Yoon Barbé Integrated Marketing

SWOT ANALYSIS – UNIQLO

Strengths
1. Following their tagline “made for all,” Uniqlo provides clothes for everybody: male and female, young and old,
low and high purchase power. Uniqlo’s goal is to provide high-fashion and low-cost clothes, which their
customers can wear with their $1500 coat or their $700 pair of jeans.
2. Due to their affordable prices, Uniqlo invests a lot in fabric technology to prevent customers from perceiving
their goods as low quality. Uniqlo mainly concentrates on high utility fabrics, working along scientists,
engineers and designers.
3. Fashionable and updated design: Uniqlo is able to constantly come out with new products that are able to
remain updated in terms of design.
4. Uniqlo differentiates themselves by not chasing trends and on the contrary, focuses on basic garments,
produced in a variety of different colors to satisfy all their customers.
5. Corporate culture and involvement of their staff in providing excellent services.

Weaknesses
1. Lack of brand recognition: Uniqlo is well known in the Asia-Pacific region but is poorly recognized in Western
countries.
2. Lack of understanding of the Western culture, which puts them in a difficult position when it comes to
implementing their brand in Western territories.
3. Minimal social media presence.

Opportunities
1. Global expansion: investing much more in Europe and in the United States.
2. The fast-retailing industry is a very dynamic industry with a lot of emerging trends that Unqilo could take
advantage of.
3. Growing customer demand for more affordable clothes.
4. Increasing purchase power in emerging countries.
5. Continuing to engage with their audience lie they are already doing with their Uniqlo’s annual T-shirt design
contest – top designs are featured in Uniqlo’s next Spring and Summer collection.

Threats
1. Fierce competition with domestic and global players, especially global and well established brands such as
Giordano, H&M, Gap and Zara.
2. Conflicts with suppliers.

Sources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregpetro/2012/10/23/the-future-of-fashion-retailing-part-1-uniqlo/
http://www.fastretailing.com/eng/group/strategy/tactics.html
http://www.fastcompany.com/1839302/cheap-chic-and-made-all-how-uniqlo-plans-take-over-casual-fashion
http://www.businessoffashion.com/2013/04/with-an-evolutionary-approach-uniqlo-aims-to-create-new-category.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/22/uniqlo-expansion_n_4598031.html