The Secret Behind The Growth Of UNIQLO

Discount, clearance, shop withdrawal, has been everywhere fast fashion encountered the biggest survival crisis in recent years, Zara parent company's performance slowdown, H&M product backlog can not sell, Forever21 in 3 years closed more than 200 stores, even the official cat flagship store closed.

"Fast fashion" suddenly failed?

But under this howl, Japan's fast fashion brand "UNIQLO" has grown up against the trend, even once again the founder of "Liu Jing Zheng" has been pushed onto the richest position in Japan.

Where does UNIQLO go against the wind?

UNIQLO is one of the most worth learning cases for any entity retailing in China. Today, old guns will help you explore the secret behind UNIQLO:

01

Buy with your eyes closed -- a strategy of perfect quality.

The key to UNIQLO's success is its strategic positioning.

Unlike fast fashion fashion brands, ZARA and H&M, who pursue fast fashion style iteration, UNIQLO's pursuit of "fast" is to help users make quick decisions. Its essence is that people do not need to spend time to choose, that is, the same as the good market supermarkets in the United States, "close eyes buy, everything is good" integrity strategy.

So how does UNIQLO build its own "essence"?

The key to rapid decision making is to save consumers' choice time and decision cost. They are "proficient" in the style of a single product, refined in quality, and "magnified" to the functional value accurately.

Because UNIQLO's audience is the public, UNIQLO first guarantees that the width of the product can contain all the people.

UNIQLO's style is simple, with only a few basic styles, and UNIQLO will develop in depth for every style. A single product is often divided into round collar, V collar, full coverage of men, women, old and young, especially in terms of color. Each species has four or five colors.

While increasing the style of extension, UNIQLO will also optimize the size of different shapes.

Although UNIQLO's style is simple, its style is all over the world, and it is not easy to go out of fashion.

Through the comprehensive coverage to form a larger market scale, the simple and versatile style also saves a lot of fitting and picking costs for consumers.

2, refinement: quality control to metamorphosis.

In fact, the middle-class demand brought by the upgrading of consumption is more important to the Chinese people than the quality of the appearance.

In terms of quality control, if Japanese clothing is very strong, then the quality control of UNIQLO is abnormal.

UNIQLO's clothing is mostly produced in China. The average rate of defective products in the industry is generally 2-3%, but UNIQLO requires factories to reduce the defective rate to 0.3%.

Moreover, UNIQLO's rules for evaluating defective products are very strict, for example, on the surface of T-shirts, even if there is only one 0.5 millimeter thread, it is considered defective.

Unlike chasing Zara and H&M, UNIQLO focuses its efforts on the continuous development of functional fabric products, so that quality is greatly improved.

Some people even say that UNIQLO is more like a technology company to some extent.

The pursuit of this quality will greatly save consumers' cost of selecting the same high quality products.

3, precision: functional black Technology

It is often said that UNIQLO is a high-tech company that has been delayed by clothes. In addition to its quality assurance, UNIQLO will introduce various black technologies according to the functions of different clothing, so as to bring the functional value of clothes to the extreme.

For example, the recent popular UNIQLO sunscreen clothing, anti UV technology;

For example, before the hot "self heating" underwear, the use of HEATTECH heating technology: fiber absorption of human body water vapor, continuously pformed into heat.

UNIQLO will put these black technologies in the form of experiential display so that customers can experience the "incredible" of black technology intuitively.

In the long run, customers leave "screaming" functional sense of value.

Thus, under the three attack of proficient, refined and precise, it constitutes a perfect strategy of UNIQLO product with eyes closed and buying casually.

Addictive promotions -- changing preferences

In order to make customers choose quickly, besides the excellent quality of products, the moving of prices is equally important.

In addition to its own pricing benefits, UNIQLO's application of sales can be described as cattle: can't help but shop around without hesitation.

1, a regular preferential strategy - you can't help visiting shops.

Most brands today may offer a discount of 20 percent off a week after a discount of 50 percent off. It seems that according to the mood of random discount strategy, UNIQLO's preferential strategy is a certain rule, and even online UNIQLO's discount strategy, generally speaking, there are 3 to 4 price cuts.

Such a sales promotion will give customers a sense of control over the purchase of clothing in UNIQLO, thereby encouraging customers to take the initiative to go to UNIQLO.

But the consumer is still too tender. The law of promotion strategy is not a real rule at all. It is just an illusory illusion that can not be accurately considered.

For example, UNIQLO often launches "special time limit". First, a garment is discounted, and then the original price is restored in a few days.

Making random offers will confuse consumers and make consumers make decisions more quickly.

