Uniqlo is back in downtown San Francisco. The Japanese clothing chain opens a two-story, 20,000-square-foot flagship at 801 Market St., at the corner of Fourth Street, on Friday, Oct. 9. The city says it will be Uniqlo's largest store on the West Coast and will employ more than 80 people.
A long-vacant corner fills up
The store takes over a storefront that had sat empty for a long time and was previously associated with Old Navy, Hoodline reported. Uniqlo's earlier San Francisco flagship, a 29,000-square-foot store at 111 Powell St. near Union Square, opened in 2012 and closed for good in March 2021, with 69 jobs lost, according to SFGATE reporting cited by Hoodline and SFGuide. Since then the chain kept Bay Area stores at Stonestown Galleria and in Emeryville, Daly City, Hillsdale, Concord, Milpitas and Santa Clara.
Mayor Daniel Lurie's office framed the opening as part of its downtown revival plan and as a sign of returning retail around Union Square and Yerba Buena. Uniqlo USA has said its 2026 U.S. rollout includes 11 new stores, with flagships in San Francisco and Chicago, Hoodline reported.
What's inside
Beyond clothing for women, men, kids and babies, the store offers a repair studio, embroidery, hemming on select pants, ship-to-store pickup and UTme!, a counter where shoppers print their own designs on T-shirts or tote bags. It also carries exclusive merchandise made with Muni's parent agency SFMTA, students at the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts, and local artists fnnch and Lauren Martin.
If you go
A free, family-friendly street festival runs Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., with music on stages on Ellis and Powell streets, local food and activities from the San Francisco Public Library's bookmobile and the Exploratorium. Opening-weekend store hours are 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Sunday. The Powell Street BART and Muni Metro station is about a block away.