Uniqlo Is Going To Start Producing Clothing At Zara Speeds

Uniqlo and Zara are both in the business of fast fashion on a global scale, but style-wise, they’re on opposite ends of the spectrum. While Zara is trend-driven to a fault, Uniqlo is all about wardrobe essentials. Uniqlo’s flashiest collaboration, for example, a capsule collection by French designer Christophe Lemaire, includes things like gray hoodies and white canvas sneakers. That is, even when the Japanese retailer goes for hype, it doesn’t ever get weird. While Uniqlo’s brand slogans include “quality comes first, then price” and “simple made better,” following a slightly lackluster 2016, which forced the company to cut revenue predictions for the next five years by 40 percent, it’s putting more emphasis on something more core to the Zara strategy: speed.
According to Bloomberg, at the opening of the company’s new design and delivery center in Tokyo last week, Uniqlo owner Tadashi Yanai—a former hippie turned Japan’s richest man—told the press that Uniqlo intends to shorten its design-to-delivery cycle down to just 13 days, on par with Zara’s breakneck cycle. “We need to be fast,” he said. “We need to deliver products customers want quickly.” But Yanai clarified that, despite a similar production strategy, Uniqlo and Zara are still worlds apart. “Zara sells fashion rather than catering to customers’ needs,” he said. “We will sell products that are rooted in people’s day-to-day lives, and we do so based on what we hear from customers.” Read more at GQ.