I don't know when to discount, and I don't know when the price will rise, so I will buy it without hesitation when I meet the clothes I like.

With this and the past, consumers will be able to develop UNIQLO discount, which will be the inertia cognition of super high performance price ratio. After consumers buy something in UNIQLO, they will buy directly as long as they discount, saving most of the cost of the price.

03

Intangible attraction -- details determine success or failure.

In addition to products and pricing, you will find that walking in UNIQLO shops will have inexplicable comfort, which is an invisible scene attracting people to unconsciously want to wander, which actually conceals many small details of optimization, such as:

1. The smiling service of employees

In order to train the staff to learn to smile, UNIQLO set up a practice of biting the chopsticks: let an employee bite the chopsticks, cover the eyes with paper, and let other employees realize that if there is no smile on the eyes, the shape of a smile alone is still invalid.

Customers who pass by have to say hello, whether they respond or not, as long as customers choose clothes, employees must immediately take the shopping basket and deliver them to the customers. On rainy days, shop assistants will also put a pparent plastic bag outside the printed paper bag to prevent the paper bags from getting wet.

"To be able to give customers what they want, so that they can become your loyal fans."

2. Setting details of shopping environment

Like Muji, shop details are extremely demanding. All clothes are stacked in a very particular way. For example, it is easy for customers to see the folding of the trouser legs.

Another detail: the mirror.

In China, the mirror from UNIQLO's mirror and GAP, H&M and ZARA mirror have different effects.

Part of the reason is the placement of mirrors. The other reason is light. Because the outline of the yellow people, especially the outline of the face is not deep, which is more "flat" than that of the Europeans and Americans. It is not suitable for the light directly from the above. The defect of the facial contour can be completely revealed through the shadow. However, the deep European and American people can show the three-dimensional skeleton outline.

UNIQLO itself is an Asian brand, so the research on the characteristics of yellow people will be higher than that of other European and American brands. In UNIQLO's mirror, the lights are shone from the front or rear, which is more suitable for the yellow race.

UNIQLO's lighting selection is also right, not yellow, not dazzling, soft light, and even to a certain extent, beautify the skin.

There are many such details. They may be irrelevant, but they can form a small goodwill accumulation in the continuous fine adjustment, which virtually affects the shopping mood of consumers.

Unbeaten secret -- benign inventory

For any company, the most important thing is always profit, and it is very difficult to guarantee profit under the condition of large inventory and low price, such as UNIQLO's high quality and low price. More than UNIQLO, it is very difficult for most retailers to control inventory. Let's look at the practice of UNIQLO.

Before making the sales plan, UNIQLO will make the budget on the basis of last year's and last year's data. For example, how many new stores need to be expanded, how high will this year's sales increment be? 5%, 10% or 15%? Finally, a specific figure will be determined.

The advantage of UNIQLO mode is that the quantity is large, one is 100 thousand, so that the price of the supplier can be reduced to a very low level.

So over the years, UNIQLO's explosive products have beaten some of China's major apparel companies to a rout.

3) quick response and replenishment

This link is also viewed by UNIQLO's competitors H&M and ZARA as the most important part of the sales process, which requires a lot of manpower and material resources to analyze the data.

UNIQLO uses the skilled SPA mode (private brand retailer business mode), driven by the information of the terminal stores: the information that the store will receive will be fed back to the factory quickly and effectively, and the factory will adjust the production structure immediately, so that it can not only avoid the slow response of multi-layer channels, but also effectively protect the market supply of the best sellers.

In short, the following is the information driven mode.

Because UNIQLO has stores in many countries around the world, if the winter in the northern hemisphere is over, they can sell the goods to the southern hemisphere, where it happens to be winter.

Moreover, UNIQLO's clothes are few in style, and the matching speed and speed are very fast.

Formed a benign allocation cycle, so that the risk of inventory backlog brought about by season change has been perfectly regulated.

Of course, the four point above is only the basement, which can only guarantee that in the turbulent times, it will not decay. If we want to go against the trend, we need to keep up with the continuous growth of the times. What is unique about UNIQLO?

The black hole of drainage is just a tool.

1. deep docking Tmall build online drainage entry

With a lot of brands rush to follow up the layout of the electricity supplier is different. Obviously, UNIQLO has unique views on the electricity supplier and the Internet. In the view of UNIQLO, the Internet is just a tool to drain from the line to the offline.

We take 16 years of UNIQLO perfect play online double eleven example:

16 years, double eleven, UNIQLO broke 2 sales in the first 2 minutes and 53 seconds, and announced that all products had been sold out and withdrew from double eleven ahead of schedule.

