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The story
Keisuke Honda has announced his entry into the apparel industry, saying, “Uniqlo is cheap, but sports brands are expensive. There’s a gap in the price range in between” — and that’s the gap he’s targeting. On 5ch’s Live Everything G board, the thread’s doubts centered on this very “mid-price-range” premise. Commenters pointed out that low-price players like Uniqlo, GU, and Workman have already penetrated the middle market in both quality and price, and noted that many brands that have targeted the mid-price segment in the past have gone under — opinions were split over whether the idea is actually viable.
Keisuke Honda on his chances in apparel: “I think we have a shot. Sports brands sit at the higher end of the price range.” His goal: “to leave something behind in people, in some form.”
Keisuke Honda
“For everyday lifestyle clothing, you’ve got things like Uniqlo, for example. On the other hand there are various sports brands, and they’re all priced pretty high, so the space in between — between Uniqlo and the sports brands — is really wide open.”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
It's because nobody wants it.
Mid-range is struggling badly right now,
because Uniqlo/GU is just good enough.
Everyone just ends up thinking "Uniqlo's fine" for anything mid-range.
There are also plenty of overseas brands that aren't well known in Japan.
Is that really the "cheap" end…?
Nike and Adidas?
Those are only a bit above Uniqlo, no?
Even pricier sports brands.
The actual middle ground is Workman and Shimamura.
I think he's only looking at the fairly upscale end of that lineup.
It's the least profitable niche there is.
If anything, Uniqlo doesn't just dominate the cheap end — it's taken over the middle too.
And for people on a budget there are private-label sports brands like Ignio (Aeon's in-house brand).
Uniqlo would be like 4,000-5,000 yen?
So mid-range would land around 7,000-8,000 yen, I guess?
At that point it's just a mass-market brand.
They do supply gear to tennis players and sell athletic wear too.
Muji's in the same price range as Uniqlo.
Muji might actually be cheaper than Uniqlo, if anything.
The people who incorporate sports brands into their fashion tend to already be pretty stylish, and I can't see them all flocking to buy some random new mid-range brand.
You think? Practically every guy's wearing The North Face these days.
People who don't → buy Uniqlo or some private label.
How's anything in between supposed to survive?
It's tough — you think "guess I'll buy something pricier than Uniqlo," but then you feel the fabric and the quality's actually worse than Uniqlo's.
In the end it all comes down to value for money.
I don't get the feeling that Uniqlo isn't cheap.
It's still around 2,000 yen a piece, right?
That's plenty cheap.
Background and key points of this discussion
The “gap in the mid-price range” that Keisuke Honda pointed to is a point often raised in the apparel industry, but the thread’s reaction ran the opposite way — the prevailing view was that low-price brands like Uniqlo, GU, Workman, and Shimamura have already raised their quality enough to eat into the middle market. The mid-price range tends to struggle because customers who care about clothes go for brand names, while those who don’t feel cheap private labels are good enough — commenters also pointed out that many brands which targeted the same price range in the past have since pulled out. Another sticking point was how to interpret “expensive sports brands”: some posts assumed Nike and Adidas, others included outdoor brands like The North Face, so the premise shifted from reply to reply — and the source article never specifies exactly what price range Honda means by “the middle.” As of this article, Honda hasn’t laid out concrete odds for the business or actual pricing.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Live Everything G) thread “Keisuke Honda enters the apparel industry: “Cheap Uniqlo. Expensive sports brands. Nothing in between. I’m aiming for the middle”.”
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