the owner of the uniqlo chain hosted its new recruits at a welcoming ceremony in tokyo. the firm has doubled the number of new hires this year to about 900 people. more than 500 attended the ceremony including recruits from china and russia. >> translator: it's important to keep trying to succeed. even if you fail many times. keep challenging yourself, and never give up. >> he urged the new employees to join him in overcoming national and cultural boundaries to change the world for the better through clothing. the new crop of employees will be assigned to uniqlo stores this week. >>> all right let's get a check of the markets now. investors appear to be staying pretty cautious before the release of u.s. jobs data and a meeting of the european central bank. main indexes in europe are looking like this. we're seeing a fairly mixed bag with the majors there. london is down by 0.3% as is frankfurt. paris is seeing very slight gains at this hour. earlier most major benchmarks in the asia pacific region ended the day lower. in tokyo investors continued to book profits in the w

uniqlo is a great example.want a high return on investment for their time. >> they closed 275 stores since 2010. erik: do they need to do more? >> obviously, we talked about this last time. the country is over-stored. there are probably too many. really, where is the excitement in the store? at one point, you had a line out the door and the shutters were dark and it was cool, but things have evolved. that is what retail is about. it is about evolving, not revolution. revolution would mean that the whole concept was wrong in the first place. nothing different from kate spade and others coming back. with the right leadership and product, it is still a great brand name. maybe it is bigger in europe than it is in the u.s. right now. stephanie: for me, it is never about waiting in line in the cold on 5th avenue. erik: coming back to the conversation of abercrombie & fitch. stephanie: can they make a turnaround? we will find out. ♪ stephanie: welcome back to "market makers." we are back with michael gould rachel steg