Uniqlo monthly sales soar in June as delayed clearance sees huge demand

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jul 2, 2019

Fast Retailing’s biggest chain, Uniqlo, recovered from some sluggish trading months in June with the company saying on Tuesday that its like-for-like sales, including online sales, surged as much as 27.3% year-on-year in its domestic Japanese market. The massive increase came at the same time as total sales rose 26.9%.

That surge was down to strong sales of its summer collections and it got a particular boost by moving its regular anniversary sale from May into June.

The figures left the rest of the year’s performances trailing with sales movements so far in 2019 having mainly been a few percent up or down.

The June performance was helped by much heavier visitor traffic to the company shops and its webstore. The average purchase per customer was also higher than the year as a whole.

In May, the company had reported like-for-like sales down 1.8% and total sales down 1.7%. But that wasn't quite the bad news that it had seemed as the company said that it's summer collection was selling well due to consistently high temperatures. In fact, as mentioned, it took the decision to delay its clearance sale and support profitability by selling more goods at full price for longer.

This seemed to pay off with May sales holding up fairly well and that June boost showed that there was still plenty of pent-up demand to keep the company busy last month.