Uniqlo’s CEO on His Long, ‘Crazy’ Fight for the Future of Retail

Tadashi Yanai, CEO of the parent company of Japanese clothing juggernaut Uniqlo and the wealthiest person in Japan, found himself in San Francisco recently, opening his company's first West Coast store and explaining how Silicon Valley had influenced his fast-growing company. After some discussion of flat management hierarchies, the power of failure and the brilliance of Twitter, Yanai got down to brass tacks. "You have to be a crazy guy and a little eccentric to be very successful," Yanai says. "Whether it's Steve Jobs or [longtime Intel CEO] Andy Grove, they're crazy."