Uniqlo's poor performance in the United States established a denim R&D center

Recently, UNIQLO's parent company, Fast Retailing, announced the establishment of a research and development center in Los Angeles called Denim Innovation Center, which will provide technical and fabric aspects for Jenny Brand's jeans brand J Brand and Uniqlo's denim product line. R & D support.

This is the first R&D center dedicated to denim fabrics. It is also another overseas R&D center after the establishment of the R&D center in Paris in the middle of this year. The latter is the artistic director of Christorphe Lemaire, who is responsible for the R&D of the Uniqlo U series.

According to WWD reports, this is the second and fastest sixth R&D center in Los Angeles. In addition to Los Angeles and Paris, Fast Retailing also has R&D centers in Tokyo headquarters, Shanghai and New York. Among them, the New York R&D Center focuses on trends and conceptual design.

The newly established “Cowboy Innovation Center” in Los Angeles has already begun to operate, and its results will be available on the shelves of Uniqlo and J Brand as early as the fall and winter of 2017. The director of the R&D Center is also the design director of Mas Brand, Masaaki Matsubara.

According to Matsubara's statement to WWD, the R&D center is not a production base, but rather a “laboratory” responsible for the development of denim fabrics and comfort. Prior to this, some of the fast-selling denim fabric samples were produced by an external factory, and the new R&D center will undertake the process, so that the entire R&D-production process is completed by the company's internal team.

Matsubara also said that while the Uniqlo and J Brand are developing denim products, the results of the center will also apply to the GU and Comptoir des Cotonniers brands.

Founded in 2005, J Brand was founded in the United States by Jeff Rudes, a stylist, and Susie Crippen, a stylist. The jeans are popular because they are loved by many Hollywood stars. The brand's jeans are priced between $150 and $300.

In 2012, Fast Retail acquired 80.1% of J Brand's shares for US$300 million. Liu Jing, chairman of Fast Retailing, said at the time that the acquisition of J Brand helped the group to expand into the mass luxury sector and also to explore the US market. As early as 2009, Fast Retailing also acquired another American brand, Theory, which was also making decisions to expand the US market.

However, in the past few years, the most important Uniqlo brand of Fast Retailing has performed poorly in the US market. Now it has set up a research and development center in Los Angeles, or because the company has a deep understanding of the needs of the US market, especially for local trends and consumers. Preference makes for a more timely and sensitive response.