UNIQLO
Launching UNIQLO’s First e-Commerce Site in the US
With more than 30,000 employees and $9.66B in sales, UNIQLO is Japan's leading clothing retail chain in both sales and profits. The brand is well-known and beloved in many countries worldwide, but has struggled to replicate this dominance in the US market. In the midst of this low awareness, we were hired in the spring of 2012 to launch UNIQLO.com, the brand’s first stateside commerce storefront. Competing against several of the top digital agencies, we pitched and were awarded the business. Since working on this project, I remain a die-hard UNIQLO fan and continue to buy their clothing.
Client: UNIQLO
Role: Experience Director
Agency: Razorfish + Digitas
Activities and Deliverables: I helped to win the business with a UX/UI approach and strategy for implementing personalization that best met the needs of our stakeholders. Lead a small team of two UX designers and collaborated daily with visual designers, copywriters, engineers, and our clients. Hands on with wireframes, site maps, and task flow diagrams. Primarily responsible for designing the e-Commerce experience which had an aggressive launch timeline of less than 6 months, but also supported the marketing team due to the complexity of their campaigns — which were cross-platform and involved emerging tech (at one point a QR code on a blimp was proposed). I provided UX designs to a partner agency to create the Magic Mirror experience which was showcased in UNIQLO’s San Francisco flagship store. I also worked daily with NTT in Japan, which was providing the backend infrastructure for the e-Commerce platform.
Our Challenge
We were asked to deliver a digital flagship experience that immersed shoppers in the brand’s famous blend of utility and fun, while positioning the site to achieve sales goals of $20MM within two years. And we needed to do this in under 6 months. In addition to creating a new e-commerce platform, we were asked to support UNIQLO’s marketing efforts, and provide UX support for in-store experience.
E-commerce Platform
Accolades from UNIQLO Fans
Campaigns
I rarely get called in to work on campaigns. However, the complexity of the marketing campaigns that we were envisioning required hands on UX strategy and the creation of flows that showed the customer journey from social media, to the site and live events. This was the case with our Lucky Cube campaign which featured Maru, a celebrity cat from Japan.
UNIQLO Magic Mirror
For the UNIQLO store at Union Square in San Francisco, we helped to create the Magic Mirror in partnership with Holition in the UK. The Magic Mirror is a virtual dressing room which helps shoppers decide which item to buy. Using the Kinect’s color-changing engine, customers can put one of the items on and walk in front of the mirror and a touchscreen then prompts them to select other hues and projects the modified reflection back to them. They can also capture images and share them on their preferred social network.
