Ideally, Uniqlo wants to be everywhere in Australia. That’s according to Satoshi Naito, the brand’s Australian COO, who has held the role for over three years now. While sounding ambitious, this goal runs parallel with the way its parent company Fast Retailing has been thinking on a global scale for at least the last two decades.
In its annual report covering the year 2000, Fast Retailing’s overall mission was to be an internationally recognised apparel retailer, then holding just 433 stores – mostly in its home country of Japan. By 2014, when Uniqlo first entered the Australian market with a store at the Emporium Melbourne, the fashion retailer’s international store network hit approximately 820 stores.
By 2024, the brand operated 1,700 stores in 25 markets, with Australia’s store count soon to hit 40. This doesn’t include Uniqlo’s home city of Japan, which had 797 stores in 2024.
Fast Retailing pools Australia into its Southeast Asia (SEA) market, which spans from India and Thailand, down to Australia. With a network of 380 stores by 2024 end, this market is the fastest-growing region for Uniqlo.
Including South Korea, the SEA region’s total sales hit 619.4 billion yen (~A$6 billion) in 2025. This is up by around 80 billion yen from 2024 numbers, with the region’s operating profit lifting by 19.2 per cent to 116.3 billion yen (~A$1.1 billion).
But Satoshi Naito says the Australian team is just getting started on its local growth. This comes amid the brand’s latest milestone, refurbishing its first-ever store in Melbourne, which reopened this week just in time for Christmas.
“We are committed to delivering our excellent customer service and also offering our Life Wear philosophy,” Naito says. “We learn from the local consumer what they want or what they need, and then we try to reach that demand.
“After 11 years, we have opened 40 stores, and now we are trying to expand. And not just expanding our business, but asking how we can make the customer happy.”
Part of this means knowing how to show up for customers, and where. Across its local store portfolio, Uniqlo’s Australian store locations are situated within around 50 kilometres of capital cities. The brand’s most regional store in Australia is Gosford, which is around 80 kilometres north of Sydney. This matches its footprint strategy globally, targeting major city hubs.
The other part of this is the product offering. Alongside selling a vast array of simple silhouettes across tops and bottoms, the brand also sells practical items such as thermalwear, which it calls Heat Tech, alongside UV protection wear and workout gear.
The final piece of the puzzle is upgrading the shopping experience. The new Melbourne store will showcase Uniqlo’s ‘People Campaign’, featuring Melbourne icons across media, sport, art and music. The brand’s UTme! concept, a print-on-demand customisation service, will also launch at the store. This allows customers to create personalised t-shirts and tote bags using templates, photos or text.
This all adds to more standard store features such as self-service check-outs.
To Naito, the Australian market is very unique, especially within the SEA market. Australia is close to Asia, which arguably makes it easier to ship products from Japan, but Naito points out that the culture here is very different to the rest of Asia.
“I know Australian people very much have a strong sense of quality,” he says. “That's why the number of stores we open is not overly important. It’s more like each of the stores, one by one, is individually important for making customers' lives better.
“That's why we need to be very careful to listen to customers living in Australia, knowing where we need to open. Now we are, of course, searching, researching and just listening to the customer’s voice.”