Singaporean Entrepreneurs

If a casual clothing store is able to catch a designer’s eye and make her a loyal customer, you know its going to be a big hit. Strolling down Nanjingdonglu a few years back, a friend who is an art director at an ad agency spotted UNIQLO ( a Japanese “giordano”) and was hooked.

Now UNIQLO is one of our favourite casual clothing retailers, especially after one of our friends actually won in a lucky draw! (He won a 30GB iPod even though he entered the draw as a visiting Singaporean and put down a resident’s address.)

Anyhow, UNIQLO is doing so well that they are planning to roll out 200 more shops within 5 years. They currently have 5 stores in Hong Kong and 10 stores in the mainland (not counting the rest in Japan) so that’s going to be an incredible expansion. Senior Vice President Tiger Pan Ning projects sales to double every year to about 7 Billion RMB (US$939 Milllion) by 2012.

As China exceeds Germany as the world’s 3rd biggest economy this year (2007), Japanese companies are moving more and more of their efforts into Chinese shores. (UNIQLO is not doing well in Japan- at all.) However, not all is so rosy for retailers in China. For instance, although WALMART has 42 stores in China today and plans to double that number within the next 5 years, its actually cutting jobs as well as competition from Carrefour (100 hypermarkets) and other giant retailers heats up. In the meantime, Japan continues its efforts on all fronts- AEON (Japan’s second biggest retailer) is investing up to 15 Billion RMB to establish 100 outlets by 2012.

So what does this all mean? The market is still in flux, opportunities are still plenty, China’s potential is yet to be unleashed.