Fast Retailing - Fashion Company Profile
Fast Retailing is the Yamaguchi, Japan apparel group behind UNIQLO - founded in 1949, reinvented from 1984 as the UNIQLO chain of private-label casualwear stores, and grown into a global SPA retailer controlling design, manufacture and retail for UNIQLO, GU, Theory and its other brands.
Company Snapshot
- Status
- Operating - one of the world's largest apparel retailers, built on its UNIQLO SPA (specialty-store retailer of private-label apparel) model
- Type
- Public - Fast Retailing Co., Ltd., Tokyo Stock Exchange: 9983
- Headquarters
- Yamaguchi, Japan
- Founded
- 1949, in Yamaguchi, Japan (as Ogori Shoji); the first UNIQLO store opened in 1984
Company Profile
As a retailer itself, Fast Retailing gets no Amazon/eBay shop box here - its own site, linked above, is the destination. The record below, with its photographs of UNIQLO in Japan, a Theory store in New York and the company's early clothing warehouse, is kept in full on the history page, including the August 2014 store counts, which belong to their period.
The business model gets its own definition in the historical record, because it is the company's real invention: as an SPA (Specialty-store retailer of Private-label Apparel) controlling the entire clothes-making process from design through manufacture and retail, UNIQLO offers high-quality casualwear at reasonable prices, and products that other companies can't. SPA means the retailer owns the whole chain - no wholesaler, no department store buyer between the design desk and the shop floor - and the filing's claim follows from the structure: control the process, and you can make what competitors cannot copy at the price. The three photographs carried in the gallery on the history page - a UNIQLO store in Japan, a Theory store in New York, and a clothing warehouse image tied to the company's history - show the model at three scales: home market, acquired brand, and supply chain.
Fast Retailing History
The earlier record for this company - its history, past brand line-ups, figures and photographs from the periods described - is kept on a separate page for historical reference.
Fast Retailing History & Historical Profile →Common Questions
Which brands does Fast Retailing own, as recorded?
UNIQLO, GU, Theory, Comptoir des Cotonniers, Princesse tam.tam and J Brand, in the historical record.
What does SPA mean in this profile?
Specialty-store retailer of Private-label Apparel - controlling the entire clothes-making process from design through manufacture and retail, in the historical record.
How international was UNIQLO by August 2014, as recorded?
UNIQLO International was approximately 37% of total UNIQLO sales, with 633 stores versus 852 stores in Japan; the first international stores opened in the United Kingdom in 2001, in the historical record.
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References & Further Reading
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