Uniqlo Co., Ltd. is a Japanese casual wear designer, manufacturer and retailer. The company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Fast Retailing Co., Ltd.

A Yamaguchi-based company, Ogori Shōji (which, until then, had been operating men’s clothing shops called “Men’s Shop OS”) was founded in March 1949 in Ube, Yamaguchi.

In May 1984, it opened a unisex casual wear store in Fukuro-machi, Naka-Ku, Hiroshima, under the name “Unique Clothing Warehouse”. Initially, the brand was going to be registered as a shortened contraction of “unique clothing”. However, in 1988, during administration work in Hong Kong for registering the brand, staff in charge of registration misread the “C” as “Q”, and that is how the brand name was born. Tadashi Yanai then changed the store name to “Uniqlo” across Japan. In September 1991, the name of the company was changed from “Ogori Shōji” to “Fast Retailing”, and by April 1994, there were over 100 Uniqlo stores operating throughout Japan.