Uniqlo will launch its own e-commerce platform in Indonesia on 17 September. The platform is hailed as the Japanese clothing apparel company’s biggest online store to date. 

Marketing Director and e-Commerce Head Business Unit of Fast Retailing Indonesia Daniel Pieter Sumual expressed the brand’s gratitude to be welcomed in the country. “We will keep on innovating and adapting to technological development by not only expanding our offline stores, but also to explore the online market,” he said. 

Daniel also explained the reason why the brand has not been in any online marketplace in Indonesia. He said Uniqlo wants to implement the same standards in all countries where it operates. “Uniqlo has a presence not only in Indonesia, but also other countries, and we are trying to implement good standards, so we make our own online store.”

Responding to the question of how the brand balances growth and expansion while pushing for sustainability, Daniel said Uniqlo has several programmes. One of them is Re.Uniqlo, in which all Uniqlo stores accept secondhand Uniqlo clothes for reuse. Clothing that cannot be reused is recycled as fuel or soundproofing material.  

The brand works with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), NGOs and NPO to help refugees and disaster victims by donating the collected clothes. It also has an upcycling programme carried out in collaboration with the UNHCR and its partner Liberty Society to empower women refugees. In the programme, Uniqlo collected and donated waste fabric to be upcycled by women refugees. The products are displayed in Uniqlo stores and the profit is used to improve their livelihood.

As of 2021, the Tokyo-based brand has opened 46 stores in Indonesia. Its global revenue declined to ¥843.9 billion or Rp239.9 trillion (-17%) and profit fell to ¥50.2 billion or Rp6.5 trillion (-62.8%) due to the pandemic, but the early recovery in China managed to help the company avoid the worst. Its online market activity was stronger than ever with a 20% rise on an annual basis.