Atole Blog's

If you live in New York or have visited Manhattan lately than you most certainly have been inundated with the annoying Uniqlo ads.  They are part of a massive marketing campaign advertising Uniqlo as "[Fashion] Made For All".  Frankly, that designation had me convinced that the brand must be some sort of organic fabric, wheatgrass, hippie woven clothes commune where all the proceeds were donated to refugee kids in Sudan that have to survive on donated Kool Aid.  But no.  All those ads featuring Laura Linney, Darren Criss, hippies, and 80-year old interpretive dancers are HIGHLY deceptive.  I finally got around to doing my research on the brand and it seems that Uniqlo is a Japanese clothing company and a company like any other.  Uniqlo is a subsidiary of a larger corporation where the profits go to a board of directors and stockholders, just as they would in any other corporation.  Uniqlo is, in fact, the largest retailer in Japan by sales and by volume, according to Wikipedia, and they are posed to become the most profitable ban in the world with gross revenues of supposedly 12 billion USD in the near future, which is practically unfathomable.  So while you, hippie NYers, may be tempted to go to the Uniqlo stores in SoHo and 53rd Street in Manhattan because you think this brand is "about the people" or something, don't be fooled!  Uniqlo is a corporation just like any other!  Basically, it's like a Japanese Gap.







According to Grub Street New York, Uniqlo managed to get some of the models to pose for the ads by promising to donate to charities they had some connection to.  That seems harmless enough, but this is still a business and the goal of business is profit.  Would you allow your image to be used to sell a jacket in exchange for a few pennies donated to a charity?  Supposedly because Uniqlo is affordable it represents "inclusion" rather than "social exclusivity" (according to the NY Times), but it's still a business, like Walmart or McDonald's.  Those places are cheap, too.  Let's just make sure that fact is clear.