Japan's leading clothes seller opens online shop in China

Japan's famed casual wear seller UNIQLO opened a shop Thursday at the Chinese e-commercial site taobao.com, Asia's largest online retailer.

UNIQLO's flagship online shop at Taobao.com has began operating. The move was also the debut for Fast Retailing Co., Ltd,to run an overseas online business, said Tadashi Yanai, board chairman of Fast Retailing which owns UNIQLO.

The great potential and rapid growth of online business in China are the direct reasons for UNIQLO to start the electronic commerce, Tadashi Yanai said in Hangzhou city of eastern Zhejiang Province, where taobao is based.

UNIQLO owns 848 chain stores in Japan and sales for Fast Retailing is expected to reach 660 billion yen (about 6.6 billion U.S. dollars) this year.

Taobao's sales reached nearly 100 billion yuan (about 14.64 billion U.S. dollars) last year with its membership exceeding 100 million.

As of the end of 2008, the number of Chinese netizens topped 298 million, the world's largest. Sales of online business reached2.4 trillion yuan.

Source: Xinhua