Uniqlo, Brand-Export Values

Yiku is one of the brands that we focus on in the investigation of "consumption upgrade/brand new retail". Compared with MUJI, it has the same successful brand operation experience.

MUJI attaches importance to brand building, but rarely does large-scale advertising; On the contrary, Uniqlo attaches importance to brand and advertising, and it is of great reference value to study them together.

I have studied Uniqlo brand systematically recently, read Liu Jingzheng's "One Win and Nine Losses", and combined with my previous investigation and analysis of MUJI in Japan, I have the following thoughts, hoping to help and enlighten the practitioners engaged in brand marketing:

Market analysis &; Positioning

Liu Jingzheng's father is an old-fashioned businessman who opened a suit shop in Japan in 1949. In that year, Liu Jingzheng was born.

in 1963, Liu Jingzheng began to inherit the family business, and in 1984, Uniqlo Store No.1 opened, and Liu Jingzheng worked hard in "Small County Business" for 2 years.

at first, I made men's suits, and later I made casual clothes. Men's formal wear is expensive and gross profit is large, but just like Japanese kimono, the turnover period of goods is very long, 2-3 times a year. Selling well can make money, and selling badly is inventory backlog. This is also the golden rule that is often talked about in today's internet circle-high frequency plays low frequency. It can be said that Uniqlo had the germination of Internet technology companies very early.

"Sometimes I feel like a taxi driver who just wants to pull long-distance guests, waiting for the opportunity is always a long time." Liu Jingzheng wrote in his autobiography "One Win and Nine Losses".

in the 198s, LIMITED and GAP, stores that can sell clothes alone, were born in the United States, which greatly touched Liu Jingzheng.

uniqlo started as a buyer's shop. At first, Liu Jingzheng went to the United States with a business delegation from the trade association. Later, he went to the United States and Europe to purchase goods by himself, so he opened a shop specializing in overseas goods. Nevertheless, suit shops and casual clothes shops are always the two carriages that drive the company's operation. Liu Jingzheng also realized that purchasing the goods he likes abroad and selling them in his own shop can only be regarded as a personal interest, not a formal store operation.

Liu Jingzheng decided to open a "huge warehouse where clothes can be selected at any time" and "let customers buy casual clothes like weekly magazines".

target group/core users

Compared with fashion, basic clothes in daily life are more popular. When Uniqlo learned about this consumption tendency, it adjusted its customers' target market to a market that has no age difference or gender difference and can cope with people of any status.

It's not without mistakes. For example, I once worked as a sportswear brand SPOQLO and a family clothing brand FAMIQLO, and later ended in failure. The reasons are summarized as follows:

1. There is no obvious difference from Uniqlo positioning.

2. Distract yourself. In order to ensure that these stores have supplies, sometimes Uniqlo's goods have to be mobilized, so that Uniqlo stores often have shortages and broken codes.

3. Distract customers' energy. Originally, one store could buy all the clothes, but now we have to go to three stores.

building a business model

traditional clothing retail stores usually choose goods from factories and wholesalers and adopt the method of consignment.

consignment mode does not exert much pressure on the seller. If it is not sold well, it can be returned to the supplier, and the operational risk is relatively small. But the wool is on the sheep, and this part of the investment will actually be transferred to the original price in the end, which will reduce the gross profit margin of the goods. In order to maintain a certain gross profit margin, merchants must raise the selling price, and as a result, this part of the price will eventually be passed on to consumers.

There is also the biggest drawback of this method-what goods are produced by factories and wholesalers, and the goods that finally appear on the shelves of shops lack consistency.

in addition, the pricing is also decided by the factory and the wholesaler, so there is no room for free pricing.

at first, uniqlo also purchased goods from garment manufacturers. Although the price was cheap, the quality was not satisfactory. Later, it was commissioned by Japanese garment manufacturers for overseas processing, but the quality management system was not established at that time.

