At the beginning of the new year, Uniqlo began to move toward new financial goals. Last year, Uniqlo was a year of rapid development. The performance of all parties was gratifying, and profits and sales increased significantly. Unsurprisingly, Uniqlo has set itself a higher performance target in the new year and expects its operating profit and sales to record again.
Fast Retailing Company stated that as of the November quarter, the company’s net profit increased by 57.2% from the same period last year to 34.9 billion yen, operating profit increased by 49% to 61 billion yen, and sales revenue increased 39.8% year-on-year. It reached 263.5 billion yen.
Such strong performance was mainly attributed to the products of the Qiudong line, especially the HeatTech underwear line, and the sales were quite good. Not only can we see that the number of consumers in Uniqlo stores is large, but personal consumption expenditures are also rising.
Company executive Toshihisa Tokunaga said: "HeatTech's sales are still strong, so we have also greatly increased the number of products. In December, we continued to increase the HeatTech product range."
Toshihisa Tokunaga also attributed the company’s strong performance to its business expansion in Asia, Europe and the United States. Despite fierce competition from overseas rivals such as Gap, Zara and H&M in overseas markets, the company’s sales in overseas markets rose from 16.46 billion euros last year to 36.09 billion euros.
Uniqlo’s new flagship store in Paris began selling in September and sales are better than expected.
The company opened 33 new stores this quarter and closed 11 stores. Now the total number of stores reaches 792. Of the 33 new stores, 10 are flagship stores.
Fast Retailing's plan for 2010 is that as of August 2010, the company's net profit has reached 62 billion yen and its sales volume has reached 820 billion yen. These figures are all new to the company's development.