On the 7th of February 1949 in Tokyo, Tadashi Yanai, the richest man in Japan was born. The father started a men’s clothing store called Ogori Shoji by the side of a road in Ube, a mining town close to Hiroshima.
The family lived in Ube for a while and Yanai went to high school here after which he went to Waseda University. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Politics in 1971. In the meantime the business expanded with a few more outlets. When Yanai graduated he started selling kitchenware and men’s clothing at a Jusco supermarket. He quit to join his father at the family business after a year. In 1984 the stores expanded in Hiroshima with the Unique Clothing Warehouse, eventually shortening the name to Uniqlo.
The business grew and the original name Ogori Shoji was changed into Fast Retailing in 1991 (Fast Retailing was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in February 1999), to emphasize the thought of expansion and growth that was the basic philosophy of the company. The retailer was the largest growing one in the country and it was listed on the Hiroshima Stock Exchange in 1994. By 1996 they had 200 stores and the capital coming from them was used to create deals with apparel producers of China as well as starting their own production venture in Shandong, China. Their stores began designing, manufacturing and selling only apparel with the Uniqlo-brand and one of the items, the fleece jackets that sold for $15 dollars were a smash hit. For the Olympic athletes of Japan the uniforms in 1998, 2002 and 2004 came from Uniqlo.
The stores continued to expand and Fast Retailing hired executives from global retailers to speed up the decisions made for the business outside Japan. New stores were opening in the SoHo district of New York, Seoul and Hong Kong in 2005 and by the end of the year there were 700 stores in Japan alone. The Uniqlo Company set global sales goal of $10 billion in 2007 wanting to rank among the top five global retailers with Gap, H&M, Inditex and Limited Brands. Yanai received the International Retailer of the Year award in 2010 from the National Retail Federation from U.S. and in 2012 was included in the 50 Most influential people in the Bloomberg Markets Magazine.
Aside from his work he is married and has two sons: Kazumi and Koji living with them in Tokyo. He plays golf each Saturday and Sunday with an 11 handicap at the exclusive Koganei Country Club where the membership costs no less than $590,000. He uses his wealth for philanthropic purposes as well and when the Sendai earthquake struck in 2011 he donated one billion yen to the victims.
There are currently 1400 stores and the international business brings them one trillion yen from China, other Asian countries and U.S.& Europe each, raising the fortune of him by over $3 billion in the past year alone and putting him at a current net worth of $22.2 billion and thus Tadashi Yanai is the richest man in Japan.
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