finalproject
puffyang
UniqloClothes.edited1.docx1
Uniqlo Clothes
Name
Institution
Course
Professor
Date
Uniqlo Clothes
Uniqlo is a clothing apparel company, and it was initially started in Yamaguchi, Japan, in 1949 as a textile-based manufacturing company. Today, it has a global brand having more than a thousand stores globally. The company is specialized in clothes as its primary product. Through that, it has redefined clothing, emphasizing quality and textiles, which has been very firm since the company began.
Uniqlo is leveraging on affordable, primary designs because such clothing products rhyme with almost everyone. Because of their long-term collaboration with character licensors like Disney, the company has found it very easy to maintain the customers. The clothing products are of high quality and basic casual wear-with performance enhanced features are tailored at comparatively very low prices (Sarker et al., 2020). The clothing is extremely qualified and in sync with the current market demands and preferences, fashions, but not trends. The company is thus offering made for all clothing products with universal features which can be worn wherever and whenever.
Uniqlo segment is the native market in Japan; however, the company has greatly expanded to incorporate nineteen other markets globally. Under the auspices of geographic segmentation, Uniqlo is much focused on the urban and suburban population. At the same time, in terms of demographic segmentation, the company targets all age groups and equally all genders (Anwar, 2017). Also, in terms of the income distribution, Uniqlo is concerned with low and middle-income earners.
Therefore, Uniqlo's target market is both men and women ranging between ages 18 and 34 years. Teenagers are also included, plus the individuals approaching adulthood. The clothing line of this company is quite trendy despite the company not been focused on trends but rather on casual and laidback clothing products. Uniqlo also caters to apparel for kids and babies.
Consequently, regarding positioning strategy, the company has always positioned itself as a modern Japanese enterprise aiming to influence to consider casual wear. Its brand strategy has embraced a "made for all" positioning strategy. It is selling and/or dealing in apparel that is extremely critical, simple, and facilitates customers to discover their individualistic styles. Fundamentally, when the potential customers need good quality, trendy and affordable clothes, the store should be Uniqlo. In their mission statement, the company has connoted the unpacking of power clothing, which focuses on products, supply chain, workers, stores, and communities, to change the world through business.
Considering its brand, the company has laid massive emphasis on the outstanding functional performance of the brand, focusing on creativity/innovation and the design of the apparel. The company differentiates itself from its rivals through its signature innovations, for instance, Heatech, AIRism, and Lifewear.
SWOT Analysis
As already indicated, the major product of the company is men's wear, women's clothing, and apparel. Also, the company is dealing with casual/professional wear like t-shirts, jeans, sportswear, polo shirts, outwear, et cetera. By 2020, the annual operating profit amounted to 1.21 billion dollars, and the yearly sales of the company's clothing were 17.2 billion dollars. The company was employing more than thirty thousand workers to help in the management of its global operations. With the very stiff competition in this industry arising from larger companies like Gucci, Amazon, Tesco, Walmart, et cetera, it is critical to evaluate both the internal and external variables affecting the world’s largest apparel company to understand how it has been keeping up strategically. The SWOT will canvas the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and even threats the company has had over the time that has made it survive thus far.
Strengths
Uniqlo has an effective operational approach of outsourcing the manufacturing work from other parts of the world like in China and other Asian countries. This makes it enjoy the advantage of getting cheap labor and attaining cost efficiency (Anna, 2020).
Basing on international statistics, Uniqlo clothes have established more than 2252 stores in more than 17 countries globally (Anna, 2020). The areas of its strong presence are United States, South Korea, Singapore, India, China, Canada, Germany, France, Australia, plus many more countries with strong markets.
Also, Uniqlo is leveraging smart operational approaches to cut redundant supply chains, thus reducing operating costs (Anna, 2020). This attainment of cost efficiency is making the company offer discounted prices to its customers.
Weakness
The largest one here is the multiple issues with the supply chain. Operating in more than 17 countries globally, the further expansion in this larger global market is extremely strenuous for the brand (Anna, 2020). Other brands have quickly adapted to the creative destruction by transforming their businesses in e-commerce; however, Uniqlo has been relatively slow.
