KUCHING: Uniqlo (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd (Uniqlo Malaysia) has officially launched its first store in Sarawak at tHe Spring Shopping Mall here, today, making it the second store in East Malaysia and the 29th overall in Malaysia.
“We are truly grateful for the tremendous support and increasing interest from customers in Kuching. We want our clothes to be a part of the daily lives of people in Kuching and Sarawakians, in general.
“As we look to grow the brand here, we also want to grow with Sarawak. We believe that this is the beginning of more exciting times for us here,” Jocelyn Ng, Uniqlo Malaysia’s chief operating officer, told the press during its pre-launch event yesterday.
“We are excited with the new store openings as this means more Malaysians will be able to purchase and experience our high-quality, stylish, comfortable product offerings at affordable prices. We remain committed to provide our customers with the best shopping experience and make our innovative products sucha s AIRism and Heattech more accessible to the communities in these communities,” Ng added.
Uniqlo at tHe Spring spans across 7,641 square feet and with ‘life wear’ as its philosophy, the store offers a wide array of every day clothes that suite any type of seasons and weather condition.
“This is the essence of our life-wear philosophy. Each product is innovatively designed and developed with our customers’ needs in mind.
“Even though we have we are in the fall and winter season right now, we do have continuous summer items and we developed our products for the Asean market because of the weather here,” Ng told The Borneo Post.
“Uniqlo do not really chase trends. We are more towards lifestyle wear. While fashion trends are ever changing, the core essential trends do not change that much. That is also our core brand,” chief operating officer Tomohiko Sei added.
Ng said having had five years presence in Malaysia, Uniqlo decided it was time to cross over to East Malaysia based on growing interests from Kuchingites.
Meanwhile, on the opening of its second store in Kuching, Ng revealed the store should be launched at the same time as the opening of the upcoming Vivacity Megamall.
“We are currently working very closely with the mall management, and we would like to open at/around the same time as the opening of the mall. We hope to launch it before the end of the year,” she said.
Other Uniqlo stores in East Malaysia include its first store in East Malaysia at Suria Sabah Shopping Mall, Kota Kinabalu. It plans to open its second store soon, at Imago KK Times Square, Sabah.
It has also recently launched its store at The Curve, Klang Valley and it plans to open its first Perak outlet at AEON Klebang.
With global sales of approximately 1.38 trillion yen for the financial year 2014 (ending August 2014), Fast Retailing Co Ltd, the holding company of Uniqlo Malaysia, is one of the world’s largest apparel retail company and Uniqlo is Japan’s leading specialty retailer.
The company has a total of 1,500 stores in 16 markets worldwide.