The Miniso logo
The Uniqlo logo
The Miniso Japan logo
The Daiso Japan logo
Products Miniso Sells
- Homewares
- Bags
- Electronics
- Cosmetics
- Underware
- Snacks
- Stationary
China is known as the land of blatant copies and dubious quality. Although things are slowly changing. If you are in mainland china check out the Mo Bikes, a smart bike sharing system. It’s very innovative and is a great example of Chinese innovation. Unfortunately, this kind of innovation hasn’t reached the traditional retail sector. Where copying foreign brands is fast way to get ahead. After all the Chinese don’t even want to purchase chinese good.
Let’s look at Miniso the Japanese copy brand, which is really Chinese. Their logo looks like that of Uniqlo. With the simple red box, with sans-serif text. However Miniso adds a small handle, to make it appear as a bag.
From their website in regards to the origin of the brand, “With the unprecedented prosperity of world economy, luxury brands from western countries are blindly chased by consumers, while low-quality counterfeits are all over the market, which results in people’s two extreme consumption patterns. As a reflection and criticism of this situation, MINISO was born!” There’s so much irony in this statement coming from a brand that itself is a counterfeit Japanese.
The retailer has over 1600 stores and has seen incredible growth. It’s now expanded to Hong Kong, Australia, Mongolia, Singapore, Dubai, Malaysia, Vietnam and many more. The brand represents itself as Japanese, with an international design team. The reality is that all the products at Miniso are private label. This means that the goods are sourced from Chinese factories, and the packaging and labels are changed to reflect the Miniso brand. They have no products that are designed by themselves. The staff wear neat uniforms with simple name badges.
Here is a plastic toothbrush holder with mug, with a sticker that claims it was designed in Japan. A quick search and Brandzaar was able to find the exact same product on the Aliexpress , the chinese Alibaba, and also ebay twice.
Brandzaar challenges you Mr. Ye Guo Fu to create a truly global Chinese brand that is authentic and respected.
What Miniso has done is what a lot of Chinese companies do. They are willing to make a lower profit margin in a sector. They recognize that Japanese design is trusted globally. That brands like Muji and Uniqlo are fantastic brands and offer great products. They’re branding is spot on, the layout of their stores and product selection is professional.
Miniso has managed to copy this same aesthetic, but giving consumers what they want at a much lower price taking advantage of the all the product that Mainland china makes cheaply. They’ve simply organised these products, chosen ones that appeal to their buyers (mainly woman).
The Miniso stores have a clean layout and design. Nice metal racks with wooden bench tops.
Perhaps the most innovative part of the Miniso business model, is in the way they constantly change product inventory. This leaves customers always coming back to see what’s new. They very quickly analyse what sells and what doesn’t; optimizing every last inch of their retail stores. This fast supply chain, tightly linked to their factories have given them the ability to out innovate their competition. Muji by contrast, design all their products and have them manufactured. This means they have to sell their products for longer to recoup the development cost and to make a profit from said products. This is another reason why Muji products are more expensive than Miniso. By contrast Miniso has no development cost. No molds to pay for, no product designers they just have to pay for their retail and packaging design team. If you look at their packaging it’s obvious they hardly even do that. So much of the packaging looks like it came standard from the factory and they just swapped out the brand names.(Insert photo showing packaging that looks like it came straight from the factory)
Of course like everything in China, if someone’s sees your business being successful, there will be copy cats. Check out this list.
Would Miniso have had the same success if they branded themselves as Chinese? We doubt it, but it’s a shame to see a country like China, not being able to have the confidence to build an international brand in the retail sector. DJI and Huawai have managed to do this in the tech sector.
Looking at the recent media in regards to Miniso it seems there has been less focus on the Japanese side. The truth is the business is Chinese, though they have at least one Japanese employee, Miyake Jyunya. Obviously the real founder Ye Guo Fu is the brains behind the business success of Miniso. It would have been more difficult for him to build the brand as Chinese as consumers prefer foreign brands. Hopefully in the future he can build a Chinese brand and make it global. Helping China to move up the value chain and being able to compete at an equal or greater level then the likes of H&M, Muji and Zara. Brandzaar challenges you Mr. Ye Guo Fu to create a truly global Chinese brand that is authentic and respected.
The success of Miniso across China has spawned a slew of copy cats
DaheSo
This is the most hilarious copy we could find. DaHeSo, they’ve copied everything from the name, logo and website. Doing there best to confuse the customer.
2358JM
2358JM, copying Miniso, but this time claiming to be Korean. Are there any Korean reader that have heard of this brand ?
Mumuso
Mumuso seems to be the best quality copy of the copies, focusing instead on being a fake Korean brand. Probably a better bet in China given the waves of political tension between China and Japan.
Their website for one seems to be much more professional. Although a trade mark search will reveal that Miniso has registered this brand’s name in many countries. Like always, capitalism is agressive with Chinese companies.
Come on Miniso, 1000’s of stores and you can’t even have a professional website?
Are there any Koreans here that can comment of the quality of their translation work?
