Workman’s Booming Business is Now in Decline Due to these Reasons!

Last November, when winter goods were in full swing, sales were negative compared to the previous year…

Workman, which had been making great strides, experienced a year-on-year sales decline in November last year. Although sales picked up in December, there were many complaints about out-of-stocks of popular items. What is happening to Workman? >

Workman has completely become one of the major petite brands over the past five years or so, and we feel that it has penetrated the general public more than we imagined. I am the only one among my relatives who works in the clothing and apparel industry, and the rest of them have no connection to or interest in the apparel business, but among them, the number of middle-aged and older people who buy clothes from Workman has been increasing recently, which makes me feel how widespread it has become.

Workman is a company that has been in such a state, but recently it has been difficult to obtain their products. Even if you open the online shopping site, there are many products that are marked “NEW” (in other words, newly introduced products) but are sold out, and you do not know when they will be restocked.

Due to its popularity…

Let us now consider why this is the case.

First, the biggest reason is

“Workman’s popularity continues to grow.

The first and most important reason is that the popularity of Workman continues to increase. It is only natural that when demand outstrips supply, the product will be out of stock.

The reason why Workman’s popularity continues to increase is that not only Workman, but also other companies’ work clothes were originally low-priced and highly functional. In addition, in recent years, the designs have become sophisticated enough to withstand casual use. In fact, the price of Workman’s products is a little cheaper than the regular price of g.u. and about half the price of UNIQLO’s regular price, so it is natural that the demand for casual use “Workman is good enough” will increase if the design is better.

However, even so, the question arises as to why the out-of-stock ratio is so much higher than that of g.u. and UNIQLO. This is because there is a background unique to Workman.

Workman manufacturers change models every two to five years.

Since Workman was originally a specialty store, it purchased products from various work clothes manufacturers and sold them in its stores. Although the general public is not familiar with work clothes manufacturers, there are many leading manufacturers such as Jijyudo, XEBEC, and Kurodharma in the market.

However, unlike general casual wear, the speed of fashion “fads” is not as fast as that of casual wear. Therefore, a cycle of model changes every two to five years was sufficient, and the sales method was to make enough clothes for two to five years and then sell them. Workman’s initial statement when it first entered the casual wear market, “We will sell out without changing models for 2 to 3 years, and change models after selling out,” is a method unique to the work clothes industry.

On the other hand, while there are various methods in the casual wear industry, the method of making large quantities at the beginning of the period and selling less by the end of the period is one in which UNIQLO excels, and by making large quantities at the beginning of the period, UNIQLO was able to lower the production cost per piece and sell at a lower price.

Although UNIQLO and Workman share the same method of making large quantities and selling fewer items, Workman’s out-of-stock status is now overwhelmingly higher than UNIQLO’s. Our guess is that Workman’s volume of stockouts at the beginning of the period is considerably lower than UNIQLO’s. At the very least, Workman’s demand is lower than UNIQLO’s. We have to assume that it is less, at least in relation to the current volume of demand for Workman.