After four years of waiting, Japanese clothing company Uniqlo will open its first store in Mumbai on October 6, 2023 and a second on October 20 at Oberoi Mall in the east of the city. This is the brand’s first foray into western India after initially limiting its expansion to the north of the country. FashionUnited took a first look at the new store in Mumbai’s largest mall, Phoenix Market City, in the suburb of Kurla.
“We are very excited to open our much-awaited first store in Mumbai,” said Tomohiko Sei, CEO of Uniqlo India, in almost fluent Hindi after greeting the press delegation with a friendly “Namaste”. The brand is launching in Mumbai after opening its first store four years earlier in Delhi in October 2019. Two years later, the e-commerce store launched and showed that sales in Mumbai are comparable to Delhi, despite having no physical retail presence there.
“We are excited to introduce our new LifeWear to Mumbaikars and support their daily lives after witnessing strong demand through our e-commerce channel,” said Sei.
Goals for Mumbai
The new store in the Phoenix Market City Mall covers an area of almost 1,070 square meters and two floors. It offers a range of LifeWear collections for men, women, children and babies. There is also the special Uniqlo x Kaws collaboration T-shirt collection as well as the UT collection based on the popular TV anime “Jujutsu Kaisen” and Japanese artist Hokusai.
Sei named the goals for Uniqlo in Mumbai, among other things, the development of the LifeWear concept, which offers functional and high-quality clothing, as well as the expansion of the branch network. “We want to tap into different geographical areas in Mumbai,” the brand confirmed.
Nidhi Rastogi, Marketing Director, Uniqlo India, highlighted the LifeWear approach, which aims to improve customers’ lives through clothing. She focuses on five areas: the needs of customers, constant innovation, ingenuity in detail, the highest quality and the ability to complement any style. Rastogi cited non-iron shirts, non-slip socks and the brand’s ultra-light down jacket as examples of clothing designed to make people’s lives easier.
In Mumbai’s hot and humid climate, the brand’s AIRism line is also popular with its lightweight fabrics as the items are sweat-wicking, quick-drying, odor-resistant, moisture-wicking, smooth, stretchy and cool to the touch. It may come as a surprise that fall/winter items like the ultra-light down jacket, Heattech items and fleece are also among the top sellers, but this can easily be explained by the fact that Mumbai residents love to travel – especially to cold climates.
When asked about sizing for the Indian market – an omission that costs many European brands dearly – Sei confirmed that there are two sizing models, one for the European and American markets and one for Asia. “Before coming to India, we did a lot of research and found that Indian sizes are very different and diverse. While the Asian specification is more suitable for this market, we had to expand it and add an XS and XXL size,” explained Sei.
Vision for India
Regarding Uniqlo’s vision and journey in India, Sei highlighted three main objectives: expanding the store network, expanding collaboration with the Indian community and expanding production in India with the ultimate aim of becoming number 1 in India. Sei made it clear that it wasn’t just about sales and profits, but above all about trust: “It’s not enough to just want to sell products.”
Regarding the growth together with the Indian community, Sei mentioned that Uniqlo’s parent company Fast Retailing donated 220 million rupees (around 2.5 million euros) for Covid relief in India in May 2021. Part of the investment in the community and the country also includes partnerships with 17 sewing factories and six fabric factories.
Expansion of production
In this context, Sei mentioned three promises that Uniqlo has made in terms of quality, expanding production (and thus more local jobs), and nurturing Indian talent that will be prepared not only for the Indian market but global markets . Sei hinted that expanding production in India could reduce the brand’s dependence on China as a manufacturing hub, confirming that clothing produced for the brand in India is already being exported to other markets.
With seven stores in the Delhi metropolitan area, the brand is now set to eye a similar expansion in Mumbai, although Sei could not provide specific numbers beyond the two stores opened this month. However, he emphasized that the expansion of the branch network depends on good partners and highly qualified employees, with the company making efforts to train branch managers. With one store each in Tier 2 cities of Chandigarh and Lucknow and the first highway store in Zirakpur near Chandigarh, the brand’s number of stores in India will increase to twelve.
“India is a huge opportunity and an important market, not just for Uniqlo but for everyone,” Sei said, citing the country’s strong economic growth and brand awareness, as well as the diverse interests of customers. When asked why Uniqlo has been relatively quiet over the past four years, Sei acknowledged that the company is still behind in terms of brand awareness and that more needs to be done in the future.
Given the competition, Sei agreed that “everyone is very strong,” citing the strong tradition that domestic brands have in the country. But he is confident that Uniqlo will prevail in the market with its affordable and reasonable prices, especially given the high quality it offers. “Indian customers are quality conscious, not bargain conscious,” he said, sharing his observation that it is typical for Indian customers to touch a fabric before buying clothes.
Uniqlo’s store network in numbers
With almost 1,000 stores (996), the brand has the largest store network in Greater China, followed by Japan with 809 stores. The South Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania region follows at some distance with 293 stores, followed by 122 stores in South Korea, 115 in Europe and 59 in North America.
