Uniqlo Billionaire Founder Sets His Sights on Passing Zara Owner

In the past four decades, Uniqlo has refined the art of getting people to buy clothes. Step into any store and you’ll find perfectly folded garments, color palettes that shift from light to dark, pulling shoppers deeper into the space, and sizes following a vertical logic, with smaller pieces within easy reach and larger ones on higher shelves. That streamlined retail aesthetic, along with a deep supply chain delivering quality shirts, pants and outerwear at compelling prices, has allowed Tadashi Yanai, the CEO of Uniqlo parent company Fast Retailing Co., to build an enormous business with $22.9 billion in annual revenue from 26 markets. Only Inditex SA, the company behind Zara, brings in more, but Yanai intends to eclipse his Spanish rival by tripling sales in the coming years. Bloomberg News Senior Editor Reed Stevenson joins Bloomberg Businessweek Daily to discuss. He speaks with Alexis Christoforous and Isabelle Lee. (Source: Bloomberg)