Who Owns Uniqlo?

Uniqlo's origins trace to 1949, when Hitoshi Yanai established a men's clothing store in Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. The business operated as a conventional menswear retailer for several decades before Tadashi Yanai transformed it into a mass-market casual wear chain.

In 1984, Tadashi Yanai opened the first Unique Clothing Warehouse store in Hiroshima, Japan. The store was designed as a self-service casual wear retailer offering a wide range of basic clothing at low prices, a format that was novel in Japan at the time. The concept proved immediately popular, and Yanai rapidly expanded the store network across Japan throughout the late 1980s.

The brand name was shortened from "Unique Clothing Warehouse" to "Uniqlo" in 1988 when a clerical error during a Hong Kong business registration inadvertently created the abbreviated name. Yanai adopted it, and the Uniqlo brand identity was formally established. By 1994, the company had listed on the Hiroshima Stock Exchange, and it moved to the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 1999.

The late 1990s and early 2000s marked Uniqlo's emergence as a national phenomenon in Japan. The brand's fleece jackets, launched in 1998, became a cultural sensation, with approximately 2 million units sold in the first season. The success demonstrated that Uniqlo could create mass-market demand for specific product innovations rather than simply competing on price alone.

Uniqlo's international expansion began in 2001 with the opening of stores in the United Kingdom. The initial UK expansion was challenging, and the company closed most of its UK stores by 2003 before regrouping and relaunching internationally with a more refined strategy. The brand returned to the UK and expanded into China, South Korea, and the United States in the mid-2000s with considerably more success.

The development of proprietary fabric technologies became central to Uniqlo's brand identity from the mid-2000s onward. HEATTECH, a thermal fabric developed in partnership with Toray Industries, launched in 2003 and became one of the brand's most successful product lines, with hundreds of millions of units sold globally. AIRism, a moisture-wicking cooling fabric, followed in 2012. Ultra Light Down, a packable down jacket line, became another signature product. These innovations gave Uniqlo a functional differentiation that pure price-based competitors could not easily replicate.

By the early 2010s, Uniqlo had established itself as a major global apparel brand with stores across Asia, Europe, and North America. The brand opened its flagship New York store on Fifth Avenue in 2011 and its Paris flagship on the Champs-Elysees in 2013, signaling its ambition to compete directly with global fashion brands in their home markets.

In fiscal year 2025 (ended August 31, 2025), Uniqlo Japan reported revenue of approximately 1.03 trillion yen, up 10.1 percent year-on-year, while Uniqlo International continued to expand its global store network. Fast Retailing described Uniqlo's popularity as "rising worldwide," with support for the LifeWear concept growing among consumers and the brand receiving increasing coverage in international media.