Tadashi Yanai: the lazy youth who found a gold mine

Japanese billionaire Tadashi Yanai had a relaxed start to life, but since discovering a talent for high-street fashion, he is bent on world domination. Jane Lewis reports.

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Tadashi Yanai: inspired by Next
(Image credit: © 2017 Bloomberg Finance LP)

When asked recently to describe what guides his vision, the Japanese founder and CEO of Uniqlo, Tadashi Yanai, produced an unusual historical artefact a 1987 catalogue from the mass-market British retailer, Next. "All the clothes are so classic that they could be worn today," he observed approvingly.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.