Some clothes of inferior quality are often found in products processed overseas. Because the purchase price is low, if we ask for high-quality products again, the factory will not do it because there is no profit. So Uniqlo began to consider its own production and quality management.

we have systematically studied the famous and excellent products, and the logic of the famous and excellent products supply chain also comes from this.

the turnover rate of low-priced goods has become the most critical factor. At that time, because of the lack of funds, which goods were easy to sell went in, and fast-forward and fast-out were implemented. Goods that don't sell well should be dealt with in the current season and never sold in the next season. Due to the increasing number of shops, it is more and more difficult to ensure the supply of goods.

in order to control the selling price, retailers turn to special orders. With the increasing number of shops and the increasing purchasing ability of shops, Uniqlo decided to develop its own products and then entrust manufacturers to produce them. Although as a retailer, it is impossible to directly produce garments, it is feasible to participate in production management when entrusting manufacturers to produce and process. This is also the origin of UNIQLO SPA model.

uniqlo introduced GAP's SPA model into Japanese innovation, and analyzed it with Uchida Kazuo's "rule disruptor model", which belongs to order disruption type-changing the competition rules by introducing new profit model without changing products and services, and providing new value to consumers.

p.s. was fortunate to hear the sharing of Kawasaki Uchida, a professor at Waseda University's Business School, during the investigation of "Consumption Upgrade/Brand New Retail" in Yingchuang Laboratory in Japan, which greatly inspired the thinking of business innovation. This part of the content will be written separately in the future.

from "small county business" to "Fast Retailing"

quickly capture customer needs, quickly commercialize customer needs, and quickly put them on the store for sale.

uniqlo designs and plans its own products, entrusts the factory to process them, and then buys out all the products and sells them in stores, and at the same time feeds back the sales results to the design and planning of the products.

every link from product design to terminal sales can ensure efficient operation. In the whole process, Uniqlo takes full responsibility for the goods, eliminates all unnecessary waste and ineffective labor, and returns the profits saved to customers, so that customers can enjoy more affordable benefits.

the above is the core of uniqlo's business model.

since all risks are borne by uniqlo, it is only necessary to control the risks within the maximum range that the company can bear, and then take action. At this time, the original control of the buyer of goods has also become a product planning (MD) to determine the direction, quality and quantity of goods.

it is worth noting that MUJI is also the same SPA model, but it has moved towards another product and brand direction.

product iteration, technology drive

at first, uniqlo's products were really not as good as they are now. There is nothing new under the sun. You see, the following operation methods are very similar to the MVP minimization feasible products and gray scale test on the Internet:

In October 1995, Uniqlo published an advertisement in national newspapers and weekly magazines: collecting dissatisfaction with Uniqlo for 1 million yen.

Liu Jingzheng believes that it is better to listen to consumers' voices directly than to get consumers' feedback and dissatisfaction indirectly from consulting companies.

As a result, nearly 1, consumer opinions were collected, almost all of which were related to the quality of goods.

"A set of 19 yen sweatshirts, washed once, fell off the thread, washed twice, and cracked under the arm. I will never buy your products again."

"T-shirts are washed only once, and the neckline comes loose".

After reading the feedback, Liu Jingzheng felt very depressed. But on the other hand, these opinions are very helpful to understand the quality of the company's goods and are the first-hand information for research and improvement.

Liu Jingzheng insists that the quality of Uniqlo's products has been greatly improved, which is inseparable from the countless failures in the store. "Controlling the store" is the foundation of management.

Failure is the mother of success. Without the failure of that year, there would be no explosion product-polar fleece series born at the turn of the century in 1999. And the ——HEATTECH series, which was born in 23.

In addition, for the research and development of new materials, Uniqlo has made no secret of its fascination with technology. In many ways, it has the core of a technology company. The technological innovation of Uniqlo makes clothes, the second layer of "skin" that we extend, more comfortable and fashionable.

in China, in most enterprises, technology is limited to the information technology department. Nowadays, digital technology, mobile technology, big data and other technologies are used to support and promote the innovation of the whole organization, including the development of new products, manufacturing and market development strategies, covering many industries.

the key to all problems is to build a platform and use it repeatedly to generate influence. The enlightenment of this platform is not limited to "Internet".

uniqlo is just such a internet plus platform.

Brand-/Export Values

In 1984, Uniqlo No.1 Store opened in Hiroshima.

Liu Jingzheng's dream of opening a "huge warehouse where clothes can be selected at any time" and "letting customers buy casual clothes like weekly magazines" has finally come true, which can be seen from the early name-"UNIC LO Clothing Warehouse".

Although the name is meaningful, it was later found that customers were hard to remember, so it was renamed UNI.CLO, Later, the middle dividing point was simply removed: it was called UNICLO.

"No matter how much effort you put into naming a name, it's meaningless if customers can't remember it," Liu Jingzheng said.

