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Japan Business Headlines: Armani, Uniqlo, Beaujolais, and Toyota

November 10, 2007
By Ken Worsley


We are slightly behind with reporting and thoughts on this week’s economic reports - and especially Bloomberg’s assertion that Japan’s economy probably saw a ’short-lived rebound’ last quarter - but those will have to wait one more day. For now, it’s the most recent news in the business world that concerns us:

1. Georgio Armani has opened a flagship store in Ginza. It’s almost hard for us not to yawn at this, but it is an interesting story, especially when the man himself has uttered such Japandering, irrelevant, meaningless comments such as, “Japanese women have learned to dress in a way that is more mixed, more personalized, and less devoted to one designer.” Japanese women have learned to dress? Really? From whom? Have the cultural imperialists been teaching these ‘how to dress’ lessons to what they seem to suppose are unsophisticated Japanese female consumers? I’m sure Armani wouldn’t phrase it like that - right? Then again, maybe Armani can get away with being so offensive and off the target at the same time.

Or has Can-Cam been driving the trends?

2. Or has Uniqlo been the firm making the money during the ‘Lost Decade’ and after (despite some recent setbacks and speed bumps)? In its continued attempts to move overseas, Uniqlo has opened two shops on London’s Oxford Street, including - wait for it - a flagship.

2.5 Uniqlo UK CEO Masayuki Nagatake comes across as being just as false and mealy-mouthed as Armani when he tells reporters, “The London flagship is part of the next generation of global flagship stores for Uniqlo. Designed uniquely for Londoners, the emphasis is on innovation and exceeding customer expectations.”

It’s a store stocked with cheap clothes, Mr Nagatake. That’s not unique for Londoners.

3. The best ongoing marketing of a bad product goes to the shysters behind Beaujolais once again. This barely drinkable wine is being sold at over $20 a bottle in Japan once again, after being rejected in its homeland, where people would be embarrassed to serve it to their pets. The good news? This year’s shipment is at 700,000 cases, down 20% from last year. When is this marketing falsehood moving on to China?

4. Toyota rounds up the list. I might have been a bit negative about the previous three, but Toyota is my favourite firm right now and the only things I can fault them for is not winning Le Mans with the GT1 and stopping production of the Supra. My first Toyota was a Corona built when Zenko Suzuki was Prime Minister, and I bet that bad boy is still out there running somewhere.

Point is, Toyota announced on Wednesday that it has posted a record 1.27 trillion yen operating profit for the first half of business 2007. This is a record high. US auto giant General Motors lost $39 billion in the third quarter of 2007 alone.

Filed Under Business 

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Comments

4 Responses to “Japan Business Headlines: Armani, Uniqlo, Beaujolais, and Toyota”

  1. Contrarian on November 10th, 2007 7:41 am

    What do you mean by, “maybe Armani can get away with being so offensive and off the target at the same time?”

    It sounds like it’s right on target for Armani. Think about the target audience. Armani wants to shame people into buying its overpriced goods by suggesting that if you don’t wear Armani, you are crass and unsophisticated. I would suggest that Armani’s ostensibly incendiary comments are right in line with the way it moves into any market (in other words, it’s not a slam on Japanese women as you seem to have taken it).

    Armani is simply suggesting that there might be enough stupid young people with too much money in Tokyo that they will, in fact, buy a $30 pair of trousers for $800 and prove that they have learned to dress.

    My words, not Armani’s. I don’t speak euphamism.

    Cheers.

  2. WG on November 10th, 2007 1:37 pm

    Another giant temple to fashion in Tokyo? And I thought Omotesando was the new cool. Armani might be too much for the younger crowd over there, so it’s back to the old Ginza. I wonder what age women Armani has in mind when he made that statement. It seems to carry no meaning to me. All I see women wear is what’s on the cover of three or four big magazines and copy exactly what their friends are wearing.

  3. Mr. Noah on November 12th, 2007 8:11 am

    Ken, whenever you get the urge to pooh-pooh market pandering by clothes retailers, just remember the venture capitalist’s mantra: “You are not market”…

  4. Marxy on November 12th, 2007 12:13 pm

    I think Armani is referring to the fact that the standard fashion practice in the 1980s was to wear wardrobes created by a single designer. So, you’d have 100% Armani people and 100% Comme des Garçons people. Since the late 80s, the idea has been to mix and match - now even between high fashion and low fashion like UNIQLO.

    I also think it’s a bit naive to think that Japanese fashion consumers don’t learn to dress from somewhere. There is a reason that all Japanese fashion magazines read like textbooks. I don’t think he meant necessarily “from the West,” although fashion editors do take cues from overseas.

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