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Japanese affordable fashion giant Uniqlo recently announced that it will start a limited trial sale of Made in Tokyo sleeveless sweaters, sleeveless knit dresses, three-quarter sleeve knit jackets and other Wholegarment seamless products at its Ginza flagship store in Tokyo from July. 3D knitted products.
I still remember that in September last year, Uniqlo’s parent company, Fast Retailing, announced the establishment of a joint venture company Innovation Factory with the Japanese knitting equipment leader SHIMA SEIKI. This is not only Uniqlo’s first own factory, but also hints at Uniqlo. Will further advance in the direction of "on-demand production".
Uniqlo has always been good at making cheap and basic styles more refined and larger, so it is very strict in the selection of foundries. In order to balance quality, quantity and price, in the past, Uniqlo cooperated with foundries mostly concentrated in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Ethiopia. Asia, Uniqlo will dispatch "technical craftsmen" to the factory to provide various technical support. Even if the annual output is as high as 1.3 billion pieces, Uniqlo did not have its own factory in the past, and of course it would not choose to produce in the high-cost Tokyo. However, all of this has changed with the environmental protection in the market and the progress of textile technology.
In fact, Uniqlo has been cooperating with Shima Seiki since 2015. The first batch of products was a cocoon-shaped 3D sweater in the Uniqlo U joint series that Uniqlo and Lemaire collaborated in 2015. Since then, Uniqlo has a small number of Wholegarment seamless knit styles every season.
In September 2020, Innovation Factory was established. This year, it moved from Wakayama, Osaka, which was originally close to Shima Seiki, to Shinonome near the Ariake Center of Fast Retailing’s Tokyo headquarters, in order to cooperate with Fast Retailing’s Knit Innovation Center (Knit Innovation Center). Work closely to facilitate nearby testing and adjustment, and link with the research and development department of the headquarters to increase the speed of product planning to development. It is also expected that in the future, the group's 3D knitting products will be shortened from the current 3 months to 1 month (or less) from the preliminary design and planning to the preparatory stage before mass production in the main overseas factories.
Tomoya Utsuno, CEO of Innovation Factory, said that Innovation Factory can be said to be the key to shortening the lead time. In addition to producing products limited to flagship stores, this factory is also an "experimental center." In the future, all 3D knitted products will be trial-produced here before mass production in factories in Vietnam and China to optimize production efficiency.
In other words, the new products developed by Innovation Factory will first be sold in limited quantities at the Tokyo flagship store and sold locally. "We will observe consumer demand based on this, and if it is popular, we will share information with overseas factories such as Vietnam and China for mass production" to help Fast Retailing Group reduce unnecessary production and reduce inventory. At the same time, it echoes Tadashi Yanai, chairman of Fast Retailing Group's "Ariake Plan": not to make, not sell, and not to carry useless goods.