Japan topped the apparel value table by adding one brand

Photo: Uniqlo

Japan recorded the steepest rise in collective apparel brand value of the fourteen countries in Brand Finance's annual ranking, the consultancy said in August, taking the combined figure to $13bn.

That total is made up of two brands. Uniqlo rose 12% to $11.3bn, entering the global top ten at tenth, and Asics entered the ranking for the first time at $1.7bn, Brand Finance said. The two sum to exactly the national figure.

A year earlier, Uniqlo was the only Japanese brand in the Apparel 50, ranked eleventh at $10.1bn.

So the 29% is arithmetic rather than a boom. One brand grew 12%, a second brand qualified, and the country total moved from $10.1bn to $13bn. Nothing happened to a Japanese apparel sector that has hundreds of companies in it, because only two of them are large enough to appear.

Brand Finance says Japanese clothing brands gained 29 per cent this year. Two brands make up the whole figure, and one of them is new.

What did happen is worth separating out. Asics reaching the threshold at all is the actual news, and the consultancy attributes it to running rather than to fashion.

Brand Finance scored Asics at 50.9 out of 100 on its Brand Strength Index with an A- rating, against Uniqlo's 71.5 and an AA, and pointed to the Re:focus campaign run across major European marathons through the 2026 season and a four-year title sponsorship of the Los Angeles Marathon beginning this year.

Alex Haigh, managing director of Brand Finance Asia Pacific, said Japanese apparel brands are benefiting from long-term consumer preferences for wellbeing, functionality and value, and that Asics had extended its relevance beyond performance sportswear through its connection with the running community.

None of that is about the Asics that spent this month releasing a sixth shoe with Cecilie Bahnsen and reviving a 2003 Onitsuka Tiger. The valuation is built on marathon sponsorship, and the fashion business sits on top of a running business that pays for it.

Brand value is a modelled number. Brand Finance estimates what a brand would earn as a licensed asset, sells brand-valuation services, and its figures are not prices anyone has paid. Kantar's BrandZ ranking, using a different method, put Asics at $4.9bn this year, close to three times Brand Finance's figure.

The number to hold onto is the count rather than the value. For most of the past decade Japan has had one apparel brand large enough to register on a global ranking. It now has two.

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