Upending Fashion, Steve Jobs-Style: 10 Questions With Uniqlo’s Yasunobu Kyogoku

Upending Fashion, Steve Jobs-Style: 10 Questions With Uniqlo’s Yasunobu Kyogoku


The Japanese retailer Uniqlo is on a global-expansion tear, opening new stores in premier shopping districts in London, New York, Paris, and Seoul, and aiming to quadruple sales by 2020 to $50 billion, with $10 billion of that coming from North America. For a company that made its name selling fleece pullovers, ultra-thin thermal underwear, and ultra-light down jackets, it’s a big bet on the appeal of fusing fashion and technology.

Wired Business talked with Uniqlo USA COO Yasunobu Kyogoku in the retailer’s new pop-up shop near San Francisco’s Union Square, a taste of what’s to come in Uniqlo’s first full-blown West Coast store slated to open Oct. 5 a few blocks away.

Wired: Why a pop up store?

Kyogoku: You need to start somewhere in educating the customer that Uniqlo isn’t about putting three holes in a pair of jeans and saying ‘this is the latest trend.’ It’s about a philosophy; we’re made for all, whether you’re 6 or 60. It’s about great casual basics, but with a twist of fashion. Also, we tend to have innovative technology that we build into the products, and you have to try it to understand it.

Wired: Fashion is notoriously fickle and hard to predict. How does technology help you in this environment?

Kyogoku: We sold a hundred million pieces of our Heattech product last year. It doesn’t only help you retain heat, but it actually helps you to generate heat. This is patented technology, developed with our partners at Toray Industries, the world’s largest manufacturer of carbon fibers. [Holds up a charcoal-colored Heattech blouse] When we first did this, we started with thermal underwear, which is a lot thicker. But over the years, we’ve iterated and it’s thin.

Traditional down you would buy is kind of bulky, hence they call them “puffer jackets.” The reason is because down feathers have a pointy end, and the feathers come out of the fabric. So traditional retailers provide an inner shell to prevent the feathers from coming out. Our Ultralight Down doesn’t have that inner shell – this outer fabric serves a dual purpose. There’s a drawstring that, for women in particular, allows you to draw it together and creates this cinch around the waist hence making it very fashionable. It’s not bulky, or masculine.

Wired: How do you go about improving and iterating?

Kyogoku: Attention to detail. Things like teaching our staff to make sure there’s no dust on the floor. When you buy jeans at Uniqlo, we hem it for you here in the back room. In the fitting room, our sales associates will go on their knees, on both knees, and they will hem it. It’s a sign of respect to the customer in Japan; the customer is at a higher level. The customer is what keeps you in business.

Wired: How do you teach your staff to pay attention to detail, and to the customer?

Kyogoku: The term we use, Zenin Keiei (全員経営‬), translates to ”everyone management” or “management by everyone.”‬ The idea is for everyone to think and act like an entrepreneur, a store manager, an executive.‬ Even if you’re a part-time worker, you’re thinking about the customer. We ask our employees, for example, let’s say about a t-shirt, ‘How does it fit? Have you gotten customer feedback?’ By asking for their input our employees are able to say, “Here’s some of the products we should have.” We’ve had some great suggestions as result of that.

As a corporate culture, we believe very, very strongly that all the answers are in the store – for everyone. No one wants to work at a company where the senior guys are off on vacation.

Wired: Is it true Uniqlo orders from its suppliers a full year in advance? What’s the thinking behind that?

Kyogoku: Let’s say you happen to own your own factory, and someone says, ‘In September, I’d like to order 40% of your capacity; in October, 70%; in the rest of the year, zero.’ You’d say, ‘But there’s a gentleman who just came to me and said, ‘I will book 80% of your capacity for a year and in fact, let’s do a long term partnership. Why don’t we add an extra line?’ The more you produce, the more you help me reduce the cost. We pass that to the customer. The customer buys more. We have a positive cycle where everyone wins.

Wired: With a 12-month cycle, aren’t you worried customers will go to faster-moving competitors with trendier clothes?

Kyogoku: We don’t chase trends. People mistakenly say that Uniqlo is a fast-fashion brand. We’re not. We are about clothing that’s made for everyone.