Despite being an article of multinational clothing, Uniqlo has registered extremely low brand recall value and making it have a common market share in markets like the U.S.
Opportunities
The ever-expanding global market is providing Uniqlo to advance its operations all over the work to attain a plethora of available opportunities even in the emerging markets (Anna, 2020).
Due to the heavy presence of media and technological advancement, platforms like Facebook, Google, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter is offering Uniqlo diverse market segments and customers who are alive and active (Anna, 2020). This means the business must strategically expand or transform to tap into the marketing opportunities provided by these platforms.
Threats
The ongoing regulations being introduced periodically by different governments for the clothing brands like Uniqlo are quite wasteful. It is so because the regulations have inspired challenges for the company to conduct its businesses of expansion and marketing effectively.
Completion and brand switching as also the other threats (Anna, 2020). For instance, Zera, Gucci, Walmart, Tesco are all competing for the same market. Thus, the presence of such huge companies in the global market has limited Uniqlo's growth and expansion rate.
PESTEL Analysis
This is one of the strategic tools the company is leveraging to understand its macro-environment, particularly the political, economic, sociocultural, technological, environmental, and legal factors impacting this environment.
Political factors
As a company from the Asian continent- Japan, it can easily leverage its very political factors. For instance, Vietnam-Japan economic collaboration agreement, which came to being in 2008, has exacerbated opportunities for doing business for the two countries and enabled them to access the capital, material goods, technology, and even market for their products.
Economic Factors
Various bodies that constitute this external environment are characterized by a particular environment that impacts the economic environment. For instance, it was anticipated that the six members of ASEAN would exacerbate faster economic growth. Vietnam being a member of WTO and a TTP has enabled the encroachment of more competition. Also, private consumption has been on the rise, which has encouraged consumer confidence and low inflation.
Social factors
The attitude and relationships formed between the company and various cultures are very critical. For instance, in Asia, it is paramount to respect the authorities, while it might not necessarily be so (Usui et al., 2017). Therefore, Uniqlo must promptly understand its attitude towards any government before attempting its marketing campaigns. Also, they must clearly understand the societal norms and hierarchy that constantly influence consumption.
Technological Factors
Most clothing and apparel companies are migrating from the conventional ways of doing business into the digital space to contend with creative destruction. Uniqlo must now embrace agile methodologies to establishing e-commerce and such like infrastructural development. This is key for its business model.
Environmental Factors
Environmental regulation has proved to lay major impacts on cost advantage dynamics in the industry. The focus and investment in renewable energy and technologies can be embraced by Uniqlo to make such a part of its competitive strategy.
Legal Factors
Intellectual Property Rights Protection– Uniqlo ought to survey the degree of security that protected innovation rights get under the comprehensive set of laws of the country (Tan & He, 2019). Customer Protection Laws – Uniqlo has to realize what the purchaser laws are, what the pace of requirement is, what is the disposition of specialists towards buyer insurance laws, and what is the job of extremist gatherings in the authorization of shopper assurance laws.
References
Anna, S. (2020). Integration of UN sustainable development goals into the value chain of Uniqlo Company.
Anwar, S. T. (2017). Zara vs. Uniqlo: Leadership strategies in the competitive textile and apparel industry. Global Business and Organizational Excellence, 36(5), 26-35.
Sarker, T. R., & Al Saeed, L. S. L. A. (2020). Benchmarking Marketing and Business Strategy of UNIQLO to Start-up a Retail Shop in Bangladesh. Benchmarking, 12(2).
Tan, X., & He, Y. (2019). Research on Marketing Modes of New Retail Based on 4C Principles: A Case Study of UNIQLO. Advances in Economics, Business and Management Research, 94, 944.
Usui, T., Kotabe, M., & Murray, J. Y. (2017). A dynamic process of building global supply chain competence by new ventures: The case of Uniqlo. Journal of International Marketing, 25(3), 1-20.
