"Annual Salary Up to 10 Billion KRW if You Change Jobs"…Chairman of Japanese Company Makes Bold Hiring Offer

Yanai Tadashi, Chairman and President of Fast Retailing.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Seoyoung Kwon] Fast Retailing, a Japanese company operating the clothing and fashion brand 'Uniqlo,' has attracted attention after it was revealed that the company raised the salary cap for experienced hires to a maximum of 1 billion yen (approximately 10 billion KRW).

On the 16th, Nihon Keizai Shimbun (Nikkei) reported that Tadashi Yanai, chairman and president of Fast Retailing, announced that starting this year, the maximum annual salary offered to experienced hires would be 1 billion yen. This amount is 2.5 times Yanai’s own salary and was presented under the premise of attracting talent from around the world to create new business models.

The 1 billion yen salary exceeds 200 times the average annual salary of experienced hires at Japanese companies. As of November last year, the average first-year salary for experienced hires in Japan was 4.53 million yen (approximately 47 million KRW), and in industries including clothing, distribution, retail, and food, it was even lower at 4.06 million yen.

Fast Retailing reportedly made the bold decision to raise salaries dramatically, viewing its future competitors as major U.S. IT companies such as Amazon.com. The company judged that to compete with these firms, it is necessary to recruit talent worldwide who are well-versed in digitalization, e-commerce (EC), and supply chain fields.

Experienced employees with salaries in the 10 billion KRW range will lead efforts to transform Fast Retailing’s profit structure, which centers on clothing manufacturing and sales, and to create new business models. Yanai added, "We plan to hire people who can create new value or think about business from scratch, not consultants or those from large corporations," and stated that there will be no limit on the number of hires.

The photo is not directly related to specific expressions in the article. [Photo by Getty Images Bank]

Currently, due to the impact of COVID-19, online sales of clothing have surged in the apparel market. Google in the U.S. is also strengthening its EC sector in collaboration with major internet retail companies, and various companies across industries, especially in the IT sector, are trying to change the industrial structure of the clothing market.

Yanai stated, "In the future, (Uniqlo’s) competitors will not be 'ZARA' but 'GAFA' (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon)." Nikkei also noted that Japan’s current salary system, based on lifetime employment, is strongly seniority-based, and forecasted that Fast Retailing’s experienced hire recruitment could influence the salary systems of Japanese companies overall, as it is a representative company in Japan’s apparel industry.