Tadashi Yanai, chairman and CEO of Uniqlo Co. and its holding company, Fast Retailing Co., strongly believes a business must keep growing and changing to survive, and is now acting aggressively on this belief.

Yanai, who turned his father's small clothing store in Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture, into Japan's largest apparel empire with about 790 Uniqlo stores worldwide, knows it is time to take a new leap in the global market.

"We can't expect much growth from the Japanese market anymore. We must go to markets that are growing," Yanai said in a recent interview at Fast Retailing's Tokyo headquarters. "Unless we become global, we can't keep growing and beat our rival companies overseas."