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“That year, I was 35 years old and served as the Executive Director of Shougun Commercial Stock Co., Ltd. (now Fast Retailing Co., Ltd.), which my father managed. After graduating from university, I worked in a supermarket for 10 months. After resigning, I led a loose life for a while, then took over my father's men's suit store. When the first Uniqlo store opened, it was exactly the 12th year of my joining the company. Although at that time I couldn't distinguish the difference between "doing business" and "working", I had already begun to feel the joy and fear of doing business.”
“In the following years, I challenged various markets with clothing sales as the core, experienced several failures, and made some business friends. In the end, I established "Fast Retailing Co., Ltd.". Currently, the company not only carries out Uniqlo's retail business throughout Japan, but also opens Uniqlo specialty stores in countries and regions such as the UK and China. In the process, we learned a lot of valuable things from our customers and our partners. What makes me proud is that the company also has a large number of hard-working excellent employees. On this occasion, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the directors and employees of the company for their great support and encouragement to me who is not very good in the past years.”
“I don't have the idea of leisurely writing a memoir, because the market is changing constantly, and all the time, I am thinking about what I have to do and want to do, so I don't have the spare time to quietly recall the past. But, what is business management? Why do we work in a company? For these basic concepts, I want to confirm and summarize, and share with directors and employees who have fought together and will continue to fight together. This is my motive and rationale for writing this book.”
“• At the funeral, I told my relatives and friends, "My father was my greatest competitor in my life." That was the first time I wept openly in public.”
“Essentially, a company is not an eternal entity. It has a high degree of fluidity and a very low chance of permanence.”
“An organization like this has the flexibility to adjust its structure and asset scale according to sales. A company without this flexibility will not work, and a rigid organizational structure will sooner or later cause problems. As I just said, companies have a lifespan, and if they can't change themselves according to changes in the environment, it's impossible for the company to survive well. As an operator, no matter how the business environment changes, it is their most basic responsibility to continuously improve business performance.”
“From a very young age, I was instilled with the idea that "whatever you do, you should do it the best". Perhaps because of this, I developed a conception in my mind that this was how fathers should discipline their sons. In my childhood, I rarely received any praise from my father, except for the occasional compliment when I was accepted to high school and university.”
“Seeing my father betting everything he had in life, conducting his business as if it was a battlefield, I always felt that I was not suitable for this kind of life. Yet, I ended up inheriting my father's suit store and developed it into the Uniqlo we have today. Looking back, I am continually amazed at the incredible connection between my life's trajectory and my father's.”
“My father opened his suit store in 1949, the year I was born. In April 1984, he had a stroke. In June, the first Uniqlo store opened. In September of the same year, my father retired from his position as President and became Chairman, and I, who had been the Executive Director, took over as President.”
“On February 1, 1999, our company was listed on the main board of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Five nights after I told my father the good news, he passed away. The next day, February 7, was my 50th birthday, while my father's 79-year-old life came to an end. At his funeral, I told my relatives and friends, "My father was the biggest competitor in my life." It was the first time I had cried so openly in front of everyone.”
“After the small suit store was on track, my father also ran a coffee shop and a movie theater, in addition to the construction company, and he became a standout character amongst the local operators. The construction business was thriving during the period of high economic growth.
During this time, my father opened a VAN store because he liked the brand's merchandise very much. I often wore VAN branded T-shirts with athletic collars and touring shoes during my high school years. This was probably one reason why I became fond of casual wear.”
“During my time at university, I also traveled to the United States, and often went to tea at the high-volume jazz dance halls in Waseda and Takadanobaba. But to tell the truth, I visited mahjong parlors more than anywhere else. I didn't go to class often, and by the time I reached my third and fourth year, I didn't worry about job prospects. All I was thinking was: it would be best if I didn't have to work.”
“At that time, the head of Human Resources at Jusco was the sister of Takuya Okuda, the founder and honorary chairman of AEON Group. I remember my strong impression when I first joined the company was that the dormitory was well-equipped, and the care for people was very thoughtful. After joining the company, I was sent to the main store in Yokkaichi for training.”
“When I decided to go home to take over the family business, my father, who was perhaps busy with his own construction company, didn't give me anything to do, just handed me the men's clothing store. Not knowing what to do, I went into the store as usual, busy serving customers and doing miscellaneous things. At that time, "Ogura Shoji" had developed from an individual store into "Ogura Shoji Co., Ltd." with a capital of 6 million yen, with a men's clothing store with an annual sales of about 100 million yen and a VAN store selling casual wear.”
“Although I consider myself a unfilial son, I am, after all, someone with practical experience of Jusco's workflow and management structure, so after working for a while, I found many problems in the store's workflow from procurement to sales. The entire store was inefficient and turned money too slowly, even when selling high-end suits in the commercial street's suit stores. Although the company was not in the red, it did not make much money.”
“When I gradually understood the principles of doing business, I felt that I could not let this state continue, so I told the six clerks in the store how to do the right thing. But what happened next surprised me: these clerks began to resign. Two years later, only Mr. Ura was left.
I never intended to have a fallout with these old clerks, maybe they thought I was wrong, maybe they were shaken by the future development of the store, which led to this regrettable result. But even when old employees like the store manager submitted their resignations, my father never blamed me. On the contrary, one day, he handed me the company's important account books and seals. If I were in his shoes, seeing these old employees leaving one after another, I would definitely say something. Now thinking back, I feel that my father is really great, truly a respected businessman. I guess my father might have thought this way: if you really have the determination to do something, go ahead and do it, even if you ruin the company in the end, as long as I am still alive, I can help you recover.”
“Mr. Pu's VAN store, which is on the same commercial street, is a place where I often go to check the sales of casual clothes. If I were to say what kind of clothes suit me to sell, I think selling casual clothes that do not require to be measured for customers seems to be a better fit. Suits are only sold to men over the age of 20, while casual wear customers have no age restrictions, making it a very public market. Is casual wear a market with a promising future? At that time, I began to feel the potential of the casual wear market.”
“Originally, our company — like Aoyama Western Clothing, XEBIO (a Japanese sporting goods retail brand), and other companies — belonged to the "Japanese Western Clothing Top Chain Association". At that time, the retail industry in Japan was in a period of vigorous development of suburban shops. Amidst my peers striving to go public, I felt the limitations of my company only dealing in men's suits. Therefore, an idea started to form in my mind: opening a large casual wear store in the suburbs might be interesting.”
“There, students had everything they needed for life, and it was easy to take. They didn't need any assistance from the sales staff, it's completely self-service. There wasn't that commercial flavor of trying to sell things, and the store layout was completely designed from the customer's perspective. Students walked in the store as casually as they would browse a bookstore or a record store. If they like something, they buy it, if not, they just look around and go out. I suddenly realized that selling our casual clothes in this way would be very interesting. However, this simple "self-service" form could easily be misunderstood as us trying to save on labor costs, a misunderstanding we would not want. Therefore, we believe the best way of service is "self-service that customers want", which later became UNIQLO's operating principle of "HELP YOURSELF".”
“At that time, the Uniqlo logo was "UNICLO". Four years later (in March 1988), when the company went into a joint venture with a local person in Hong Kong to establish a goods procurement company named "UNICLO TRADING", the person who was registering the company mistook the "C" in "UNICLO" for a “Q". Later, we realized that the visual effect was even better with the “Q”, so we decided to change all the names of the stores to "UNIQLO", including those in Japan.
Indeed, sometimes real life is like this; a beautiful story often begins with a chance mistake.”
