You may not have ever heard of the Japanese lifestyle brand MINISO, but this time next year you could very well have one operating at your local mall. The brand, which only just opened its first Canadian store last month in Vancouver, has ambitious plans to operate 500 more stores across the country in the next few years.
The self-described lifestyle brand offers everything from cosmetics to home appliances, but offers all of these products at extremely low prices. Picture a Japanese dollar store, but with the aesthetics of UNIQLO – who happen to be one of the brand’s main forms of competition.
In the next year, MINISO hopes to add 30 to 50 more retail locations across Canada with the second location being added to Vancouver’s Tsawwaseen Mills. As you can tell, MINISO’s plans for breaking into the Canadian market are beginning on the west coast and will make their way to bigger cities throughout the year (Toronto, Montreal, Calgary) and then begin branching off into the smaller markets.
Should MINISO have the success their envisioning for themselves in the Great White North, then there could be some serious disruption amongst value lifestyle retailers, more specifically retailers like Dollarama.
Click here to shop MINISO Canada.
well, MINISO sounds like a Japanese store, however, it is actually a Chinese store.
Hi Kyle! You’ll see that we only describe MINISO as a “Japanese lifestyle brand”, which is how they self-describe themselves on their brand website:
Brand profile
This can be confusing though, since they have been accused of being a Chinese retailer that markets themselves as being Japanese. Hope this clears up any confusion 🙂
Daiso Japan is authentic has good quality and prices. MINISO has bad prices, bad quality and not authentic.
I just found out Miniso is coming to my closest mall. As I’ve been to Daiso, I might be able to do a store report when it opens.
MINISO is great, I find it to be different from Daiso. They’re products are unique in my opinion and good quality. Very very cute. Just because it’s from China, doesn’t mean it’s automatically bad quality. Plus, it is authentic because it’s its own brand.