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The United Nations of Uniqlo

economist.com

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Re: The United Nations of Uniqlo

#71

Post by csomar »

hobofan wrote: post #11
csomar wrote: post #4

I have stumbled on Uniqlo while around Tokyo. I was surprised how cheap it is, minimalist the styles were, and how very good the material/quality is. I have been mainly purchasing from Celio, Mango, H&M (ie: the European brands). My experience is that the clothes will last less than a year before becoming too washed to be wear. Clothes I bought from Uniqlo still look very good now 1.5 year later. Looks like they'll l…

> and how very good the material/quality is. I have been mainly purchasing from Celio, Mango, H&M (ie: the European brands). Compared to those cheap brands, sure. I've mainly bought Uniqlo clothes for the last 4 years, and they've been decaying at about a slightly slower rate (maybe 0.75x) than similar brands to those you listed, but for each item, I estimate that it was probably 2-3x as expensive as their cheap coun…

> but for each item, I estimate that it was probably 2-3x as expensive as their cheap counterpart.

Maybe in the EU Uniqlo is expensive. But in Japan the prices were lower for what I'd pay for these brands.

For the US, here is t-shirts for Uniqlo vs H&M. Uniqlo is cheaper or at a similar price

> https://www.uniqlo.com/us/en/men/t-shirts

> https://www2.hm.com/en_us/men/products/t-shirts-tank-tops/gr...

Edit: Also if you haven't checked the cheaper brands in the last 4 years, you might not be aware that their quality deteriorated rapidly especially for Nike/Adidas.

Re: The United Nations of Uniqlo

#72

Post by csomar »

lnsp wrote: post #9
csomar wrote: post #4

I have stumbled on Uniqlo while around Tokyo. I was surprised how cheap it is, minimalist the styles were, and how very good the material/quality is. I have been mainly purchasing from Celio, Mango, H&M (ie: the European brands). My experience is that the clothes will last less than a year before becoming too washed to be wear. Clothes I bought from Uniqlo still look very good now 1.5 year later. Looks like they'll l…

The quality is definitly on the better side but the brand has the same ethical issues as H&M and others. There are other 'basic' brands like ASKET that may be a bit more expensive, but don't have these problems in their supply chain.

How are you sure? ASKET has a factory not that far from were I live. I can't find the factory anywhere on the map but looking at some of the provided photos, they don't have air-conditioners. This place becomes boiling hot in the summer. I can't affirm for 100% certainty that they are a shitty workplace but I'll bet $100 that they are as shitty as the rest of textile factories here.

Re: The United Nations of Uniqlo

#73

Post by decafninja »

victor106 wrote: post #8

Love the clothes Hate the work culture. I have a few friends who work for Uniqlo on the e-commerce team in the US. They all tell me that the work culture is horrible. It’s very Japanese. - Long unproductive hours gets your bosses appreciation. - Very sexist and male dominated. - They hate working remote even when it was absolutely necessary for the employee. - No respect for maternity related issues. Any company that…

I am Korean American, and have worked for some of the huge Korean conglomerates. The work culture leaves a lot to be desired.

There is also "reverse racism" prevalent. i.e. if you are Korean (or Kor-Am) and are working for a Korean corporation, you might be judged on different standards than a coworker who is not Korean, or not East Asian. You're expected to work harder and more "passionately" for no extra compensation just because some vague notion of nationalistic/ethnistic Korean Pride.

I've interviewed at some of the big Japanese conglomerates too, and I got exactly the same feeling as I did with Korean companies.

I've come to the conclusion that I will never work for an East Asian company again barring some earth shattering changes to their corporate culture. Many of my ex-colleagues say the same.

Re: The United Nations of Uniqlo

#74

Post by screye »

jointpdf wrote: post #31

Random tip: Uniqlo is an usual but excellent source for inexpensive hiking/backpacking/lightweight travel clothes. In particular: the UL down jackets/parkas (~9.5oz in size M), HeatTech Extra Warm baselayers, Airism underwear, wind jacket, and socks/gloves. You see a ton of this stuff out on any long distance trail (it’s high quality enough to last an entire thru-hike and beyond). Once you put on the HeatTech extra w…

Heat-tech and airism are both incredibly legit base layers. Heat tech is my favorite piece of clothing for New England winters and winter treks. The ultra light down jackets and weather proof parkas are incredibly convenient too.

They seem to be going through a wierd cut phase, which accentuates men's chest in an awkward way and looks like dad wear unless you are really slim/athletic, but I hope it is temporary thing. (or maybe I just need to get in better shape)

Re: The United Nations of Uniqlo

#75

Post by dirtyid »

Big fan of Uniqlo, curious how they fail to sell shoes in the last few years. 1-2 models of casual shoes and a summer sandals in monochrome colors every year. Well made and cheap. Always pushed to discount bin after a few weeks. Haven't seen anyone wear them outside.

Re: The United Nations of Uniqlo

#76

Post by uoaei »

arethuza wrote: post #32
gberger wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What H&M had, Zara somewhat still has, but Uniqlo doesnt have is the must buy or might not see it again. And this is why I shop at Uniqlo, not at H&M or Zara. I like to ensure that my favourite basics will always be available for repurchase 2+ years after the original purchase, so I can replace a worn item.

I wish all clothes would come with a machine readable label that takes you directly to a page to buy exact replacements or duplicates.

