Your everyday fashion discovery
URBAN RESEARCH (urban-research.jp) scores 58 out of 100 on Brand Analyzer, placing it in the Developing tier among Fashion & Apparel brands, E-commerce brands, in the 4th percentile of 8281 Fashion & Apparel brands.
URBAN RESEARCH is a Japanese multi-brand fashion retailer founded in 1989, operating as an official online store that unites several in-house apparel labels including DOORS, ROSSO, かぐれ, KBF, SENSE OF PLACE, Sonny Label, SMELLY, RODE SKO, and UR SELECT. The company offers weekly new arrivals and curated staff styling, targeting fashion-conscious young adults to middle-aged consumers in Japan who seek casual, urban, and lifestyle-driven apparel across a variety of style categories.
| Brand Name | URBAN RESEARCH |
|---|---|
| Domain | urban-research.jp |
| Industry | Fashion & Apparel, E-commerce |
| Founded | 1989 |
| Main Competitors | United Arrows (46/100), Beams, Ships, Journal Standard, Nano Universe, Adam et Rope, Uniqlo (93/100) |
Moz Domain Authority 51/100 vs category average 44 / leader 93 - a strong backlink profile, so AI systems frequently encounter mentions of the brand.
Ranked #54,704 on the Tranco list of most-visited sites - strong traffic reinforces the brand's prominence to AI models.
No Wikipedia presence was found - a major gap, since Wikipedia is among the most heavily weighted sources in AI training data.
The homepage meta description reads "アーバンリサーチ、URBAN RESEARCH、DOORS、ROSSO、かぐれ、KBF、SENSE OF PLACE、Sonny Label、SMELLY、RODE SKO、UR SELECTの公式オンラインストア。新着アイテムが毎週入荷!!" (Meta description: 7 words. No OG description (falling back to meta)) - this is the summary AI engines are most likely to quote.
Structured data on the homepage: 1 JSON-LD block(s), Breadcrumb/Website schema, og:image, og:type, canonical. Adding Organization and FAQ schema would further help AI crawlers parse the brand's identity.
AI-crawler access: robots.txt present, no AI bot restrictions - robots.txt controls whether engines like GPTBot and ClaudeBot can read the site at all.
Content is JA-only, limiting citation in English-language AI answers.
Social footprint: verified profiles on YouTube, X (Twitter), Instagram, Facebook; no detected presence on LinkedIn, GitHub - consistent profiles reinforce the brand's identity across the web.
0 Reddit mentions - community discussion signals real-world reputation to AI models.
Live results from asking a general-purpose AI assistant about the brand, checked October 2026.
When asked "What is URBAN RESEARCH?", Claude could identify the brand as of October 2026. URBAN RESEARCH is a Japanese fashion retailer and brand founded in 1989, offering casual, lifestyle-oriented apparel and accessories for men and women along with home goods under various sub-brands like URBAN RESEARCH DOORS and SENSE OF PLACE. Best known for Casual, laid-back Japanese fashion with a relaxed, lifestyle-brand aesthetic blending Western casual style with Japanese sensibility.
When asked "Best brands similar to URBAN RESEARCH?", Claude would recommend URBAN RESEARCH as of October 2026. It's a well-known and respected Japanese casual fashion brand that fits naturally into discussions of similar lifestyle-oriented apparel brands like Beams or United Arrows.
Common questions people ask in Google, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI search engines.
URBAN RESEARCH's main competitors in Fashion & Apparel: United Arrows (46/100), Uniqlo (93/100).
Sources: Brand Analyzer scan
URBAN RESEARCH has limited AI-search visibility, scoring 40/100 on Brand Analyzer's AI visibility composite (visibility 33, trust 40, recommendation 53). This estimates how likely AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity are to know, trust, and recommend the brand.
Sources: URBAN RESEARCH official site
URBAN RESEARCH was founded in 1989. URBAN RESEARCH operates in the Fashion & Apparel category. It is analyzed by Brand Analyzer across seven brand dimensions and AI-search visibility.
Sources: Wikidata
URBAN RESEARCH offers a wide range of fashion apparel through its official online store, encompassing multiple in-house brands: DOORS, ROSSO, かぐれ, KBF, SENSE OF PLACE, Sonny Label, SMELLY, RODE SKO, and UR SELECT. These brands cover various style categories including casual, urban, and lifestyle-oriented clothing, with new items added weekly and styling guidance provided by staff.
Sources: URBAN RESEARCH official site
URBAN RESEARCH scores 53/100 on Brand Analyzer's AI recommendation signal, indicating it is reasonably likely to be surfaced when AI assistants like ChatGPT suggest Fashion & Apparel options. Recommendation depends on crawlability, structured data, and category authority.
Sources: URBAN RESEARCH official site
URBAN RESEARCH is a Japanese multi-brand fashion company and official online store founded in 1989. It brings together a range of its own in-house apparel brands-including DOORS, ROSSO, かぐれ, KBF, SENSE OF PLACE, Sonny Label, SMELLY, RODE SKO, and UR SELECT-under one retail platform, offering casual, urban, and lifestyle-oriented clothing for a broad customer base in Japan.
Sources: URBAN RESEARCH official site
URBAN RESEARCH designs, curates, and sells fashion apparel and lifestyle items through its official online store, which features multiple in-house brands. It provides weekly new product arrivals and staff-curated styling suggestions, enabling customers to shop across diverse style categories-from casual and urban wear to lifestyle-focused clothing-within a single e-commerce platform.
Sources: URBAN RESEARCH official site
URBAN RESEARCH can improve AI discoverability by strengthening structured data (Organization and FAQ schema), maintaining an accurate Wikipedia/Wikidata entity, earning authoritative citations, and keeping content crawlable for AI bots. Brand Analyzer measures these as visibility, trust, and recommendation signals.
Sources: URBAN RESEARCH official site
URBAN RESEARCH is known for operating a multi-brand fashion ecosystem that includes distinct in-house labels such as DOORS, ROSSO, かぐれ, KBF, and SENSE OF PLACE, each catering to different style niches within casual and lifestyle fashion. It is also recognized for frequent weekly product updates and curated staff styling on its official online store.
Sources: URBAN RESEARCH official site
URBAN RESEARCH's customer base consists of fashion-conscious consumers in Japan, generally ranging from young adults to middle-aged shoppers, who are interested in casual and lifestyle apparel across varied style categories.
Sources: URBAN RESEARCH official site
URBAN RESEARCH scores 40/100 for AI visibility - how well ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can discover, identify and cite the brand.
URBAN RESEARCH has a limited AI-visibility profile at 40/100 - a proxy for how readily ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews can recognise and cite it. Its strongest area is recommendation likelihood (53/100) and its weakest is visibility (33/100). It benefits from a Wikidata knowledge-graph entry, a global traffic rank of #54,704 (Tranco) and a Moz Domain Authority of 51/100. The main gaps holding it back: no clear Wikipedia entity to anchor it in LLM training data, thin schema.org structured data and no llms.txt to steer AI to its best pages. In a live check, Claude could already identify URBAN RESEARCH from memory (October 2026) - a sign these signals are paying off.
The score combines seven dimensions - name quality, digital presence, visual identity, messaging clarity, trust foundation, AI discoverability, and brand authority - into a single objective benchmark.
Ranked closest to URBAN RESEARCH: Tsimpolis.gr (58/100), Trunk Club (58/100), Very Exclusive (58/100), Vicunha (58/100).
A step up - brands to learn from: Zoologist Perfumes (71/100), ZALORA (71/100).
Category leader: Complex (97/100).
Brand Analyzer is built by DataEase AI. Track your brand in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.