UNIQLO Announces 2 Vancouver-Area Stores to Open this Spring

By Craig Patterson

Popular Japanese fashion retailer UNIQLO has announced that it will open a third Vancouver-area store at CF Richmond Centre this spring, and has also revealed that its previously announced Surrey location at Guildford Town Centre will open at 10:00 am on Friday, March 9 of this year. 

The CF Richmond Centre store will become the smallest UNIQLO in Canada when it opens in the spring — UNIQLO says that the store will measure 8,010 square feet and it will be located on the first floor of the busy enclosed Richmond mall, which is one of the country’s most productive in terms of annual sales per square foot. UNIQLO will occupy a retail space in the mall recently vacated by US fashion retailer Express, which exited its Canadian operations last year. 

The Guildford Town Centre store will occupy a prominent second-level corner space that will span about 12,800 square feet, between The Gap and Old Navy.

“The launch of two additional UNIQLO stores in British Columbia is very exciting for us,” said Yasuhiro Hayashi, Chief Operating Officer of UNIQLO Canada. “We opened our first store in the Greater Vancouver Area last fall and we received great demand from customers for more stores. This newest expansion demonstrates our commitment to bring LifeWear to more Canadians on the West Coast.” He added, “We wish to thank all our existing customers for their warm reception, and we look forward to welcoming them to our new UNIQLO stores and showing them how LifeWear is thoughtfully created to make everyday life better and more comfortable.”

Jeff Berkowitz of Aurora Realty Consultants represents UNIQLO as broker in Canada. 

UNIQLO entered the Canadian market with two stores in Toronto in the fall of 2016. In September of 2016, UNIQLO opened its first Canadian flagship, spanning 33,400 square feet,  at CF Toronto Eaton Centre. A 30,000+ square foot Yorkdale Shopping Centre UNIQLO store subsequently opened in October of 2016, in the mall’s new Nordstrom-anchored expansion wing. 

UNIQLO’s first store in the BC Lower Mainland opened in October of 2017 at Metropolis at Metrotown in Burnaby, in a 20,630 two-level space. 

In September of 2016, UNIQLO Founder and CEO Tadashi Yanai told Marina Strauss of the Globe & Mail that UNIQLO could eventually operate as many as 100 stores in Canada — while it’s unclear if that number will be reached, landlords across the country confirm that they’ve been in talks with UNIQLO and that some deals have already been done for new Canadian stores. 

Craig Patterson, now based in Toronto, is the founder and Editor-in-Chief Retail Insider. He’s also a retail and real estate consultant, retail tour guide and public speaker. 

Follow him on Twitter @RetailInsider_, LinkedIn at Craig Patterson, or email him at: craig@retail-insider.com.