Uniqlo monthly sales drop as warm weather skews demand

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Dec 4, 2019

Fast Retailing’s Uniqlo struggled in November in its domestic Japanese market with the retail giant seeing a 5.5% comparable sales fall and 5.8% drop in total. Both figures included its online operations. It was further bad news after sales had dipped in both September and October too.

The company said that this time round, it had started the month on a high with sales up early on, although “warmer weather then stifled sales of thermal clothing around the time of our anniversary sale when sales are typically the strongest”.

Warm weather is bad news for any clothing retailer so late in the year and it’s the same old story for the company that does seem to be very dependent on just the right weather conditions to shift its product. 

Whether it’s reporting an uptick or a downturn, more often than not, the weather is implicated in the performance and sometimes this can be extreme. For instance, back in October it temporarily closed 352 stores when Typhoon Hagibis hit land in Japan.

Back with the November figures, the company also saw customer numbers falling slightly, in contrast to the year as a whole where they have been marginally higher. And while the average purchase size per customer was also down, at least it ran higher than the rest of the year.