Online retailers in Korea are set to open 13 outlets at Lotte Department Store branches in the next three months.
“Online brands are continuously expanding into offline stores to raise their brand value and to receive real-time feedback from consumers,” says Lotte Department Store.
Statistics Korea says online sales of apparel and fashion-related items have grown each year by double digits from 6.2 trillion won (US$5.48 billion) to 10.2 trillion won between 2013 and last year.
As these brands gain traction against traditional fashion houses, they start opening brick-and-mortar outlets as well, first as showrooms then as stores, says the Korea Herald. This helps them to tap into consumers who prefer to see products before they buy.
A report from Open Survey last year shows that 53 per cent of consumers want to buy their clothes at offline stores.
Lotte Department Store’s first offline store was for Style Nanda in 2012. Now about 100 online brands have offline outlets at Lotte’s department stores. Opening soon at Lotte are such brands as Imvely, Migun Style and Sappun.
Some Korean brands, such as Liphop and Style Nanda, have even expanded to offline stores overseas in countries like China and Singapore.
