How Does UNIQLO Develop Effective Sustainable Development Strategies?

Where should the best place for an idle garment be? UNIQLO gives the answer.

In October 16th, UNIQLO joined the Chinese Song Qingling foundation and donated 6 million yuan worth of love clothes to Yushu County, Qinghai province. Qinghai is one of the five largest pastoral areas in China. Some areas are affected by snowfall at high altitudes and in autumn and winter.

This time, according to the actual needs of the people of Qinghai, UNIQLO has prepared over 70000 brand-new clothes and donations of heavy clothing from the public, and donated 6 counties and districts to 4 Tibetan cities such as Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Guo Luo Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and Haidong City, Qinghai province.

"We hope that the power of clothing can become a social force. At the same time, we will pass this idea on to our consumers, hoping to help people in need and help better social development through the transmission of strength and temperature through clothing." Referring to the original intention of clothing donation, UNIQLO official said.

　　 Full merchandise recycling project

　　 3 million 600 thousand old clothes recycling, benefiting 300 thousand families.

This is not the first time that UNIQLO has held clothing donations in China. In 2012, UNIQLO launched a full commodity recycling program in China to encourage the public to donate idle clothes to stores and help people in need. For several years, UNIQLO joined the China Song Qingling foundation, and has donated clothing to Xiangxi, Yunnan, Ludian and Guizhou, Hunan.

Since 2012, all merchandise recycling projects have covered all the stores in the Greater China region, enabling the lives of some 3 million 600 thousand old clothes to continue, and more than 300 thousand families have been helped (as at September 2019).

　　 Building an effective sustainable development strategy

According to a report released by "gorgeous ambition", China's young consumers will be willing to choose more socially responsible brands. It is undeniable that for consumers, sustainability is the addition of fashion products; for enterprises, the implementation of detailed and efficient implementation measures is very important, and enterprises' sustainable development activities often involve many aspects.

Then, how can enterprises create effective and sustainable development strategies and put them into practice?

XXX group is the world's leading apparel group. Its sales in fiscal year 2019 reached 2 trillion and 290 billion yen, and its core brand UNIQLO has 3500 stores worldwide, including 711 in China.

　　 First, set goals for sustainable development.

Fast Marketing Group's medium term goal is to become the world's largest apparel retailer. At the same time, fast marketing has also been committed to achieving the promise of "making use of the clothing industry to make the world better", reducing the impact of business activities on the environment.

Ryui Seiso, founder and CEO of fast marketing group, said: "the basic idea of the group is to not create, not to sell, or to sell unnecessary things. We must always think about whether every daily activity we engage in is conducive to the realization of a sustainable world and then to work."

He further pointed out: first of all, the enterprise itself must fully understand and master all business processes, based on this, set a clear goal, and then with production and logistics partners, business partners to solve problems together.

As early as 2006, XXX issued the first "sustainable development report". In the past 13 years, it has been publicly disclosing the business, business activities and environmental protection measures to the public in this form, including: committed to the use of supporting sustainable development of raw materials, improving the labor environment of the supply chain factories, reducing the environmental load during production, using the store materials supporting sustainable development, and respecting the diversity of employees.

To realize the sustainable development of the world and create the future Earth Society, XXX group considers how to balance the environment, society and economy, and has formulated a series of specific sustainable development goals. For example, fast marketing has set a clear goal for the fabric factory environment: for the main fabric factories that account for 70% of the total output of UNIQLO, it aims to reduce the water and energy consumption by 15% and 10% respectively from 2018 to 2020.

In order to ensure the effective landing of these strategic initiatives, Xunxun not only established a management committee and a unified coordination decision-making mechanism within itself, but also actively worked with supply chain partners to work together to improve labor conditions and environmental protection.

　 Two, locking the three key areas.

Fast marketing has formulated the statement of sustainable development, which is based on the strength of clothing, which is transformed into a sustainable development kinetic energy. It has clearly listed the following three key areas: the earth environment, regional society and personnel training, and strives to achieve the goal of sustainable development.

1, the earth environment: through technological innovation, upgrading supply chain, improving production technology, reducing the impact of enterprises on the earth's environment.

For example, UNIQLO, in line with the principle of sustainable development, purchases raw materials (including protecting animals, protecting the environment, considering the interests of cotton growers, etc.) to provide customers with goods that can be used safely. At the same time, on the basis of solid cooperative relationship with the supply chain cooperation factories, we can introduce large-scale production processes that are beneficial to the society and environment.

Based on the concept of sustainable development and the problem of water resource waste, in 2016, Xun marketing group set up a "jeans Service Innovation Center" in Losangeles, successfully developing new jeans washing process, which can reduce the water consumption of jeans in the washing process. The technology has been applied to two jeans produced and sold in China in 2019. The reduction rate of water consumption in the washing process is 73%-94.9%. (* women's waist waist straight jeans 63# color, 69# color and leisure narrow jeans 64# color, 67# color, 68# color).

2, regional society: fast marketing group will store stores as a carrier of return to the community and transfer clothing strength. In the group's strategic planning, including UNIQLO's 3500 global stores, first of all, the store itself should have sustainable development. By restraining and reducing energy consumption of stores, strengthening waste management and recycling of stores, and using sustainable development of shop building materials, equipment and consumables, we can achieve sustainable store development.

The second is to contribute to society through clothing. For example, the UNIQLO full merchandise recycling project mentioned above has been able to extend the life of some 3 million 600 thousand old clothes since it was launched in China in 2012, and more than 300 thousand families feel the power of clothing.

UNIQLO also combines the recycling and recycling of all products with traditional culture to help regional social development. For example, in July 2019, UNIQLO joined hands with the Chinese Song Qingling foundation to launch the "Miao embroidery project" to inherit the power of new generation to deliver excellent embroidery. It recruited more than 400 embroidered girls in Xiangxi, carried out Miao embroidery technical training and embroidery practice, recovered 4 embroidered pieces produced by embroidered Niang, and increased the income of embroidered women by 1300 yuan per capita.

3, personnel training: improving the skill level of employees and improving the working environment of employees has always been one of the focuses of sustainable development of UNIQLO and Xun marketing group.

For example, the design of the UNIQLO store design competition has attracted the participation of nearly all the top design universities in the country, with nearly 1000 participants. The UNIQLO scholarship project: jointly sponsored by the China Educational International Exchange Association, has held 326 scholarships for 7 years, and the design of the UNIQLO Business Design Competition: since 2018, more than 5000 people have participated in the design competition.

　 epilogue

According to the recently completed sustainable fashion consumption attitude survey by "gorgeous ambition": 26% of the participants said that the biggest obstacle to their purchase of sustainable fashion products was that they did not believe that the brand could speak and act together, 21% did not know where to buy, and 19% did not know what sustainable fashion was.

This enables us to realize that in the practice of sustainable development, enterprises and brands especially need to achieve unity of knowledge and action, establish an effective and unified strategic system, and implement detailed measures for practical measures, while maintaining the communication mechanism with consumers.

Whether it is starting the whole commodity recycling project or developing new technology for jeans washing water, it is an important measure for Xun marketing group to carry out the strategy of sustainable development, and is also in line with the values of "changing clothing, changing common sense and changing the world".

From setting specific goals to implementing key initiatives in the key areas, from the establishment of internal coordination mechanism to the cooperation with external supply chain partners, XXX's practical experience in building sustainable development strategy can provide some ideas for other enterprises to learn from.