Tadashi Yanai, founder and president of Fast Retailing, the parent company of Uniqlo, has very specific views on how a business should be run. First and foremost, as he recently told Business of Fashion, is that a company needs to have a soul. "A soul is the most precious thing we have in life. Without a soul, a company or a person is nothing more than an empty shell."
What Yanai considers the soul of his $15.5 billion-a-year company is a list of 23 management principles that he's cultivated over the past 30-plus years. From his days as a brash young upstart managing his father's small tailoring shop, to today, where he's turned that shop into one of the world's largest fashion retailers.
Many of those 23 principles, which are printed onto a card and given to every employee, seem fairly intuitive. Things like putting the customer first and focusing on the details are pretty standard business fare. But others come from a far more fascinating and esoteric place, primarily through questions that Yanai has asked himself over the years. Questions like, "Why do we work?" and "Who are we?"
It's these questions that eventually lead him to a grander vision for his company, like how its value is intrinsically linked to the value that it brings society. "Only after making a positive difference in society, are you able to run a healthy business," he says. And also, how a successful company needs disruption. "I keep telling our people: 'Disrupt the current model,'" he says. "Even working for a large-scale company, you need to reinvent everything from scratch."
Given that Uniqlo is currently one of the most successful fast fashion brands in the world, Yanai's advice is probably worth listening to. Especially since he's lived it, through both success and failure, rather than theorized it from the cozy confines of a business school. And for those too afraid to try something new, there's this final nugget from Yanai: "Nobody can predict the future. So why don't you venture out and create one? Those who create the future will be blessed with luck."
