UNIQLO Cuts Half Sales To ‘No Japan’ … Myeongdong Jungang Branch Which Had Lined Up With Hundreds Of People

Entry 2020.12.04 15:55 | Revision 2020.12.04 16:05

Sales 1,378.1 billion won → 629.8 billion won, operating loss 88.8 billion won
Corona 19 overlaps with boycott … Myeongdong’s largest store in Korea is closed

UNIQLO, whose sales were cut in half due to the “No Japan” movement, will close the Myeongdong Jungang store, Korea’s largest store, in February next year.

FRL Korea, which will launch Uniqlo on the 4th, announced that it had an operating loss of 88.8 billion won in Korea in fiscal year 2020 (September 1, 2019 to August 31, 2020). Considering the operating profit of 1994 billion won in the previous fiscal quarter, the operating profit fell by more than 280 billion won. FRL Korea is 51% owned by Fast Retailing, Uniqlo’s headquarters in Japan, and 49% by Lotte Shopping.

Sales amounted to 6298 billion won, which is half compared to 1.378.1 trillion won in the same period last year. Net income of 163.3 billion won last year turned into a net loss of 99.4 billion won. It also failed to pay dividends to shareholders, who paid 121 billion won in the previous fiscal quarter due to poor performance.

Since the situation is like this, FRL Korea is in a hurry to clean up inefficient stores.

UNIQLO announced on its official website that it will operate the Myeongdong Central Store, the largest in Korea, until January 31 next year. Myeongdong Jungang Store, opened in front of Exit 7 of Myeongdong Station in November 2011, is a large store with 4 floors and approximately 3966m2 (about 1200 pyeong). It registered 2 billion won in sales on the first day of its opening alone, and it is considered a symbolic Uniqlo store so customers had to wait more than 4 hours to enter the store.

However, this year’s coronavirus infection incident (Corona 19) overlapped with the boycott of Japanese products that continued in July last year, and the Myeong-dong business district collapsed. Myeong-dong became a ghost business district when Chinese tourists, the main customer, disappeared. Cosmetic stores were closed or temporarily suspended, and clothing stores like A-Land and Whoayu were also closed. The first national store opened by Swedish fast-fashion brand H&M also closed late last month.

Additionally, FRL Korea plans to shut down the operations of the Lotte Fit In-Dongdaemun branch, the Lotte Mart Sasang branch, the Daedeok branch, and the Myeongil branch this month.

An official from FRL Korea said: “The performance declined due to the problem of relations between Korea and Japan, the prolonged COVID-19, the warm winter weather, etc.” I’ll try to be this. ”