UNIQLO - From Tokyo to Paris
UNIQLO is an expanding, global fast-retailing company originally from Japan. With 60 years of history in the apparel industry, they aim to compete against big names such as the Gap, H&M and Zara. Their main focus is casual apparel that incorporates high technology fabrics and high street fashion. With a product development strategy strongly based on consumer feedback, their goal is to become the number one clothing retailer in the world.
What I found interesting about their global expansion advertising strategy was to use the phrase “From Tokyo to the World”… and in the case of the Parisian Flagship store that opened in 2008, they used “UNIQLO – From Tokyo to Paris”. According to the marketers at UNIQLO, their aim was to break apart the notion of “foreign companies entering our markets”, and make it more of a connection between global metropolitan cities like Tokyo and Paris. I felt that they spent a lot of time considering how consumers in different countries and cultures would feel about a Japanese brand going global. In my opinion, they did a very good job opening their stores in countries such as France, UK, Russia and China, where a phrase such as “From Japan to Russia”, would have caused unwanted stereotypes to come up in the minds of consumers.
