FMCG History | Ginza 6-9-5 — Twelve Floors, and the Ninth Flag Planted

Twelve floors of one building on Ginza's Chuo-dori, and every one of them selling the same brand. UNIQLO opened here on 16 March 2012, in the Ginza Komatsu East Building, with about 1,500 tsubo of selling space stacked from street level to the twelfth floor. Fast Retailing called it the largest UNIQLO in the world. That was the company's own measure, and it was a claim about that moment rather than a permanent one. The more useful number is the ninth. Ginza was UNIQLO's ninth global flagship, and the eight before it explain what the format was for. The run opened in the SoHo district of New York in autumn 2006, and the seven that followed went to London, Paris, Shanghai, Osaka, Taipei, Seoul and Fifth Avenue in New York. Fast Retailing's own accounts differ on the order after SoHo, but not on the shape: seven cities, eight stores, five years, and nothing in Tokyo. Yanai's stated reason for finally planting one in Ginza was that Japanese shoppers still did not think of UNIQLO as a global brand, and he wanted the argument made at home. The timing carried its own argument. The Harajuku store, the one that had made UNIQLO an urban name in 1998, had closed five days earlier. Ginza absorbed its UT range onto a floor of its own. The store was rebuilt once, closing on 27 August 2021 and reopening on 17 September under the slogan New Life, New Wear, New GINZA. It still trades on all twelve floors, eleven until nine, and the building's own landlord still lists it as the world's largest. The cover photograph shows the Ginza Komatsu East Building from Chuo-dori, with kabuki-themed window displays on the ground floor. Photo: Tokumeigakarinoaoshima, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.