TOKYO — Fast Retailing saw same-store sales at its Uniqlo chain drop 10.3 percent in May while department stores posted mixed results for the month.
Fast Retailing said Monday that Uniqlo’s sales slid despite strong sales during a series of public holidays early in the month and a promotional campaign celebrating the brand’s 28th anniversary.
The retailer attributed the decrease to differences in the calendar that gave this past May one less Sunday and one less public holiday than the year before. It also said cool weather in the middle of the month dampened sales of summer garments.
Isetan Mitsukoshi, the country’s largest department store operator, saw sales at its nine main stores increase by 1.4 percent on the year. Stores in Tokyo performed particularly well during the month, with sales at the Ginza branch of Mitsukoshi rising 11.1 percent.
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Takashimaya said Friday that sales at its 18 stores in Japan decreased 0.8 percent. Like Fast Retailing, the department store operator blamed the drop on the decreased number of days off during the month. However, it also said that pricey items, such as specialty clothing, jewelry and art, continued to sell well, out performing last May’s numbers.
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Also on Friday, H2O Retailing said that same-store sales at its Hankyu and Hanshin department stores fell by 3.0 percent in May.
J. Front Retailing, which operates the Daimaru and Matsuzakaya chains of department stores, said same-store sales rose by 0.8 percent year-on-year, the 14th straight month of increases for the retailer.
“As Mother’s Day sales wars heated up, sales of women’s clothing and accessories, especially items such as hats and parasols, increased, and luxury brand goods, watches and jewelry also performed favorably compared with the previous year,” the company said in a release.
Meanwhile, McKinsey & Company just released a new report with an upbeat outlook for the luxury goods industry in Japan. The consultancy surveyed 20 Japan-based luxury company ceos and 70 percent of the executives said they were optimistic or somewhat optimistic about the about the medium-term future of the luxury goods industry in Japan.
The report’s authors Brian Salsberg and Naomi Yamakawa, wrote that every single one of the 20 executives surveyed predicted that their respective companies‘ sales outlook for 2012 is better than that of 2011, a year marked by the tsunami disaster in March. Almost three-quarters said that the tsunami disaster had no effect on company performance while 10 percent said it “counter-intuitively” had a positive effect on their businesses, according to the report.
“Only a little more than a year after the worst crisis to hit Japan since World War II, the Japanese luxury market is stable. Ultimately, it comes down to this: Despite deflation and disaster, Japanese consumers continue to want luxury goods and to buy them at a good clip. But — and this has been true since the financial crisis hit in 2008 — they are more cautious about price and more demanding,” Salsberg and Yamakawa wrote.