Yeah, seriously, this is a solved problem in inventory management and we have the technology to spin up some infrastructure for that without too much effort nowadays, even for multinational brands. QR codes, a database, a REST API, and a static site generator. Literally that's it. You don't even need to store the webpages you generate, just generate them on-the-fly and discard them for rarer items.

I was looking for some specific bike parts and found the exact serial numbers for exactly what I need and there's no way to determine if anything similar still exists.

That being said, I wish semantic web blew up like it was supposed to. If we had ontologies for describing products that could be searched to find an appropriate item, that would be huge. But the scale was always limited by the nonzero rate of human error and the high rate at which humans lose interest in maintaining systems manually.

Re: The United Nations of Uniqlo

#77

Post by intopieces »

wastedhours wrote: post #16
iamben wrote: post #15

Huge fan of Uniqlo, we're very lucky to have so many of them in London. The clothes tend to be the right side of 'fashionable', ie the cuts are modern and flattering, the price is very comparable with and often better than the other UK high street rivals, and most importantly the quality for the most part far surpasses everything else in the price bracket. It's (generally) far better than buying from Zara or H&M, whi…

Before the lockdown and WFH, I'd say about half my work-casual wardrobe ended up being Uniqlo. Very good quality, good design, and as you say, there's nothing obnoxious about their branding. If they had a similar free delivery option as Asos Premium, would probably use them for pretty much everything. Though I don't fully understand their ridiculously long trousers. Edit: as per responses, make use of their alteratio…

>Though I don't fully understand their ridiculously long trousers.

As others have pointed out, they hem them for free. This is a clever bit of optimization for them, for two reasons:

(1) Fewer SKUs to stock. Each type of pant only varies in waist, not length.

(2) The pants become non-returnable after alternation. This reduces the number of items that can be returned substantially, since very few people fit the dimension of the pants.

Re: The United Nations of Uniqlo

#78

Post by jessaustin »

pretendscholar wrote: post #52
jessaustin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In USA public schools the same history course is given ten grades in a row. Somehow it neglects to include anything about Wounded Knee, USA actions in Philippines, Mosaddegh coup, COINTELPRO, School of the Americas, etc.

Definitely didn't cover COINTELPRO but the Philippines and Wounded Knee were definitely covered. We rarely got past 1960 so most of the more recent US actions were uncovered.

Honestly, I'm jealous. For so much of my life I was deeply skeptical of history as a field of study. It seemed arbitrary and useless. It turned out that what I'd seen of the subject was a bogus selective narrative carefully constructed to make me ignore the fact that the polity to which I am subject has been at war against non-white people for centuries. I probably should have been smart enough to figure this out earlier, but I wasn't. I wish that rather than constituting a complete waste of time, public school history classes could have better acquainted me with the world as it really is. Although, I wonder if that younger me would even have cared? The war media has a strong effect on inquisitive young minds. So much trivial bullshit to learn!

Re: The United Nations of Uniqlo

#79

Post by stickfigure »

kinghtown wrote: post #57
victor106 wrote: post #8

Love the clothes Hate the work culture. I have a few friends who work for Uniqlo on the e-commerce team in the US. They all tell me that the work culture is horrible. It’s very Japanese. - Long unproductive hours gets your bosses appreciation. - Very sexist and male dominated. - They hate working remote even when it was absolutely necessary for the employee. - No respect for maternity related issues. Any company that…

> Any company that would like to see itself become multinational has to adapt to local cultures Good luck on that. General consensus out here in Asia is that western people are lazy ( but not everyone feels this way! Some people consider westerners to be lazy and nice..) Traditional Asian culture, this is my own Non controversial opinion coming, values hard work. A bunch of people I know who work in Science park in T…

"How's that working out for you?"

'Dominating' doesn't seem like the appropriate word to apply to Japan right now? From Wikipedia:

Japan's asset price bubble collapse in 1991 led to a period of economic stagnation known as the "lost decade", sometimes now extended as the "lost 20 years." From 1995 to 2007, GDP fell from $5.33 trillion to $4.36 trillion in nominal terms. Japan today has the highest ratio of public debt to GDP of any developed nation, with national debt at 236% relative to GDP as of 2017. This debt is predominantly owned by Japanese nationals. The Japanese economy faces considerable challenges posed by an ageing and declining population, which peaked at 128 million in 2010 and has fallen to 126.5 million as of 2018. Projections suggest the population will continue to fall to potentially lower than 100 million by the middle of the 21st century.

Economies are complex. It's not clear that punishingly long hours at work are an advantage.

Re: The United Nations of Uniqlo

#80

Post by gumby »

ksec wrote: post #59
iamben wrote: post #15

Huge fan of Uniqlo, we're very lucky to have so many of them in London. The clothes tend to be the right side of 'fashionable', ie the cuts are modern and flattering, the price is very comparable with and often better than the other UK high street rivals, and most importantly the quality for the most part far surpasses everything else in the price bracket. It's (generally) far better than buying from Zara or H&M, whi…

My problem with Uniqlo is that they changes cuttings, Materials and some other minor details all while showing the same label. So they will look 95% the same, even material is pretty much the same.... but it is still "different". ( The Item code will be different ) Not to mention Uniqlo's quality depends on its country of origin or where they are sold. Uniqlo in Japan is really a bar higher than Uniqlo around the wor…

People on HN praise Tesla for the same thing: model S is model S, not the 2019 S and 2018 S
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