Fast Retailing, the parent company of Japan apparel retailer Uniqlo, has announced the locations for 11 new stores in the US, on its way to a target of 20 openings in North America this year, which in turn is the first instalment on its plan to reach 200 stores in 2027.The 11 openings so far announced are all in malls. Five of them are ‘A-quality’ malls in the metro areas of Dallas and Houston, Texas, a state in which Uniqlo so far has no physical store presence. The other six will be in California, where it already has 19. The new California openings include units at toney malls like Westfield Century City in Los Angeles, Westfield UTC in San Diego and Westfield Oakridge in San Jose. Twenty openings this year, if achieved, would bring the North American total into the mid-90s, and leave the company needing more than 100 openings, or in excess of 30 per year, to reach the 2027 target. That is a significant and rapid expansion and one that would draw investor scrutiny. Is Fast Retailing about to repeat its mistakes of the past, when it went into North America, expanded in sub-optimal locations, and had to retrench?The mistakes of historyThe first Uniqlo store in the US was opened at Menlo Park Mall in Edison, New Jersey, in September 2005. It opened two more mall stores in 2005 and ended up closing the lot in short order. Strategically, it had been a bad decision to launch in the US in malls before the brand had any recognition there. It needed flagships in high-profile street locations.Bloodied, but not bowed, Uniqlo corrected its initial mistake by opening a SoHo, New York street flagship in November 2006. Other flagships followed, with mall stores trailing in their wake instead of leading the push. The company set itself a goal of opening, yes, 200 stores by 2020, but once again it ran into trouble. By 2015, a year after opening 17 stores but still unable to get traction, it began to cut its losses and close smaller, unprofitable suburban mall stores yet again.Third time lucky then, right? Wrong. Along came Covid-19 in 2020 and then further rationalisations of the store portfolio occurred, including its flagships in New York’s Herald Square, San Francisco’s Powell Street and Chicago’s Michigan Avenue.It now has 76 stores in North America, of which 54 are in the US. And it has noisily resurrected that seemingly magical target of 200 stores over the next few years.The company is now certainly a lot further along in building brand awareness through significant investment in marketing and, at least on some level, it has a better understanding of the American shopper than it once did. For example, it offers products like cropped T-shirts and damaged jeans in the US that are popular there but not a staple in its Asian markets. Understanding the target shopper and identifying locations have been helped by e-commerce. Texas ranks third after New York and California in Uniqlo e-commerce sales, hence the five new openings in Dallas and Houston. There is, however, something else about all three states that makes them logical Uniqlo targets: they are the most populous states for Asians in the US. There are nearly 7 million Asians in California, 2 million in New York, and 1.7 million in Texas. After those three, the number of Asians drops off sharply (to New Jersey, which has less than a million).The US market is the big prizeIn becoming a truly global brand, success in the US is just about de rigeur, and it depends on being able to succeed in suburban malls, where Uniqlo has had so much trouble in the past and where it comes up against apparel retail titans like H&M and Gap’s Old Navy. At nearby power and community centres it also has to contend with the likes of Wal-Mart, Target and TJ Maxx. And of course that doesn’t include online retailers like Amazon and Shein.GU has landed, tooUniqlo, though frequently referred to inaccurately as a ‘fast fashion’ retailer, is neither fast nor particularly at the cutting edge of trends. It emphasises minimalist clothing basics that feature significant investment in fabric technology and design. The fact that its pricing is sharp doesn’t put it in the same category as, say, H&M or Zara. Unfortunately, that’s a message that Uniqlo struggles to get out. Sibling brand GU is more trendy, lower-priced and closer to a true fast fashion concept. And as reported by this publication on May 14, it has opened a flagship at 579 Broadway in SoHo, in New York City. This is GU’s first permanent store outside of Asia. It will offer women’s and men’s clothing, footwear and accessories on two levels. This comes on the heels of a popup shop in the same district and the company believes it has learned enough from the popup to make the permanent store a success. An online store for GU opened simultaneously.What is the magic of 200 stores?GU may well be a significant opportunity for Fast Retailing in America and Uniqlo certainly has room to expand but it is difficult to see the magic of 200 stores. It might be more comforting if Fast Retailing had announced a more modest target – better to under-promise and over-deliver. Yet its brass are almost obsessive-compulsive when it comes to declaring grandiose ambitions. There is another danger to setting targets for store openings, which is that the goal itself, if it isn’t conservative or thought out well enough, can result in the opening of stores that shouldn’t exist. Indeed, this is exactly what Fast Retailing has been guilty of in the past and is the very reason it subsequently had to retrench.Uniqlo is a great retailer and a great brand. But it has made mistakes and still can and will, like every other retailer. Hopefully, it will make fresh and less costly mistakes though, and not repeat the ones of the past.