A few days ago, Fast Retailing, the parent company of Japanese fast fashion giant Uniqlo, announced that it has become the controlling shareholder of the joint venture Innovation Factory. The latter is a wholly-owned subsidiary originally established by Japanese knitting equipment giant Shima Seiki in December 2015, specifically for the production of Wholegarment seamless knitted products.
After the transaction is completed, Fast Retailing Group will hold 51% of the shares of Innovation Factory, and SHIMA SEIKI The production company continues to hold 49% of the shares.
In October 2016, Innovation Factory converted to a joint venture model. Fast Retailing Group and SHIMA SEIKI Manufacturing jointly invested 400 million yen, based on Wholegarment knitting technology, establish a new production system, and jointly develop and produce knitted products. The equity structure of the joint venture at that time was: Fast Retailing Group held 49% of the shares and SHIMA SEIKI Manufacturing Co., Ltd. held 51%.
In 2017, Fast Retailing Group released the seamless three-dimensional knitting technology 3D U-Knit in New York. This technology is further developed based on Wholegarment technology. The biggest feature is the three-dimensional shape without stitches. braid.
Fast Retailing Group stated that this acquisition of the controlling stake in Innovation Factory will relocate the company to the suburbs of the Fast Retailing headquarters, Ariake Center, and expand its production scale. The factory is expected to be put into use in 2021. In the future, Fast Retailing Group will further strengthen its knitwear production system centered on 3D knitting technology and teach key technical points to cooperative factories in overseas markets such as Vietnam and China.
About SHIMA SEIKI MFG., LTD.
When it was founded in 1962, Shima Seiki Manufacturing Co., Ltd. was a small factory manufacturing flat knitting machines in Wakayama City, Japan. Starting from the automation of glove flat knitting machines, the current business covers the development, production and sales of computerized flat knitting machines, clothing design systems, automatic cutting machines, gloves, sock knitting machines and other products. It ranks first in the world in terms of market share in the field of computerized flat knitting machines. As of the fiscal year ending in March 2019, SHIMA SEIKI Manufacturing’s total revenue was 39.352 billion yen (approximately RMB 2.55 billion), with a total number of employees of nearly 2,000. </p