Domesky
Domesky, this time the Malaysian’s have copied the Chinese who copied the Japanese, but are copying the Koreans.
Confusing as their true origins may be, the store seems a like a quality copy.
XiMi Vaue 熙美诚品
XiMi Vaue seems like a poor copy of a copy. The logo and the name are almost exactly the same as Miniso.
YuBiSo
YuBiSo, this one is an exact copy of Miniso, absolute failure to innovate on any part. The exact same store layout, and almost exactly the same products.
UNYSO
Unyso is another copy of Miniso, but this time claiming to be Korean. Interestingly enough this copy of a copy is in Chatswood, Sydney Australia.
There are probably more copy Miniso stores than in this list. The fact that they have so many copies, proves that this brand is popular. After all people only copy you if you are successful.
Brandzaar Comments:
The fact is, Miniso is a fantastic brand, and although they did copy some ideas from Japan. Their products are genuinely good quality and very competitively priced. They’ve managed to find a place in between Daiso and Muji. They’ve had incredible growth. They have the buying power and innovation that their copies don’t have. There’s still many countries where the brand hasn’t expanded to yet. Most notably in South America and Italy. Cheap well designed and good quality products, they have been a hit with Chinese consumers. If you don’t have Miniso in your country yet, you are truly missing out.
Would you be interested in an insiders guide to getting the franchise rights to Miniso for your country?
Covering such topics as, how to deal with the Chinese culture, how to not get screwed in your contract and how to get the sole agents rights when there’s a lot of competition.
If so, let me know in the comments.
Korean here.
I read some product descriptions written in Korean at the back of Mumuso’s product and I can definitely say that they are really awful. Too much typo and wrong grammar, even the Korean font on their logo “무궁생활” is typical chinese-made Korean font that nobody in Korea uses.
At least they could have hired a Korean designer to improve the disguise–being Korean–but they have never been done that yet.
I’m really curious as to what does that means. Can you say that this is a counterfeit and so their products? I’ve been in one of their stores here in the philippines. Do they have a store built in the country they claimed to be come from?
Well they did copy the idea of daiso and their logo, as you can see above. They used _so name to be mistaken for being Japanese or having connection with daiso on purpose. What I can tell you is there is no Korean brand named _so. None. All of those _so brands were established in China by Chinese. The only difference between them is some of them claiming to be Japanese and the others claiming to be Korean. I personally have no problem with them as long as they only use the “image” of Korea and don’t claim that they are actually from Korea. What frustrates me is that some of those brands lie that they are from Korea. For example “Domesky” says on their web site that they started and maintained the business in Korea for more than 20 years. That’s completely a lie. I like the fact that Japanese and Korean products being popular all over the world but you just can’t lie about your origin just to boost up your business. it’s about dignity. I wonder if they ever feel ashamed
this korean show exposed mumuso
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPiFLd1Fi7I
Hello plasee send me more info on Miniso franchise business
I believe Brazil has already been taken.
You can try emailing Miniso directly at info@miniso.com
I am from surat gujarat,India.we are interested in miniso franchise.
Hi Rajesh,
We takes care of Ximiso Asia pacific. contact us at galloptrading02@gmail.com
Regards/
Gallop
Don’t bother. They will only give u a franchise in some village location. All prime property in the big cities they only will own and operate. Don’t waste your time
Please email me as I am very interested in franchising opportunities in our province. We don’t have a Daiso yet and I would like to be ahead of the game.
adding on,
there’s a new store in Malaysia named “Mini Good”. It is an exact duplicate of Miniso and whatever “___so” that that have sprouted out of the fame.
Hi there. I am very much interested in Franchising opportunity. May you send me more information.
Email info@miniso.com
I bought some products from Miniso Japan in west London (Ealing Broadway shop) they are really awful not very good they Break very easy, and the people who work there they have no idea about the Products they are selling be careful what you buy from there
Hello…miniso has come to India but what about minigood…want to know more about both
the funny thing is that that ‘unyso’ in sydney, is now a miniso shop ahahaha
uniso is now where that unyso shop was in sydney….
hello, I need all the information you mentioned before, thanks.
Miniso has opened two stores in Mexico, and it’s been a huge hit. Although it seems all of their products are made in China, the key to their success in this country was the uniqueness of the store and their price vs quality relation. Dollar stores aren’t new here, but most of the products are of awful quality. Things got difficult once D. Trump made it to the presidency, and Mexican Peso devaluated almost 50%, in consequence, everything got quite expensive, but Miniso came at affordable prices.
Plus, Miniso has brought some products which were hard to get.
Their owners decided to go global, while most Japanese brands are afraid of taking that risk. And that’s the main reason of their success.
Miniso In-Ear Headphones are good and super duper cool! It is worth 299 php
(Just please Convert it on your currency lol)
Catch me on youtube: CJ MNL for my upcoming reviews vlog! Open also for sponsorships! Thank you email me at christianjacobeph@gmail.com Godbless!