The change from UNICLO to UNIQLO originated from a beautiful accident:

When the joint venture company was established in Hong Kong, the person who went through the registration procedure mistakenly wrote C as Q. Later, from the font, the visual effect of Q was better, so he decided to change the names of all the stores in the company, including those in Japan, to "UNIQLO".

Since the first Uniqlo store was established, Liu Jingzheng has been determined to build the store into an "environment where customers can choose freely".

for example, when decorating a store, the main passageway in the store must be straight and spacious. The zenith doesn't have a ceiling as far as possible, and it doesn't matter if the cement frame is exposed. It looks open and has a sense of space.

The clerk is required to keep a spotless environment, and the goods look neat at all times and be replenished in time.

Shop assistants don't have to pester customers all the time, but they give the most enthusiastic service when customers ask for advice or need help. Shop assistants must wear aprons for customers to identify.

this is to think from the customer's standpoint-turn the store that customers want to go most into the best-selling store.

the essence of these stores has been learned to the extreme by the famous and excellent products of China enterprises, and it has been written into the book "There are no secrets about famous and excellent products".

　Slogan——LifeWear? Suit life

Uniqlo was originally a famous brand collection store, and did not produce its own clothes. For example, CHAMPION, Reebok, ELVIS PRESLEY and Badboy are all other people's brands.

The failure to acquire VM company made Uniqlo realize that the operation mode of marketing its own products under other people's brands (paying brand use fees) is not feasible. We must quickly use the brand of Uniqlo to unify the company's external brand image.

but what is the brand image? Besides fashionable products such as clothes, what is it advocating? What kind of lifestyle does it represent?

"We sell Style, especially lifestyles. We make clothes to let people express their attitudes towards lifestyles ... We hope to provide customers with comfortable clothes based on Japanese values of simplicity, quality and durability, so as to make people's lives better." Liu Jingzheng said.

In order to express that technological progress makes people's lives better. At the end of 213, Uniqlo changed Slogan from Made For All to Life Wear.

compared with its competitors, the equally successful MUJI, the brand is also exporting its values to the world-a simple, environmentally friendly and restrained lifestyle, while eliminating redundancies in products and pursuing essence.

Revelation: Great brands should give people special value in their lives-what is the significance of your existence besides making profits?

Marketing Activities

When Uniqlo Store No.1 opened, Liu Jingzheng had already realized the importance of advertising:

"If you want to do business in a strange area, if you don't advertise, the guests won't know, so they won't come to your door." Even if it has a certain popularity, Uniqlo must do something widely publicized every time it opens a store.

since the first store of uniqlo (located in Hiroshima city) opened, uniqlo has been advertising on radio and TV, and since then, Liu Jingzheng has personally felt the effect and influence of uniqlo advertising in the mass communication.

The most satisfactory advertisement in Liu Jingzheng, which directly promoted sales, was a TV advertisement of fleece sweater broadcast in early winter of 1999. From Mr. John Jay, creative director of W+K, Liu Jingzheng did not hesitate to praise this creative genius in his autobiography "One Win and Nine Losses". It's a pity that I can't find this advertisement. If you have friends you can find, please send them to us.

according to John Jay, Japanese TV advertisements are totally useless. They only know what they want to say, and they use exaggerated voices and weird expressions in the means and ways of expression, blindly pursuing novelty, showing no respect and respect for the auditees, and the information that customers want to convey to consumers has not been effectively spread. （P.S.? I think it's much better than domestic advertisements.)

The advertising experience of Uniqlo

The advertisements of Uniqlo should show respect for the auditees, not impose their will on TV viewers, and let the viewers judge the advertising content according to their own minds.

It's not a unilateral information transmission, it's necessary for the audience to realize themselves after watching the advertisement.

advertising itself is a waste if it has no substance. If the advertising content is rich and substantial, it will become a big selling point of promotion, and at the same time it will receive twice the result with half the effort. The substance of the advertisement is like the turboengine of an airplane. Without it, the airplane can't fly.

the living habits of modern people are influenced by all kinds of information. Therefore, good goods can't be sold at all if they are just quietly placed there. Information such as what is good about this product, how good it is, what price it is, where it is sold, when it will be sold, and so on, must be accurately told to consumers.

Effective use of advertising agencies

Advertisements should be made by advertisers themselves, not by creative people or advertising agencies. Advertisers need to plan their own plans, and can only put the creators or advertisements on their behalf.