Uniqlo plans to double its flagship stores in Japan to about 20 within ten years. It will do this while the country loses people and more of its shopping moves to a screen. The plan sounds backwards, and the reason behind it is the lesson worth taking.

Fast Retailing, which owns Uniqlo, told Nikkei it will roughly double its Japanese flagship stores to around 20 over the next decade. Every new store from here will follow that plan. The company has about 10 flagship stores in prime city spots today, and the largest run around 3,000 square metres of floor. New sites are lined up for Nagoya, Sapporo and Shibuya, partly to catch spending from overseas tourists who want the Japanese Uniqlo in person.

A flagship is built to be noticed. Most sit at street level behind glass, with the Uniqlo logo facing the pavement, so people passing by look in. Inside, rows of mannequins and digital signage turn the space into something closer to a stage than a shelf. Some run services you cannot get online, such as collaborative T-shirt projects with local companies and embroidery sold only in that region.

This is a change of direction. Uniqlo grew for years by opening standard stores in shopping centres and along suburban roads. It had 785 stores in Japan at the end of May 2026, down about 8% from a peak of roughly 850 in 2013, and the count has been flat since. Chairman Tadashi Yanai has now called time on that model. His line to Nikkei was blunt: standard stores that only sell products are not worth adding.

Opening more standard stores has stopped paying.

Where the flagship idea came from

This idea is not new for Yanai, and where it came from is part of the story. On holiday in Barcelona in 1998 he noticed people carrying Zara bags, walked into the store, and saw a fast-fashion chain using a grand shop to set the tone for a whole season. Later the American retailer Leslie Wexner told him a brand could travel the world by opening large, department-store-style shops in prime spots. Yanai took the advice, opened a flagship in New York's SoHo in 2006, and built the habit of selling Uniqlo before selling clothes. The move at home is that same playbook, brought back to Japan.

Why build shops when the buying moves online

Yanai has a specific bet in mind. He is looking at what happens when software does the shopping for us. Once an AI assistant can pick and buy your clothes in a click, price and convenience stop being the ground a brand wins on, because the machine handles both. What the machine cannot do is give you the feel of the product in your hands. Yanai put it plainly to Nikkei: "One rediscovers the value of holding a product in hand."

So the store stops being a till and becomes the brand's best advert. You walk in, you see the clothes lit and styled, you feel the fabric, and you leave with a clear picture of what Uniqlo is. That picture is the thing a screen cannot send you.

For a business, that is the real warning. If price and convenience are all you offer, the assistant will swap you for whoever is cheaper that morning. The brand, and the reason a person chooses you on purpose, is what stops the swap.

The store is the advertisement now.

There is a second job the flagships do. For years Uniqlo carried the image of a place that mass-produces cheap clothing. It stopped competing on low prices back in 2004, and lately it has leaned into pricier autumn and winter ranges. A big, well-made shop in a landmark spot tells that story faster than any discount ever could. The building says the brand has moved up.

Uniqlo is not the only one thinking this way. Marui, another Japanese retailer, is rebuilding its shops as pure showrooms, made for looking and trying, with the buying done elsewhere. Two large retailers have reached the same view. The job of a shop has moved from selling to showing.

There is a pattern here that has run through a few of these pieces. Software is becoming the first thing that meets your business. LinkedIn's ranking decides who sees your post. Meta's shopping agent reads your listing before a person does. Now an AI assistant may become the first thing that buys from you. When that happens, the human moment moves to wherever a person still turns up in body. For Uniqlo, that place is the shop.

One caution before the lesson. This is a Japanese company reading a Japanese and global market, and the line drawn here to Australian business is mine, not theirs. The shape still fits. Foot traffic is moving online here too, and the question of why anyone should visit in person is already live for local owners.

How this hits your business

Treat your space as media, and cost it that way. A shop, a stand, a showroom or a studio is a place people meet your brand in person. Measure it on the impression it leaves and the customers it starts, rather than only on the sales rung up at the counter that day. Uniqlo is spending on 3,000 square metre flagships because the building itself sells the brand.

Give people a reason to turn up that a screen cannot match. Uniqlo runs services you can only get in the shop, from custom printing to local embroidery. Find the version of that for your business. The offer has to be something a delivery van cannot bring to the door.

Build one thing worth touching. If a machine will soon handle search, price and checkout, stop competing with it on those. Compete on the one product, finish or detail that a person wants to hold before they buy. That is the part of your business an algorithm cannot pass on.

Make your shopfront worth the trip, or let it go.