Uniqlo August sales surge after heatwave boost

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Sep 2, 2020

As shopping gets back to some degree of normality, Uniqlo’s Japanese sales have returned to being more influenced by the weather than anything else. And this meant a major boost during August, the company said on Wednesday.

The month’s same-store sales — including online — increased by a massive 29.8% year-on-year, while total sales for the retailer increased by a slightly larger 29.9%.

Sales at the Fast Retailing-owned chain’s domestic stores were boosted by a record-setting summer heatwave in Japan, the company said.

This drove strong sales of the firm’s AIRism products, as well as its UT T-shirts, and other core summer ranges, plus its products “designed to satisfy stay-at-home demand”. Also reflecting the changes that have happened this year, the brand’s AIRism masks proved popular.

Customer numbers are on the rise and the average number of purchases per customer is rising too, although the comparisons with year-to-date figures remain very easy given pandemic-linked plunges earlier in 2020.

The company’s stores are largely open now but are still not completely back to normal. At the end of August, a total of six stores remained temporarily closed and 91 stores were operating shorter working hours due to Covid-19. The company didn’t exclude those stores from the total number of same stores or own stores in the monthly sales data calculations.