Do you know a Japanese fashion brand called UNIQLO ? Maybe not.

But this is the most popular Japanese casual wear brand. The secret for the popularity is amazingly low price and incredibly high quality. Yes, the cost performance is the best.

If you visit big cities like Tokyo or Osaka in Japan, you will see a lot of UNIQLO stores there. Recently the UNIQLO stores are in the train stations and airports ! 

Japan is in serious economic situation, but this apparel brand keeps running at the top speed and no other competitors  can catch up.

UNIQLO says they will open 100 stores newly in China in one year.　More surprisingly, they opened stores in NY, London, and recently in Paris too. At the Paris shop, it’s said that people needed to wait 2 hours for fitting trial ! because of the crowd.

Generations ago, nobody imagined that Japanese apparel company would start selling Japanese brand.  Japan somehow learned how to produce cars, electric things, and some more after the war.  But in fashion business, how could we imagine the success of a Japanese brand ? Impossible. Western apparel business is of course imported style for us, Japanese.  We didn’t think Westerners liked any of  Japanese  clothes. If we sell Kimono, the Japanese traditional clothes, it would be still reasonable trial. But who would buy T shirts or Jeans of Japanese design ?

But time passed us by.  World changed.  Actually we didn’t think Japanese animation would be popular in the world. But it is now.

We don’t know how the other nations think about Japanese culture or fashion.  It’s not yet famous compared to European fashion or American fashion, but something seems to be changing. 

It’s interesting and exciting.