Japan’s Uniqlo in JV with Grameen unit

Tapping growing middle class: Muhammad Yunus.

AFP/Dhaka

Japanese clothing chain Uniqlo will open stores in Bangladesh in a joint venture (JV) to tap into the nation’s growing middle class, the joint business said yesterday.

Fast Retailing, which owns Uniqlo, has teamed with Grameen Healthcare, run by Bangladesh’s Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus, to initially open two stores in Dhaka.

The stores, to be operated by the tie-up Grameen Uniqlo, will be the first in Bangladesh from a leading global retailer.

Although home to millions of poor, Bangladesh also has a 30mn-strong middle class, one of the largest in Asia, thanks to economic growth of around six percent annually over the last decade.

“They are the first step towards a vision of a chain of multiple stores across the country, providing quality, comfortable and affordable clothing manufactured by locals, for locals,” Grameen Uniqlo said in a statement.

Details of the Dhaka stores will be announced at a press briefing on Saturday.

Uniqlo announced in 2010 it was teaming with Yunus, who pioneered micro-loans, to set up Grameen Uniqlo as a social business to produce clothes in Bangladesh for the nation’s poor. The clothes are currently sold by women door-to-door or from their homes in a bid to help them gain financial independence. Profits from sales have been reinvested back into the business, Grameen Uniqlo says on its website.

But Uniqlo attracted controversy last month for not signing up to a new safety pact for Bangladesh’s garment factories, following the country’s worst industrial disaster that killed more than 1,100 people.

The company, which has 1,200 stores worldwide, said it was still studying the pact.

The April 24 disaster highlighted appalling worker conditions in the $20bn garment making industry, the world’s second largest after China.

European brands and major supermarket buyers have committed to the agreement and its fire and building inspection regime in the wake of the tragedy. Some major US retailers have however refused to join the pact promoted by workers’ rights groups.