Japanese Miniso’s $1.5bn International Investment Enters Nigeria

Raheem Akingbolu

The federal government’s quest for foreign direct investment (FDI) has yielded yet another positive boost as Miniso, a top Japanese designer brand and market leader, has opened its world-class outlets across the six high-brow shopping malls in Lagos. Listed as the number one fastest growing retail brand, since its establishment in Japan in 2013, Miniso has actively explored the international retail market by opening over 2,250 stores in more than 41 countries with close to 15 countries underway, with a turnover of USD 750 million in 2015 and USD 1.5 billion in 2016.

Miniso, whose strongest competitors include MUJI, DAISO, WATSON and UNIQLO has beaten all odds with an average monthly growth rate of 80 – 100 stores across countries including the United States, Canada, Russia, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Korea, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, and Australia.

Announcing the arrival of the designer giant into Nigeria at a press briefing held recently in Lagos, the Country Manager, Mr. Chris Lee, said the brand’s products are lifestyle essentials that include creative home necessities, health and beauty products, fashion accessories, gadgets accessories, digital accessories, stationeries gifts, unique toys series, seasonal products, Kitchenware, etc. with more than 10,000 SKUs.

According to him, “Miniso advocates a philosophy of quality life and is dedicated to providing premium and high-quality products to its customers, with a creative ideology of competitive and affordable pricing”. Miniso continuously selects the best materials from all over the world for its products designs with a focus on the “home” and “life”. 80% of the designs are from Japan, Korea, Sweden, Denmark, Singapore, China and Malaysia.

Quoting Ye Guofu, a co-founder of the company, he said in the statement: “The higher the price, the better the quality” It’s only the excuse for those enterprises finding a way to sell products at a high price. Those “low prices with bad quality” products resulted from the profiteering desire are originated from the period of command economy. The time for “good quality with low price” products has just begun. In this era, the actual value of a brand should be beneficial to millions of people rather than providing services only to the noble and the rich. These very values and principles have induced the inception of Miniso.

According to him, it has established a new type of shopping experience with cozier stores, which has become the main force within the department stores and shopping malls along with catering, fast fashion clothing and entertainment. “We strive to provide consumers with simple, natural and quality products, at lower prices, so as to give the consumers an exciting and happy shopping experience”, he added.