Uniqlo sales rise, weather has little impact as stay-at-home pieces still selling

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Aug 4, 2020

The weather played less of a part than usual in sales at Fast Retailing’s Uniqlo chain during July with the company saying on Tuesday that its Japanese same-store sales (including online) rose 4.4% year-on-year during the month. Total sales rose 4.7%.

Uniqlo is usually heavily dependent on the weather in the Japanese market with the right temperatures at the right time of year regularly helping to boost or suppress sales of its basics such as T-shirts or its weather-specific items such as its Heattech series.

But this time, it said that “despite the long spell of rain and low temperatures experienced during the month, same-store sales rose in July on the back of strong sales of items that perfectly suited the recent demand for stay-at-home clothing”.

It’s another example of the pandemic and its after-effects changing consumer behaviour and tastes in a big way and means that the increased sales of loungewear items that have been seen by retailers worldwide are continuing, even though society is opening back up again.

The company also said that its stores are largely open and that as of the end of July, only seven shops remained temporarily closed, although 93 are still operating shorter working hours due to the pandemic.