I don’t get the hate over “pretending” to be another country’s product. Yes, I know generally Japanese goods are of good quality, yes, Chinese products are notorious for its cheap price and sometimes poor quality (and funny no one mentions that even high-end products like Samsung or Apple uses Chinese-manufactured goods for their product’s components or parts). But I don’t see anything wrong if I am not Japanese and I want to open a “Japanese” sushi shop outside of Japan, it’s part of the branding, it’s what attracts people. And businessman wants to make money.
Frankly, unless the quality is actually so poor that nobody wants to buy it, it is okay to sell at any price. If you want it cheaper, you go order yourself on Aliexpress. However if I decided to buy a brandless product from the internet and sell it as my own then that’s my business.
opening a japanese restaurant is different as people will likely know if a food brand comes from a certain country or just a local shop cooking a foreign recipe. think of it as some Chinese fastfood pretended they are McDonald’s and sold some BigMac’s vs a Chinese fastfood selling their own type of burgers.
samsung and apple may utilize other countries for parts but i’m sure they have processes to check it’s quality.
the point is people know what they are going to get. if it’s local sushi, then they know the restaurant is serving food that originated from another country. users of samsung and apple know that the respective companies have quality control departments so the originating country for the parts is of little consequence. the issue with miniso is that they pretended to be of a country known for good quality products (as you have said re the difference between Chinese and Japanese).
Hi, i live on Georgia an recently discovered Miniso. I don’t think that it was open for a long time, but it sure has clients.
I love this shop, and fell in love from the first time i saw it. For my first visit, i nought my mom a small penguin plushie, surprisingly it was really good quality for a low price. My fiancee got used to buying art stuff, cosmetics and toys there. Thought his Bluetooth speaker doesn’t work properly.
We even found metal chopsticks, and for 7 years I’ve been using only wooden ones(it’s really rare in our country, for someone to use them, so i always bought packages from amason.) Also, they are great quality, and the packaging is kawaii.
Even though on the FB page they said that they had japanese tea and snacks, which i was looking forward to. But never found any :C
The only thing i hated was a deodorant in a cute cat-printed tube, it was sricky and made me sweat.
But, i still love this shop.
these minisoo and copycat brands are shady as fuck. how is no one weirded out? I remember I went to the new miniso store in Ximending in Taipei, Taiwan, and there was literally so much people in there. No one seemed to be commenting on how similar the logo was to Uniqlo (which I immediately recognized), and they were just excited to shop there. Also what’s up with a Chinese owned company branding itself as Japanese? Shady as hell
The logo similarity to Uniqlo was the first thing that popped into my mind, typical Chinese copycat practice. I am Japanese and not really thrilled to find out that Miniso is blatant attempt from a Chinese company to exploit others. Bottom line, a Chinese company taking advantage of another countries success and profiting. A Chinese company using Japanese quality as a front for their business.
Hi…pls send me some info on how to franchise mumuso….i want to open here in Baguio city,benguet
Philippines
HEllo I will appreciate more information about the franchise cost of investment in the cas of Costa Rica
Many thanks
You can email info@miniso.com
Shocking af
The red box logo is not fresh. It has been used in the industry for a long time.
(EX. Red Square Interactive Ltd LOGO / Mary de Saulles’ red-square LOGO)
UNIQLO is not world famous brand like ZARA. It is mostly Asian and is popular in Europe (Russia). UNIQLO was imitated by the US GAP, but marketing, image and advertising are very similar. After that, it seems to be made in France’s famous music video style (Michel Gondry). In fact, spa fashion comes mostly from imitation, but marketing is very important.
The katakanas used are a mess. I mean, it’s not that hard?? Miniso’s is spelt Meisou (supposedly,mi-ni-so-u…) Yubiso is spelt Yubisoo (supposedly, yu-bi-so-u). I don-t even know what they mean (yubi is finger/toe if one wants to find meaning behind it). At least do that one thing right even if you want to butcher the rest on the products.
That said, I ain’t against people who like imitation products. Just be careful with the ones you ingest and put on your skin…
Let me have franchising information for Miniso.I like their business idea.
info@miniso.com
Hi,
Definitely interested in an insiders guide to getting the franchise rights to Miniso in Melbourne on the outer East suburbs. Will be interesting to read what you have to say on how to not get screwed in your contract and how to get the sole agents rights when there’s a lot of competition.
Hi, I am definitely interested in the insiders guide to getting the franchise rights to Miniso. If you can provide. Thanks
what about minigood ??
I am from Mexico and I am interested in miniso franchise. Please let me know to whom I need to contact to get more details.
Welp, MINISO is now invading South American economy. Here in Colombia is opening many stores in such a short time, is aggressive but the novelty is effective and now is getting really popular. And about the quality, it seems good so let’s give it the chance 🙂
Does anyone know if Miniso has a fair trade policy from who they purchase from? Are the working facilities safe and the wages and rights fair? I haven’t been able to find any information.
No way. They fine their employees at their head office in Guangzhou if they are late to work.
The products come from all different factories, they would not think to check this.
Dear I am looking for contact Daehso, Domesky, Unyso, 2358?
I am interested to cooperate with one of those brands as Miniso has a sanction in Lebanon.
Thank you