively try and embrace the future
Looking back at the development path led by Yanai, every turning point in business operation is the result of his active attempts.
From a simple buyer store to an independent brand produced and sold by itself, and then from a rigid brand positioning to a diversified positioning brand, UNIQLO's every success is the result of Yanai's progress.
From a waste firewood who does not do his job, to an entrepreneur who painstakingly runs a family business and grows well, he has had a blockbuster success, as well as a stumble and struggle after opening too high and walking low.
Although he stumbled along the way, Yanai kept moving towards his goal.
From setting goals, to dismantling, executing, landing, and reflecting, he won nine victories and never gave up.
In his own words, running a business is all about achieving results. 9 failures mean that with 9 experiences, you are one step closer to success.
Now, Yanai, who was once semi-retired, is re-emerging from the mountains, clamoring to open 3,000 stores in China, and I wonder where the 73-year-old will send Uniqlo's future.
We'll see.