Analysis and Exploration of Uniqlo’s Technology Innovation

Company Profile Uniqlo is a fast fashion clothing apparel company, it is founded in Japan by Yamaguchi in 1949 as a textiles manufacturer. It already becomes a global brand and has over 1000 stores all over the world. They are fashion retailing company, also focus on the quality of the textiles and products. Uniqlo's first store was opened in 1984, they used first store was opened in 1984, they used private label apparel manufacturer to help them be successful in the market. The reason is they can take control of the whole process from product planning, production, and the market. They are trying to provide high quality casual wear to different group people. The style of their cloth is simple, people can freely combine the style that they like to become their own style. The concept of high quality in fast fashion is the reason why their business can expand to all over the world.

Business Before New Technology

Uniqlo has strong ability to produce the huge number of the product, their business model helps them to know the requirements of the market. The worldwide market let them have opportunities to develop new materials with great fabric research group. The collection of their Life Wear is high quality with universal design, which means their target market is for everyone and everywhere .

Technology Innovation

Uniqlo's in store neuroscience stylist is a technology innovation for their retail business. This is the first time to base on consumer's mood to select clothing match to them. This is a wearable technology, called Umood. Consumers will place it on the forehead, then the screen will show images and videos about the neurological reaction. It provides a brainwave reading, Uniqlo will base on the information to suggest a t-shirt from their retail range to match with consumer's mind. It shows the brand turn to neuroscience technology to help them an edge with consumers. It will help them base on the process to collect the data from the consumer. This technology uses five metrics, like concentration, stress, and drowsiness to measure consumer's mind. This brainwave sensing technology was design by the Japanese company called Dentsu ScienceJam. The sensor is a commercially available biosensor made by NeuroSky. This subject support by the consumer neuroscientist program of the University of Melbourne. Consumers have too much choice to by the product, it will bring trouble for them making decisions. This tool will feel more interesting and less stress during the shopping experience. It is a really good example shows the technology work together with the human touch. Uniqlo was one of the pioneers of the brainwave Sensing technology. The make-up brand called Benefit also uses this idea to connect with their consumers. They came up with a face-reader to analyses consumer's upper part of their face to know their emotion. The shape of eyebrows will be the measure tool to know the needs of the consumer. This is the same concept as Uniqlo's in store neuroscience stylist. They both analyses the information provide by consumers and help them make decisions for the product that fit them.

Business Advantage

The Uniqlo company only provide this technology experience in the store that located in Australia. It provides a fun, personalized shopping experience for the consumer. The change for their business is let consumer left everyone talking, earning Uniqlo and Umood 20 million media impression. It is a benefit for them to promote their brand through social media. It successfully improves in-store traffic, email capture, and engagement. This retail innovation covered by hundreds of media outlets around the world. This innovation push Uniqlo at the center of the future technology retail business. The benefit is bigger than the cost for Uniqlo's in store neuroscience stylist. The reason is they only provide this shopping experience into Australia so far. It as a concept to let consumers know they are not only a fast fashion clothing brand, but also follow technology trend to require the needs of the market. The technology that they use support by the Japanese company and the University of Melbourne. Uniqlo will use their technology into their retail market. Uniqlo does not need to take any market risk during the whole process. It helps Uniqlo earned 20+million media impressions in earned media worth $1.1million and got 2+ million social media impressions. It also pushes Uniqlo's position as the leader of global retail technology innovation and effect through Asia.

Conclusion

In 2018, Uniqlo start teams up with Google to help for their Ariake Project. The goal of this partnership is translated require of consumers into products and service faster. This project focuses on the close communication with factories to create a flexible manufacturing structure, highly efficient distribution system and expand online services. The achievement of this project will affect the whole process of their business. The problem Uniqlo needs to face in the future is they need to make sure their technology innovation powerful enough to compete with other fast fashion like Zara and H&M because they also woke on digitizing the supply chain to be a digital consumer retail company.