Even so, UNIQLO took advantage of a far superior position to occupy the sales champion of several eleven Tmall categories, and took off Tmall's double eleven fastest breaking billion record in one fell swoop, and entered the double eleven sales "billion club".

It can be seen from the sold out posters that the sale is just a marketing tool for UNIQLO.

In this marketing, the clever place of UNIQLO lies in:

1) quickly grab double eleven gimmicks

First of all, UNIQLO arranged for at least eleven yuan to ensure that the "two billion club" gimmick online goods.

Then, give super low price concessions, under the favorable custom of UNIQLO's traditional retailing, provide power for UNIQLO to seize the "speed" gimmick. (more importantly, "speed" guarantee, provide adequate time for the next store outlet of UNIQLO).

The benefits of gimmick lie in the dissemination and enhancement of UNIQLO brand, and on the other hand provide free resources for offline drainage.

Why are other brands struggling to compete in double eleven trading day? While UNIQLO converse thinking, double eleven when the inventory limit is on the antenna, simply backflow.

Apart from making bigger gimmicks, the most important thing is to have room for offline stores.

We looked back at the sold out posters of UNIQLO, which first showed that they had sold out, and then said there was a need to go to the next store.

On the one hand, the online sale shows that the strength of the discount is enough to attract people.

On the other hand, there are four persistent principles for UNIQLO discount:

A, the same price, the same price online and offline.

B, fair, no special discount, no matter how much.

C, publicity and promotion policies are all pparent and informed in advance.

D, it can be expected that pricing, promotion and shelves are regular.

The long-term persistence of these four principles has established a trust authority for users. When the online sale shows the strength of the discount, consumers will be under the inertia that the discount strength is equally strong.

Coupled with the posters' "if you need to go to the physical store to buy preferential products", most of the consumers who saw the news but did not get the preferential products would have a successful solution to the line.

Successful online drainage has made UNIQLO a big winner of double eleven, and has also verified its first step in exploring new retail outlets.

For consumers who do not have full time to experience offline scenes, UNIQLO stores through online shop orders, line stores, pick up goods, online ordering, 24 hour store speed service and so on, using store advantages to turn stores into warehouses and after-sale guarantees, provide speedy speedy service and secure replacement. At this point, UNIQLO has built a unique new retail system of UNIQLO through online drainage, offline scene entrance creation, and offline services from online to offline.

From UNIQLO's exploration of new retail experience economy and high technology, we can see that what UNIQLO does is to eliminate all factors that hinder consumer decision making to achieve its core strategy: helping consumers make quick decisions.

UNIQLO will never let go of unfit clothes and unsuitable versions of the clothes that are not fit for the line, and the version is unsuitable. As early as 2014, UNIQLO tried to put online virtual fitting rooms on the line.

Due to technical constraints, online virtual fitting rooms still have many shortcomings: online can not fully reflect the physical properties of clothing, online can not accurately simulate the prototype of consumers, online models are too rigid and not vivid enough, so that the consumer experience today is greatly reduced.

But in any case, UNIQLO still takes the lead in capturing the exploration heights. First, it does not say whether the future will continue to lead. At least when the virtual fitting room is introduced in the future, more or less will mention the example of UNIQLO!

06

The maker of tidal currents -- joint UT

Compared with ZARA and H&M, whose products are highly iterative, the uniforms which sell the basic products are not so fashionable in the eyes of young people. Too simple modeling has been criticized for a long time by fashionable young people.

Just like UNIQLO's "service life", most of the young people buy it because of comfort and safety quality. In the hearts of young people, UNIQLO can be said to be the most fashionable fashion brand.

How does UNIQLO solve this problem?

If you do not tide yourself, you can play with the tide and tide yourself! So, UNIQLO has released a T-shirt series called UT, which has been jointly launched with the IP collision that has triggered the trend.

Let young people shout that UNIQLO can still be so popular?

"UT is a box, everything goes inside." the essence of UT is a trend maker made by UNIQLO. It turns the foundation into a trend product through the joint name of a T-shirt and a tidal IP pattern. Moreover, such UT will not be eliminated like the new models of ZARA and H&M, because it will be eliminated because of a trend decline. It can be linked to the latest trend IP continuous manufacturing trend.

Why can UNIQLO grow against this trend in this fashion of rapid fashion?

From the main road to Jane, the world's martial arts will not break quickly. For the brand "fast" is not the fast action, but the fast recognition of the consumers. UNIQLO is not so terrible. The frightful is the impetuous era. Too many brands are flickered by the false "tricks".

The trend of UNIQLO is just keeping up with the trend and sticking to its original intention. It constantly shapes consumers' "unconditional trust" with "closed eyes robbing, all over value".