GU, the lower-priced sister brand to Uniqlo, opened its first store outside of Asia this week. The flagship store, located just one block away from the existing Uniqlo store in New York City’s SoHo neighborhood, bears a striking resemblance to the Uniqlo store. The same gray concrete floors, high ceilings, elegantly posed mannequins and informative placards adorn the interior.
But what is different is the product. According to GU’s CEO Osamu Yunoki, GU is going after a completely different customer compared to Uniqlo: a younger, Gen-Z, fashionable, trend-focused shopper.
“Uniqlo is high quality, reasonable price points and basics,” Osamu said. “But GU is more trend-focused at an even lower cost.”
New products will be coming into the GU store every week, often capitalizing on the biggest fashion trends of the day. When the store opened on September 19, the first round of products featured trendy barrel-leg jeans, a wide collection of corduroy clothes and accessories, and chunky, thick-soled loafers. All were priced less than their counterparts at Uniqlo — $35 for a pair of jeans at GU compared to $50 for jeans at Uniqlo, for example.
But while new releases will be more frequent for GU compared to Uniqlo, the total number of SKUs released each year will be less than its sister brand.
“Other lower-price fashion brands like H&M and Zara offer as much variety as possible,” Osamu said. “We narrow it down, curate and offer only the most essential items. Every product can easily be worn by anyone, not just by models, and can easily be mixed and matched. There’s no need to purchase as many items. That’s the concept.”
Another new idea that GU is embracing in its U.S. store is genderless fashion. Every display in the store features a combination of masculine and feminine mannequins wearing the same clothes. And while the store is loosely divided into women’s clothes on the ground floor and men’s on the floor below, clothing for all body types and gender expressions is mixed in on both floors.
That sets the New York store apart from GU’s other flagships in Asia, which are more segmented by gender. But Osamu said the New York store is the brand’s most advanced one yet. It features Uniqlo’s unique self-checkout process where customers can put all of their items together into a single bin which automatically scans each item, eliminating the need to scan them one by one. The process, which was developed in-house, has been a hit with customers since it was introduced in the U.S. in 2022. More than 70% of Uniqlo’s customers use it.
To market the store, Osamu said GU is hoping to convert existing Uniqlo customers attracted by the lower price point. GU has also been working with style influencers like Jervari Hendrix and Lindsiann Shi to promote the opening.
GU’s parent company, Fast Retailing, has been having a stellar year, with a 31% increase in operating profit in the third-quarter, as reported in July. That growth is both attributed to and fueling the company’s international expansion. Uniqlo has been busy opening stores in new markets like Italy and China this year, while GU is being introduced to markets outside of Asia for the first time.
The GU store opening also comes as others in the fast fashion space are investing in physical stores. H&M has signaled that store openings will be a big part of its strategy this year by opening 100 stores and refurbishing 160 more.
Uniqlo is still the larger brand, with $1.6 billion in revenue last quarter compared to GU’s $600 million. But Osamu has high hopes that the flagship store and the simultaneous launch of GU’s international e-commerce store will be the beginning of a larger international growth period.
“Of course, we want to spread GU across the country with other stores,” he said. “But for now, this store is our focus.”
