Fast Retailing's Uniqlo May Open 200 Clothing Stores in the U.S. by 2020
Fast Retailing Co., Asia’s biggest clothing chain, aims to open at least 200 Uniqlo stores in the U.S. by 2020 as it seeks to raise sales sixfold in a decade.
“The United States is one of the most important markets for us,” Shin Odake, chief executive officer of Uniqlo’s U.S. unit, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in New York aired yesterday. “We want to become the number one retailer in the world.”
Fast Retailing, which plans to open its second U.S. store on New York’s Fifth Avenue next year, aims for revenue to reach 5 trillion yen ($60 billion) by 2020. The Yamaguchi City, Japan- based company is considering opening stores in other major cities including San Francisco, Chicago and Boston, Odake said.
The company will hire 50 U.S. college graduates this year and send them to Japan for six months to train them to be managers, Odake said.
Fast Retailing rose 0.4 percent to 13,060 yen as of 12:54 p.m. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The shares have fallen 25 percent this year.
Fast Retailing will add 44 Uniqlo stores overseas and 36 in Japan in the 12 months to August, bringing the total to 1,024, the company said Oct. 8. That’s the same pace of openings as its last fiscal year. The company has said it aims to boost the tally to 4,000 by 2020.
Uniqlo’s sole U.S. store is located in New York’s Soho district. Fast Retailing also sells the Theory apparel brand in the U.S.
To contact the reporter on this story: Naoko Fujimura in Tokyo at nfujimura@bloomberg.net; Jonathan Erlichman in New York at jerlichman1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Frank Longid at flongid@bloomberg.net
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