Fast Retailing will reopen UNIQLO's Shanghai flagship at a new Huaihai Road address on October 30
Fast Retailing is rebuilding UNIQLO's global flagship in Shanghai on a new site after 13 years at its old one — the latest entry in a flagship programme, alongside stores in Tokyo and New York, that the Japanese retailer treats as a proving ground for ideas it eventually brings home to its own domestic stores.
Fast Retailing said on 27 August that it will reopen UNIQLO's Shanghai global flagship at a new address — the first to third floors of 755 Huaihai Middle Road, in the city's Huangpu district — on 30 October, according to the company's release. The move replaces the store that had served as UNIQLO's China flagship at a different site for 13 years.
The new store spans roughly 2,800 square metres of sales floor across three storeys and will carry men's, women's, kids' and baby's lines, Fast Retailing said. Shanghai was also the site of UNIQLO's first mainland China store, which opened in 2002.
Pan Ning, Fast Retailing's Greater China chief executive, said the renewed store "will allow us to better meet the expectations of customers in China and around the world."
The company described the reopening as part of continued investment in flagship and large-format regional stores in Shanghai this year.
Fast Retailing's global-flagship programme — anchored by stores in Tokyo and New York — functions as much as a proving ground as a retail statement: fixtures, layout and merchandising ideas tested at a flagship abroad are often the ones that later show up in UNIQLO's Japan stores. Choosing to rebuild in Shanghai after 13 years on the old site, rather than simply closing that chapter, is also a straightforward signal of how much weight Fast Retailing still puts on China's largest cities as worth the capital and floor space of a full flagship — a read on what UNIQLO's own home stores may eventually look like, and a bet the group is placing well ahead of any Tokyo opening.