First Look: GU, sister brand of Uniqlo, opens first U.S. store
The lower-priced, more trend-driven sister brand of Japanese apparel giant Uniqlo has opened its first permanent store outside of Asia — a flagship in New York City.
GU, which part of the Fast Retailing Group, has opened its doors at 578 Broadway in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. With a sales floor of about 10,225 sq. ft., the two-level store features women’s and men’s clothing, along with shoes, bags and accessories. The opening coincides with the launch of GU’s U.S. e-commerce site and app, making its products available to a national audience for the first time.
The launch also highlights GU’s brand philosophy, which focuses on narrowing down the variety of products to offer customers an easy-to-understand assortment of practical, on-trend items with affordable prices. Each curated collection is designed to be easy-to-wear and mix-and-match, resulting in more styling possibilities with fewer products.
“GU differentiates itself by taking a different approach to other global fashion brands in the same price range that sell a huge variety of styles by offering less than one-tenth the number of items,” the company said. “By reducing the number of products and narrowing down the range to the essential items that customers actually want and use, GU dramatically increases the efficiency of the entire supply chain, including material procurement, sewing, distribution, sales and supply-demand coordination — resulting in high quality products at low prices.”
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Image courtesy of GU. -
Image courtesy of GU. -
Image courtesy of GU. -
Image courtesy of GU. -
Image courtesy of GU.
GU said its philosophy furthers the brand’s goal of not making, transporting, selling and disposing of wasteful clothes as much as possible. To minimize waste, each GU store globally has donation boxes to collect clothes that customers have finished wearing. GU works with local partners to deliver the clothes to those in need, such as refugees and the homeless.
GU has operated a small pop-up in SoHo since 2022. It is closing with the opening of the permanent store.
“Since opening our first pop-up store in the U.S. in the fall of 2022, we've had the opportunity to introduce GU products to many customers, which has greatly fueled our expectations for business growth in the U.S.,” stated Osamu Yunoki, CEO of GU. “We've leveraged the insights gained to create a robust framework for global product development and business operations."
GU (pronounced as the letters “G” and “U” and derived from the Japanese word for “freedom,” was established in 2006 as a sister brand of Uniqlo. It currently operates approximately 470 stores in Asia, mainly in Japan, as well as e-commerce sites in several markets.
