Dearth of Chinese tourists prompted Uniqlo to shut down its store

Wednesday, July 7, 2021

The lack of tourists from China may have partly encouraged Uniqlo, a Japanese casual fashion brand, to plan on closing and relocating a store in Osaka’s main shopping area from Aug, 2021, on Tuesday, tourism industry practitioners explained by highlighting the rising impact of the pandemic on international businesses that depend on Chinese tourists.

To quote Uniqlo, “the store of Uniqlo in Shinsaibashi is scheduled to be closed on August 1. It will be relocated to the same facility of GU and reopened in September.”

The area of Shinsaibashi, which normally attracted local crowd and foreign tourists, has experienced a drop in visitors due to the coronavirus.

To quote Zhang Jian, a tourism industry practitioner in Japan, “Many popular fashion and cosmetics brands opened stores in the shopping area. That pushed rents up pretty high, and some shops just can’t afford it anymore because of the coronavirus.”

Zhang noted that lack of Chinese tourists created a major impact on the tourism industry of Japan. “The knock-on effect ranged from Japan’s air sector and hotels, to shopping to restaurants, and sales of Japanese black cattle.”

However, Uniqlo didn’t accept such move. In a statement sent to the Global Times on Wednesday, Uniqlo mentioned that the decision to shut down the store was made because of the expiring lease on the store. “Amid the epidemic, it is true that the number of foreign tourists dropped, not only those from China. But this is not the main reason for closing the store.”

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